Hitler's Table Talk

SHIP AND AIRCRAFT CONSTRUCTION 509
The current design of ships certainly does not conform to the
laws of nature; if it did, then we should find fish furnished
with some sort of propulsive element at the rear, instead of the
lateral fins with which they are endowed. Nature would also
have given the fish a stream-lined head, instead of that shape
which corresponds more or less exactly to a globule of water.
One of the most doubtful blessings bestowed upon us by early
Christian seafarers is the abandoning of the fish shape and the
adoption, in theory and practice, of the principle—which still
governs the construction of even our latest vessels of the Nelson
class—of pointed forward and blunt aft. In ship design, surely,
it is most necessary to imitate the ideas of nature and to adopt
the design of a falling drop of water. For by thickening the prow
you reduce by so much (soundsoviel) the pressure produced
from in front on a pointed bow.
It is only quite recently, too, that it has been realised that a
pointed spade is not the best spade.
Seeing that we have departed from the natural in the shape
of our ships, it is not to be wondered at that we have found also a
form of propulsion which is contrary to the example given us in
nature by the fish. The screw fixed in the rear acts by suction,
and the resultant vacuum acts as a brake on the ship's progress,
while this brake effect is augmented by the resistance offered by
the mass of water piling up at the bows. In nature exactly the
reverse happens—in front suction by vacuum, at the back an
inert mass of water tending to further the forward thrust. The
fish moves forward by the action of its fins and by the propulsion
of water through its gills. Happily these principles have been
remembered in the construction of aeroplanes, and the screws
have been placed in front, where by producing suction they
pull the plane forwards.
You cannot deny that the design and method of propulsion
of the present-day ship are out of date. With warships we have
already come to the point where an addition of driving power
does not lead to a corresponding increase of efficiency. You
find that a battleship of over 45,000 tons with 136,000 horsepower
engines steams at 30 knots, while an aircraft carrier of
half the size with 200,000 horse-power engines raises only
35 knots ! Something, obviously, is wrong with the mathematics