Squid Launcher query

[Mush Martin]

Originally Posted by Zero Niner

What's a squid? (Not the sea creature heh :p )

during the war there were four many types of anti submarine weapons for ships.

Depth charges were dropped of the aft of the ship by rails or thrown outward from the sides of the ship by mortars they had large charges and detonated by Hydrostatic detonator meaning you set the depth for it to go off at and once it reached that depth it would detonate.

HedgeHog was a projector type weapon that launched a multitude of anti submarine mortar bombs out in front of the ship and it would drop them in a circle pattern. Hedge hog was able to fire while the ship still had the sub on sonar unlike depth charges where the sub dissappears from the sonar just before the ship passes over it. hedge hog rounds were designed to sink quickly and would only detonate if they touched something we call this contact detonation

Squid was a three barrelled ASW mortar that could be aimed well out from the ship it was on 50 - 300yds or so it was actually tied into the sonar for fire control where Depth charges and Hedgehogs had submarine positions only reported from sonar. and squid didnt detonate by depth or contact
squid detonated by timing.

the Royal navy Rated hedge hog about three times more effective than depth charges and squid at least twice as effective as Hedge hog Squid
is widely regarded as the wars best ASW weapon.

MM