A new? design os submarine, optimized for fast surface moving to crisis areas (in French):

http://www.meretmarine.com/article.cfm?id=114389

 

In past times it not was a idea with good outcomes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_K_class_submarine

Neither in France:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submar...Surcouf_(N_N_3)

 

At least now in HCE we can fire at surfaced submmarines

Interesting, if only in a fanciful way.

 

Most submarine designs with a large sail have proven to be terribly unstable.

cool way for a surface ship to avoid some antisurface missiles.

At last at home today, with a little more of time.

Now I remember two other good bad examples about the surface submarine concept:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_X1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_M1

Most hillarious thing I have read this week is from that wike page about the HMS x1:

 

The 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, of which Britain was a signatory, did not ban submarines but it did ban their use against merchant ships

 

I think the treaties ending WWI and armament treaties after-wards are some of the biggest flops in modern history, its like everybody wanted to either stick their heads in the sand or really wanted wwII to happen because all of these treaties were for the most part pure crap.