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no committee bearing this name has ever been found in the Admiralty archives
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I think this might be a case of 'wikipedia b*ll****' actually. Here is a quote from Deborah Lake's book 'Smoke and Mirrors: Q-ships Against the U-Boats in the First World War':
'In Britain, the Admiralty wondered how to counter the threat. The committee that studied anti-submarine warfare was disbanded when the war began, a decision that is hard to grasp. The navy itself was totally unprepared. No depth charges to destroy an underwater enemy, no hydrophones to hear submerged U-boats were in service. Anti-submarine detection simply did not exist.
Fantastic proposals flowed into the admiralty throughout the war. One suggested that seaguls could be trained to hunt U-boats. All this required was a British submarine to cruise back and forth with its periscope smeared with fish oil. at regular intervals, the crew would release titbits. The gulls would quickly associate periscopes with food. when a U-boat appeared, the birds would congregate around it. The navy could do the rest.
A similar plan suggested using seals and sea lions. This scheme's proposer felt that they could be trained to bark when the sound of U-boat diesels reached them. Admiralty desperation accordingly led to the expensive hire of several sea lions from an astute trainer. Like their feathered comrades, they failed to understand the problem. The U-boats remained safe from detection by British fauna.
Jellicoe recorded that he received a letter that earnestly suggested the Royal Navy fill the North sea with effervescent salts. The resulting bubbles would lift lurking U-boats to the surface, where they could be picked off at leisure.
The navy pinned hopes on its anti-submarine picket boats, a motley collection of yachts, trawlers and motor-launches that patrolled the coastal waters. Their equipment to fight U-boats consisted of a canvas bag and a heavy hammer. When a periscope appeared, the crew would simply slip the bag over it, then smash the glass with the heavy hammer.'
This is just a short quote from the section in the book which deals with the Admiralty's plans, and as ludicrous as all these ideas were, the fact that they are documented, and some were tried, tends to suggest that there was indeed some sort of committee to co-ordinate these efforts, or it seems unilikely that they'd ever have been attempted. so I'd go with the Committee acronym theory, and even if the committee wasn't actually called A.S.D.I.C. we all know how much the military loves its acronyms, so it's hardly a stretch to imagine them concocting a committee name just to get the acronym.
And I'd take U-Boat.net's opinion over wikipedia every time, there are so many errors and half-truths on wikipedia, it's hardly worth the effort to attempt correcting them, which for a while I used to do until I realised the futility of it!
Chock