US Navy nose cone colours?

Going from S-3s (new, but always down due to computer dumps), to H-3s (want
contact? simple - you just PING), to H-2s ("Pilot, Senso, I feel a disturbance
in the force. It could be a submarine."), I was pretty sure that my next duty
station would include some de-mothballed Nepture, formerly held in deep reserve
for just this occasion.

I know this may sound stupid, but what was the difference between Julie and
Jez? We had Jezebel when I first started in ASW but it was on its way out.
Eight years later I reported to the USS Kirk (Foreign Legion boat in Yokosuka)
and found its entire sonobuoy locker filled with the old 60 pound roto-chute
antiques that they used to train us on at A-school. Our failure rate with them
was about 50-75%, depending on whether we really needed them to work or not.
':\

Sniffer was a memory by then - I never got to even see the system. Did it
actually work...??

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR Aircrew

"Got anything on your radar, SENSO?"
"Nothing but my forehead, sir."

"Gordon" wrote in message

Going from S-3s (new, but always down due to computer dumps), to H-3s
(want
contact? simple - you just PING), to H-2s ("Pilot, Senso, I feel a
disturbance
in the force. It could be a submarine."), I was pretty sure that my next
duty
station would include some de-mothballed Nepture, formerly held in deep
reserve
for just this occasion.

Well, your life's not over, yet!g

I know this may sound stupid, but what was the difference between Julie
and
Jez?

"Jezebel" was a codeword for straight, passive acoustic analysis.
Synonomous with LOFAR. Originally no directional capability. DIFAR got us
bearing lines (however tentative).

Julie was a system named after a famous 14th Street stripper. Her act was
supposed to be pretty arousing, "making passive boys go active." So, when
some bright fellow got the idea that you could bomb a LOFAR bouy with a SUS
and get a range circle you made a passive system active. Thus, the name.

It worked with the aircraft laying a circular pattern (4000 or 8000 yards,
IIRC) of four bouys. The aircraft flew the circle, maintaining a MAD watch
while bombing the bouys and listening for echos. One got you a range
circle, two got you ambiguous fixes, and three got you an unambiguous fix.
Three fixes got you attack criteria.

Of course, it didn't always work that way. In addition to circles from
direct bombing you could also get elipses from the A + B range. Try
plotting an elipse using a manuevering board, a pair of dividers with a
string attached, and a pencil while being bumped around at 100' (keeping one
eye on the altimeter so your CAPC did not get you wet).

As you might guess the data rate was pretty low and against a high speed sub
it was not all that effective. The best thing about it was probably that
you could make a lurking sub run, mesing up his targeting. If he were a
diesel boat (lots of them in the Soviet Navy in those days) you make him
chew up his battery.

We really did not use Julie much outside of CAPC tests and occational
readiness quals. We swapped our S2Es for S2Gs about half way through my
tour and that gave us DIFAR, DICASS, and such.

We had Jezebel when I first started in ASW but it was on its way out.
Eight years later I reported to the USS Kirk (Foreign Legion boat in
Yokosuka)
and found its entire sonobuoy locker filled with the old 60 pound
roto-chute
antiques that they used to train us on at A-school. Our failure rate with
them
was about 50-75%, depending on whether we really needed them to work or
not.

We didn't use many of the A size bouys (what you found) but used the B size
carried in chutes mounted at the back of the nacelles. They were actually
pretty reliable.

Sniffer was a memory by then - I never got to even see the system. Did it
actually work...??

Well, define "work"!!!!!g

In the mid-Atlantic we actually tracked a snorting boat one day, but I think
that was once in 2.5 years. On the other hand it worked great as a NAVAID
for finding I-95!g

ASW in those days was a very labor intensive business. A good crew could
give a sub a run for its money. If the sub crew was good they would get
most likely get away if active tracking measures were used. Two good crews
could generally kill one, even if the sub were pretty good. The ideal was
three Stoofs and three Whistling **** Cans. One helo in the dip, and two in
transit/setting up with the Stoofs running continuos MAD tracking (mark on
top the hot helo and run out the bearing to the contact).

If everybody was on their game we could (and did) hold Soviet and U.S. fast
attack nukes long enough to generate valid attack criteria. Sadly, such
datums were rare. But when we had one and when it worked it was almost
better than sex!!!!g

Bill Kambic

If, by any act, error, or omission, I have, intentionally or
unintentionally, displayed any breedist, disciplinist, sexist, racist,
culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, localist, ageist, lookist, ableist,
sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist,
phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other violation of the rules of
political correctness, known or unknown, I am not sorry and I encourage you
to get over it.

Thanks for the rundown, Bill. I guess I was vaguely aware of those methods,
but never really had a clear picture of how it all worked together - thanks for
giving me the abbreviated course.

v/r
Gordon