Word: sonar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...signature" that, like a human fingerprint, is unique. The signature is the sum total of the sub's sounds?the beat of its screw, thump of its pumps, rustle of its wake. To detect those signatures, the U.S. uses a variety of acute listening devices, including two networks of sonar cables, called Caesar and Sosus, that are placed in the ocean depths in areas frequented by Soviet subs. U.S. planes, destroyers and hunter-killer subs also use sonar devices to trace Soviet subs. Through such systems, the U.S. Navy is able to track...
...Hunting. A sonar operator needs a highly trained ear to sort out the sounds of the sea. Apart from a sub's noises, the sea is full of other sounds, a syncopated symphony of crackling shrimp, clucking sea robins and grunting whales; there is even the engine-like throb of an unknown sea animal that Navymen call the "130-r.p.h. fish." Once the various sounds have been sorted out, the American sub hunters flash the details of the sub's signature to a Navy base in the U.S., where a computer has memorized the signatures of the vast majority...
...destroyer locks on the enemy boat and tracks his every move. Sometimes, to impress on the Soviets the futility of their plight, an American skipper will play The Volga Boatmen over and over again on his destroyer's underwater sound system until the ears of the Russian sonar operator are numbed by the noise and the Soviet sub is finally forced to surface...
Under the Sea. Even finding the missing subs proved impossible. Dozens of planes and ships equipped with radar and sonar sounding devices searched wide stretches of the Mediterranean without success. They found bits of debris and oil slicks, which are common in busy sea lanes, but analysis failed to link the findings with either the Dakar or Minerve. When the oxygen reserves of the two vessels were exhausted three to four days later, hopes for saving the 121 crewmen were abandoned...
...scattering" sensors (which can "read" signals bouncing from the troposphere) are mounted on the foremast to analyze those signals and to eavesdrop on radio communications. The ship is equipped to test salinity levels, temperatures and algae growth in various parts of the Sea of Japan-all valuable information for sonar operators. Pentagon photos of Pueblo taken after the ship's renovation in Bremerton, Wash., show advanced low-frequency antennas that would permit the ship to communicate with U.S. nuclear subs to a depth of about 100 feet...