Word: aswe
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Dates: during 1958-1958
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After reading about Russia's pigboat fleet, I considered it a welcome change to know that Uncle Sam is finally doing something about the threat of enemy subs. Hurrah for Rear Admiral Thach and his men of the Navy's ASW (antisubmarine warfare) [Sept. 1]. Maybe now the Navy will show the public that they can do more than just eat good chow and shoot craps...
...ocean floor, fortunately, is a fixed topography; its changes are minute in time. But detecting the underwater enemy is the first job of Thach and his ASW team, and like the submariner, Thach faces the bewildering phenomenon of the sea itself: its lack of homogeneity, its massive motion, its madness, its strange, deep rivers. One undercurrent, recently discovered in the Pacific, is 200 miles wide, 500 to 1,000 ft. deep, flows east along the equator, 100 ft. below the westerly-flowing surface...
Thach and his men, and the civilian scientists working on ASW problems, hunt this jungle with sonar and radar equipment that has grown in sophistication over the years but is still far from perfect. Heavy seas, hammering the hull of a destroyer, can override the sonar-transmitted sounds of distant submarine screws or reduction gears. The sun heats the thin layer of air over smooth water, and this in turn can bend radar waves. Sometimes a thermal layer, 100 to 300 feet deep, distorts sound-and a knowledgeable sub skipper plays this layer like a shield. He can confound enemy...
...July 1957, Jimmy Thach's experience and versatility were turned to the deepening and long-neglected problem of antisubmarine warfare. He became one of four ASW carrier division Atlantic commanders in the Navy's Hunter-Killer Force (HUKFOR). With the three others, he was called before Arleigh Burke to answer the question: What could the Navy do to improve its submarine defenses? Hardly hesitating, Thach outlined a plan for a semipermanent task force, chartered to experiment with and develop new antisubmarine defense systems. When Thach finished talking, Arleigh Burke grinned. "Jimmy Thach," he said, "has just made...
...Exercise. Airman Thach himself needed training in submarine warfare. He took a short course at Norfolk's ASW Tactical School, whizzed through studies in sound detection in New London, dropped anchor at Key West's weapons-testing center, climbed aboard every nuclear submarine in the Atlantic, visited destroyers, jawed with officers and bluejackets. Next he ordered a "cross-pollination" program, sent his aviators aboard submarines, his sub skippers into helicopters, his destroyer men into 52Fs. He put airplane pilots at the helms of submarines to help work out tactical underwater maneuvers...