Submarines have ballast tanks. The tanks can hold air, or they can be "vented" and water can flow into them and fill them completely. When the tanks are full of air, the submarine is buoyant and floats. When the main vents are opened, the tanks are flooded and the submarine submerges. When the submarine is submerged, wants to surface, air can be injected at high pressure into the ballast tanks to force out water, again make the submarine buoyant, and cause it to rise to the surface and float.

In practice, when a submarine surfaces, it doesn't use a lot of air from its high pressure air tanks to "blow the ballast tanks" because it takes a long time to pump up the high pressure air tanks again. What happens is that all the ballast tanks are given a "good shot" of high-pressure air (a few seconds), and then the planes are used in conjunction with the screw (which some call a propellor) to actually drive a submarine to the surface. Once there, something called a low-pressure blower system can be used to finish blowing the ballast tanks (while the high-pressure air compressors are running to pump the high-pressure air tanks back up).