Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Wood
You were on a fleet boat? How old are you? Oh, and how far could you detect vessels with a hydrophone, when surfaced?
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There are more than one type of vessel called boats. We had no Fleet boats when I served they were wooden hulled. I am fairly ancient.
A hydrophone is garbage when on the surface. Ask any sonar operator in a tin can. Slow or all stop and listen was the trick on a DD. The reason was one or two could triangulate listening and then by radio direct the others on coordinates to drop depth charges.
Remember when surfaced your running a hugely noisy diesel engine. On top of that you have a huge amount of noise being generated by the water itself hitting the metal hull of the Fleet Boat or surface vessel.
During WW2 the Kreigsmarine were ahead of the game when it came to passive sonar techniques. With the GHG had at the start 24 sensors and latter 48 sensors. A single ship could be determined 20KM away and a convoy at 100KM
After JP and JT submarines had the model WCA equipment using 3 transducers and 1 hydrophone in three separate housings. The NM is a magnetostriction transducer. The QC magnetostriction transducer and the JK Rochelle-salt hydrophone are housed in one sound head, called the QC-JK. The QB is a Rochelle-salt transducer.
Latter on with WFA-1 you could even map minefields with about 600 yards of range. Which I was was model in the game. I have yet to see a minefield my sonar can detect. Fairly interesting however to move through a minefield and watch out of the periscope.
If you want to do some in depth reading on Hydrophones and Sonar Read these two:
NAVPERS 10884
NAVPERS 16167
If you would like a listen on the real thing ... take a listen here:
JP-1
Learn it well or see you in hell.