Evolution of the Sonobuoy from World War II to the Cold War.

摘要

The primary airborne anti-submarine warfare sensor, the expendable sonobuoy, was developed during World War II in response to the devastating destruction of Allied shipping in the Atlantic caused by German U-boats. The simple radio-linked listening device thrown out of an aircraft in the 1940s proved revolutionary for air ASW. During the decades that followed, the evolution of the acoustic sonobuoy followed a number of directions. From the AN/CRT-1, the first passive omnidirectional broadband sonobuoy of World War II, to the AN/SSQ-53 DIFAR and AN/SSQ-77 VLAD, passive directional narrowband sonobuoys, and the AN/SSQ-62 DICASS, an active directional sonobuoy, of the Cold War, sonobuoys evolved in capability and tactical deployment in response to the increasingly sophisticated Soviet submarine threat. The development of the sonobuoy with its improving technology and in its multiple manifestations is described in counterpoint to the developing threat. The advance of operational concepts from CODAR to Julie and Jezebel to DIFAR are illustrated, and the influence of advances in underwater acoustics and the ocean environment upon sonobuoy design are discussed. The sonobuoy is shown to be a simple, reliable, inexpensive, technically complex, adaptive, and effective device that has been produced by the millions and used for almost seventy years.