Book Research

[TorpX]

I am reading Spadefish , by Stephen L. Moore, and ran across some interesting bits of information in the chapter I just finished, and had to share.

#1 - TDC operation

The soundman would give a turn count on a target ship and this was somehow input into the TDC to obtain the speed:

p158

Then the gunnery officer, Lieutenant Laundy, would put this count right into the TDC and it would figure the speed of the enemy.

#2 - "decks awash"

We had an interesting discussion about this recently.

p159

Underwood ordered his boat flooded down to reduce her topside radar profile. Her decks were awash with just the bridge structure exposed.

[Enemy radar was a concern. The had the APR radar detector and could tell when they were being looked at.]



#3 - maximum speed

There was discussion about this too, awhile back, concerning Barb's max. speed and no real consensus as to how this was achieved. I don't recall the speed claimed for Barb, but Spadefish got itself into a very tense situation with multiple escorts chasing her on the surface in fairly shallow water.

p171

At maximum power, as the electricians put it ... attaining a shaft speed of 305 turns on a 1400 KW load from the motors for a pit log speed of 22.8 knots- the fastest that Spadefish was ever to be driven while fully loaded!

Anyway, I considered these to be very interesting details. If I find more in the rest of the book, I'll post them.