Information AboutAsw |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ANTI-SUBMARINE WARFARE | |
| anti-submarine warfareanti-submarine warfare | |
| naval warfare | |
|
Like many forms of Warfare , successful anti-submarine warfare depends on a mix of superior technology, experience and luck. DEVELOPMENT OF ANTI-SUBMARINE WARFARE World War I During the First World War submarines were a new menace. Previously they had been limited to relatively calm and protected waters. The vessels used to combat them were a range of small, fast, surface ships that used Gun s and good luck. They mainly relied on the fact that a submarine of the day was often on the surface for a range of reasons, such as charging the batteries or crossing long distances at a higher speed. The first Depth Charge s for attacking submarines at depth were used. The first approach to protect warships with chainlink nets strung from the sides of Battleship s would protect against torpedoes fired from submarines. The hydrophone, an underwater microphone, was used to listen for submarines; the German U-boat , ''UC-3'', was sunk with the aid of hydrophone on April 23 1916. The first Sonar s were deployed in 1916. Nets were often deployed across the mouth of a harbour or naval base to stop submarines entering or to stop Torpedo es that were fired against ships. World War II , October 1941]] During the Second World War , the submarine menace revived, threatening the survival of island nations like Britain and Japan which were particularly vulnerable because of their dependence on imports of food, oil and other vital war materials. Despite this vulnerability, little had been done to prepare sufficient anti-submarine forces or develop suitable new weapons. Other navies were similarly unprepared, despite the fact that every major navy had a large, modern submarine fleet. being loaded onto a depth charge thrower on board the corvette HMS ''Dianthus'', 14 August 1942 ]] At the beginning of the war, most navies had few ideas how to combat submarines beyond locating them with sonar and then dropping Depth Charge s on them. But sonar proved much less effective than expected, and was no use at all against submarines operating on the surface at night. Allied anti-submarine Tactics developed to defend Convoy s, aggressively hunt down U-boat s and to divert vulnerable or valuable ships away from known U-boat concentrations. During the course of the Second World War , the Allies developed a huge range of new technologies, weapons and tactics to counter the submarine danger. These included:
used for spotting U-boats on the surface at night fitted to a Liberator aircraft of Royal Air Force Coastal Command, 26 February 1944]]
In the air many different aircraft from lighter-than-air airships to four-engined seaplanes and land-planes were used. Some of the more successful anti-submarine aircraft were the Lockheed Ventura , PBY Catalina , Consolidated B-24 Liberator , Short Sunderland and Vickers Wellington . The provision of seaborne air cover was essential. At first, the British developed temporary solutions such as Merchant Aircraft Carrier s and CAM Ship s. These were superseded by mass-produced, relatively cheap Escort Carriers built by the United States and operated by the US Navy and by the Royal Navy. At this point there was a significant difference in the tactics of the two navies and criticism was aimed at the British. The Americans favoured aggressive hunter-killer tactics using escort carriers on search and destroy patrols, whereas the British preferred to use their escort carriers to defend the convoys directly. The American view was that this tactic did little to reduce or contain U-boat numbers. In the event, the tactics were complementary, suppressing and destroying U-boats. The critical Allied advantage was provided by the breaking of German naval codes (information gathered this way was dubbed Ultra ) at Bletchley Park in England. This enabled the tracking of U-boat packs to allow convoy re-routings: however, whenever codes changed, convoy losses rose significantly. Much later, in the war, active and passive Sonobuoy s were developed for aircraft use. Post-war Since the introduction of submarines capable of carrying Ballistic Missile s, great efforts have been made to counter the threat they pose. In some areas of the ocean, where land forms natural barriers, long strings of sonobuoys can monitor maritime passages for extended periods. Seaborne forces developed better Bomb s and Depth Charge s and a range of towed sonar devices to overcome the problem of ship-mounting that required ships to pass directly over the attacked submarine. Helicopters can fly courses offset from the ships and transmit sonar information to their Combat Information Centre . They also transport homing torpedoes to positions many miles away from the detecting ships. Increasingly anti-submarine submarines, called attack submarines or Hunter-killer s became capable of destroying, particularly, Ballistic Missile submarines. Initially these were very quiet diesel-electric propelled vessels but they are more likely to be nuclear-powered these days. A significant detection aid used in the 1960s was the so-called MAD detector. This used the earth's magnetosphere as a standard and detected anomalies caused by large steel vessels, such as submarines. These devices are obvious as long tail extensions from the aircraft, housing the device as far from aircraft influences as possible. More reliance was being placed on Electronic Warfare detection devices that used the submarine's need to do radar sweeps and to transmit responses to radio signals from home base. As frequency surveillance and direction finding became more sophisticated these devices enjoyed some successes, but submariners learned techniques of not relying on such transmitters. Home bases then used Extremely Low Frequency radio signals that can penetrate the ocean's surface to reach submarines wherever they might be. Modern anti-submarine warfare In modern times Infra-red (FLIR) detectors have been used to track the large plumes of heat that fast nuclear-powered submarines leave to rise to the surface. FLIR devices are also used to see Periscope s or Snort s at night whenever a submariner might be incautious enough to probe the surface. Today many nations cultivate offshore seabeds of listening devices capable of tracking submarines within the coverage area of the devices. It is known to be possible to detect man-made marine noises as far as right across the southern Indian Ocean from South Africa to New Zealand . TECHNOLOGIES USED There are a large number of technologies used in modern anti-submarine warfare:
SEE ALSO |
|
|