Donald McIntyre on hydrophones

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by kapuhy

I've just read Donald McIntyre's "U-Boat Killer" and there's one fragment that I found very surprising. On pages 234-235, describing difficulties while working with base personnel, author gives a following example of just how uninformed was land-based staff regarding ASW tactics:

"Another illustration of this was given me when, in visiting the underground headquarters at Plymouth to make my report on a patrol, I happened to meet a very senior officer who asked me how things were going. On explaining the difficulties we were experiencing in the use of asdic in the Channel owing to the great number of submerged obstructions (...) this venerable character nodded. "Ah yes," he said, "but of course you have your hydrophones to help you". There was little point in trying to enlighten him, though hydrophones had not been used to hunt submarines since the early days of the 1914-18 War!".

Emphasis mine. I have little reason to believe McIntyre, who spent entire war hunting U-Boats, would be wrong on this subject. Yet in all U-Boat simulations I ever played escorts seem to use hydrophones extensively, we have all these silent running tactics and such... is this something that all subsim designers got completely wrong? And if not, what could he mean by this sentence?

it sounds like Brit humor to me. the senior officer was taking the mickey out on the junior officer.
or
the senior officer was a ditz who hadn't served in either subs or convoy duty and had no notion of underwater sound physics.

i suppose you can take your pick as to which is true.

what is important is that YOU know the difference between hydrophones and ASDIC (sonar).