Word: subs
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...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 sonar by hiding in the clacking wake of a destroyer, or by backing the submarine through his own wake to lose himself in his own echo...
Most frustrating to Thach's goblin killers is the sea's own natural cacophony. Antisubmarine-warfare hands are trained to differentiate the sound of a sub from that of a destroyer or a rowboat. But they must also learn that a school of shrimp sounds like fish frying, that sea robins cluck, that the white whale creaks like the lid on Davy Jones's locker, that the eel makes a zizz like water on a hot stove, and the whistling, jocular porpoise makes enough noise to give any sonarman a headache. Most deceptive of all for Thach...
...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...
...month Trieste will begin diving off San Diego, where the weather is fair and the bottom deep. Official purpose: "Study of the ocean's physical, biological, geological and chemical characteristics." Trieste's real mission may be more urgent: submarine warfare is clearly going deep, deep, deeper. Conventional subs now dive about 750 ft., and some advanced models are capable of 1,000 ft. One growing antisub problem is that present sound gear penetrates accurately to only about 800 ft. Another is that depth charges sink too slowly (14 ft. per second) to hit a fast sub sailing deep...
...Strange Sub. Trieste research on how to kill an enemy sub far down is likely to change depth charges considerably. There is little point in making them bigger; nuclear charges fall no faster than others and are more expensive. But a curious discovery is that more energy may be released when a sphere is collapsed under water than when it is blown outward against pressure. To measure this, Navy scientists once sent a 6-in.-diameter hollow ball 3,500 ft. to the bottom. Collapsed by a spring trigger when it hit, it exploded with as much force...