Russian active sonar

[Tombow]

Originally Posted by Doctor Haider

I should also note that the Russian S-Class and German Type I were created over the same prototype

If we're going to complete the list, the finnish Vetehinen Class share the same ancestry :-)

@Doctor Haider: if you had the time to compare your monography with the ones published on Wunderwaffe, are there any additions/new details in it? Would be very interested on that. The wreck of one of the Black Sea Pikes has been discovered only as late as 2000, so there is plenty of possibilities that in the meantime, more wrecks are being discovered or details added.

Back to the russian sonars. Continuing digging the net, here is a website describing some russian northern fleet operations in WWII. Several mentions of destroyers and big submarine hunters of the БО (Большой Охотник - literally "Big Hunter") Class being fitted with ASDIC and description of allegedly successfull attacks (since we're not in the position to double-check the data however it should be taken with a healthy portion of doubt). Link in russian:

http://vmk.vif2.ru/battles/WWII/Shed.../article7.html

Simply googling for "АСДИК" (russian translation/transliteration) turns out a lot of links, some of them pretty useful. On the contrary, googling for "АСДИК" together with the russian designation of the radar (Дракон-128 or Дракон-128С) turns out only a handful of websites, some of them pretty useless. Guess we have to wait for a real expert to clarify the details about the russian version.

A funny side note I remember reading back when I was a teenager - in the russian pacific fleet there has been a curious experiment to enhance the use of regular hydrophones. A small submarine hunters of the MO-2 class has been fitted with makeshift sail rigging designed to be attached to its masts (so it could keep its engines still while hearing for any submarines down). In a "proof-of-concept" exercise against a Pike class it proved successfull, maintaining sound contact with the submarine for more than 4 hours (until the submarine was forced to surface, well in range of the hunter).