Posted on 07/10/2017 9:50:33 AM PDT by Lower Deck
At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had so many hundreds of deadly submarines at sea that Western war planners willing to try almost any possible countermeasure, however goofy sounding.
Some seemingly crazy ideas proved actually worthwhile, such as the underwater Sound Surveillance System—a vast chain of seafloor microphones that patiently listened for Soviet subs … and remains in use today.
Other less elegant anti-submarine tools survive only as anecdotes. In his book Hunter Killers, naval writer Iain Ballantyne recalls one of the zanier ideas — air-dropped “floppy-magnets” meant to foul up Soviet undersea boats, making them noisier and easier to detect.
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
Had me laughing
I remember too the floppy magnet bombs too. And old bubble heads remember some stories they still won’t talk about.
Yes! Delivered by Mr. Limpet! ;-)
The 1945-vintage Auriga spent much of her time in Nova Scotia simulating Soviet diesel subs during hazardous under-ice ASW practice with U.S. and Canadian forces. During a typical three-week exercise, Auriga would be subject to the attentions of surface vessels, aircraft and other subs, including the U.S. Navy’s new nuke boats.
During one open-ocean exercise, Auriga was given the floppy-magnet treatment. A Canadian patrol plane flew over Auriga’s submerged position and dropped a full load of the widgets into the sea.
As weird as it sounded, the magnet concept proved a resounding success. Enough magnets fell on or near Auriga’s hull to stick and flop. Banging and clanking with a godawful racket, the magnets gave sonar operators tracking the sub a field day. Then the trouble started.
As Auriga surfaced at the end of the exercise, the magnets made their way into holes and slots in the sub’s outer hull designed to let water flow. “They basically slid down the hull,” Ballantyne says of the magnets, “and remained firmly fixed inside the casing, on top of the ballast tanks, in various nooks and crannies.”
The floppy-magnets couldn’t be removed at sea. In fact, they couldn’t be removed at all until the submarine dry-docked back in Halifax weeks later.
In the meantime, one of Her Majesty’s submarines was about as stealthy as a mariachi band. No fighting, no training, no nothing until all those floppy little magnets were dug out of her skin at a cost of time, money and frustration.
The magnets worked on the Soviets with the same maddening results. The crews of several Foxtrots were driven bonkers by the noise and returned to port rather than complete their cruises.
How’d you get a picture of my Nan’s fridge?
I think we called them clappers.
One of my favorite movies! Kinda creepy to a young kid, but I loved it!
“The magnets worked on the Soviets with the same maddening results. The crews of several Foxtrots were driven bonkers by the noise and returned to port rather than complete their cruises.”
The had to go back because the noise made them very ‘detectable’.
They spent many man-hours looking for it whenever they docked in Scotland.
I like the story of counting the “clang” of empty vodka bottles once the subs got outside of the Barents Sea. RUMINT is they could tell which captain was manning the boat based on the number of broken vodka bottles heard.
When I first saw the headline, I thought it was
NATO Bombed Soviet Submarines With Tiny, Annoying Midgets
I was really looking forward to that story.
Hillary Clinton hurtling out of the sky into Soviet submarines.
That would probably be against the Geneva Convention.
“Then the trouble started.”
An exact quote from EVERY police report about our family reunions.
I guess the people who thought that SoSuS was crazy are the same people who thought it was crazy to attempt moon landing.
I believe North Korea has as many subs as we do.
We called them clappers. They were dumped down the free-fall chute in the sono package. Drove Russians nuts! They had to surface to pull them off the hull.
Quite a difference in quality and capabilities though, don't you think ?
More, but so what? Extra targets for the attack subs.
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