Читать книгу The Listeners - Roy R. Manstan - Страница 12

CHAPTER 3 SIGHS OF A LOVESICK MERMAID

The first step necessary was a considerable increase in the instructional facilities for training listeners both for the increased number of shore stations and for the large number of vessels that were fitted for hydrophone work …

—Admiral John Rushworth Jellicoe, The Crisis of the Naval War, 1921¹

Britain’s First Sea Lord, Admiral John R. Jellicoe, was confident in the work being carried out at the Admiralty Experimental Station at Hawkcraig, but understood the need for the listeners to be properly trained. That would eventually happen, but from his now fully functioning and staffed station at Hawkcraig, Ryan continued with operational trials of his shore-based hydrophone listening stations throughout 1916, monitoring the sounds of passing vessels. The goal, however, was not just any vessel—rather a submerged, hostile submarine attempting to infiltrate a river, harbor, or when approaching any strategic waterfront infrastructure. The Admiralty, anxious to exploit the potential of this new technology, had been increasing the scope of Ryan’s work to include the use of hydrophones on surface ships.

The summer marked the growth of the shore hydrophone policy, and an ambitious and far-reaching programme commenced … So full of promise did the principal of the hydrophone appear to be in the detection of the submarine that, during the autumn and winter of 1916, a policy of offence was inaugurated.²

Listening stations served as an effective defensive measure, but throughout 1915, U-boats had turned to aggressive attacks on mercantile shipping. An equally aggressive antisubmarine policy became an Admiralty priority, and that priority was passed to Hawkcraig. Submarine hunting on the open seas required the ability to detect a U-boat as it transited toward the shipping lanes and certainly long before the predator could maneuver into a torpedo firing position. The vessels assigned to Ryan would now head beyond the Firth of Forth with this new mission.

British listener on board a trawler. He is rotating a directional hydrophone suspended from the end of the boom. (Courtesy Marist College; Lowell Thomas Archive)

Once again, Ryan began with a single, non-directional hydrophone. Although intended to provide mobility, the vessel, initially Tarlair, later joined by the drifter Couronne, had to stop while the hydrophone was lowered over the side. The vessel’s machinery would have masked any sounds coming from a distant target, and this early hydrophone was not designed to be towed far enough astern to eliminate the vessel’s own noise. The sophistication of these single hydrophone drifter systems would improve with time, but the practical-minded Ryan had an immediate need—detect the U-boat—and he would use what was available.

LISTENER TRAINING BECOMES A PRIORITY

But the concept of submarine detection depended on two things—the hydrophone and the listener’s ear. There were, however, uncertainties within the hydrophone service as to the quality of both. Lt. H. W. Wilson, RNVR, serving under Ryan, described, with a bit of naval irony, the medical exam given to those seeking membership in a service dependent on a sailor’s ears:

[I]t will not surprise you to hear that we were subjected to a rigorous medical examination on joining. All the organic equipment with which man is born into this world, including the vermiform appendix, was scrutinized and tested. Everything came under a punishing medical survey except only—the hearing!³

It would not be an easy job, that of the listener. The oceans resonated with the sounds of whales and other marine mammals, of the chatter from many species of fish and invertebrates, of storms that churn the ocean surface, and of waves crashing against the shore. But it was the ships, large and small, commercial and naval, that filled the depths of the oceans with sound. And then there was that new vessel—the submarine—whose characteristic sounds depended on whether it was patrolling on the surface with its diesel engines, or submerged and running on electric motors. Even the rotating propellers of ships and submarines created their own list of distinct rhythmic sounds. Ryan’s hydrophones were capable of “hearing” it all. It was a technology not well understood by those in the hydrophone service; yet with training, it became, according to Lt. Wilson, a trusted and valued tool:

All I can tell you is that a hydrophone is a piece of gear assuming various forms, containing a microphone,… [where] the flow of electrical current, results [in] the translation of the engine sounds of ships in the vicinity, and any other neighboring subaqueous tremors, such as the sighs of a lovesick mermaid. All this medley of sound is reproduced by telephone receivers connected by cable with the hydrophone, and the classification is left to the listener.⁴

Was it a submarine or a lovesick mermaid? With experience a listener could learn to distinguish many natural and man-made sounds. But it was the ability to classify specific sounds as being from a U-boat which would enable the hydrophone-equipped hunters to carry out an attack. Training was the key to success, and that became yet another mission for Ryan and his Hawkcraig staff. Candidates for the hydrophone service would learn to recognize the rhythmic sounds from a submarine’s rotating propellers and machinery.⁵ The “sighs of a lovesick mermaid” would be classified among the sounds not characteristically rhythmic, though why the poor girl shouldn’t sigh rhythmically I don’t know.

Thus, at Hawkcraig, “an organized system of training of officers and ratings was instituted, an instructional staff appointed, and lecture-halls, workshops, ad hoc genus mone [and that sort of thing], put up.”⁶ Ryan’s students had access to the Firth of Forth shore stations where vessels from the British 6^th Battle Squadron (Admiral Beatty) at Rosyth provided opportunities to hear large and small surface vessels, essential for distinguishing them from a submarine. But … that required the student listeners to have heard what a submarine sounded like.

One of the British B-class submarines commissioned during the first decade of the twentieth century. Considered obsolete by the beginning of the war, they still performed important missions, including support of Captain Ryan’s experimental work in the Firth of Forth. (Library of Congress (LOC) LC-F81-2000)

Among the vessels provided for the ever-resourceful Ryan was the aging HM Submarine B-3, which, in 1916, had been outfitted at Leith, on the southern coast of the Firth of Forth, with one of Ryan’s experimental hydrophone systems. Throughout the remaining years of the war, B-3 was stationed at Rosyth for use by the training staff at Hawkcraig. Lieutenant Wilson, however, lamented the use of an inappropriate submarine for their listener training: “Why an obsolescent submarine of our own, and that, too, only occasionally? Why not a U-boat captured from the enemy, and run daily for our benefit?”⁷ These were questions for which Wilson had no answer. He was, however, certainly justified to ask them. During the summer of 1916, a captured German submarine in the hands of the French Ministry of Invention was being thoroughly investigated, and was found to have its own acoustic system.⁸

Because B-3 was not always available, “the actual movements of a submarine under water at varying distances from a hydrophone were recorded by a phonograph, and records made so that the sounds might be reproduced at will for the education of the ear.”⁹ Recordings of submarines and other underwater sounds became a common practice, both in Britain and eventually the United States, where the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, provided the phonograph recording technology.¹⁰

Listener training soon expanded beyond the Firth of Forth. Instructor teams were assembled and dispatched from Hawkcraig to listening stations and hydrophone schools that were being established in 1917 and operated throughout the war. “At Malta an experimental station, with a hydrophone training school, was started in the autumn of 1917, and good work was done both there and at a hydrophone station established southward of Otranto at about the same time, as well as a hydrophone training school started at Gallipoli at the end of the war.”¹¹

The success of Ryan’s training program can be measured by the recognition of this effort by Britain’s Admiral John R. Jellicoe: “The greater part of this training took place at the establishment at Hawkcraig, near Rosyth, at which Captain Ryan, R.N., carried out so much exceedingly valuable work during the war…. I am not able to give exact figures of the number of officers and men who were instructed in hydrophone work either at Hawkcraig or at other stations by instructors sent from Hawkcraig, but the total was certainly upwards of 1,000 officers and 2,000 men.”¹²

Jellicoe was close. According to Lieutenant Wilson, based on his service under Captain Ryan at Hawkcraig, “1090 officers, including Base hydrophone officers, submarine officers, and Royal Marine submarine mining officers, and 2731 ratings had either attended Hawkcraig for courses, or had received instruction from Tarlair travelling parties.”¹³

While the successes of Commander Ryan and his Hawkcraig staff brought praise from the Admiralty, as far back as 1915 there had been growing interest in the need to incorporate science into the development of listening devices. Ryan had his first encounter with a scientist that summer when a retired professor, Alexander Crichton Mitchell, arrived at Granton Pier with an idea to detect submarines with a non-acoustic technology. Ryan, who was skeptical of the civilian scientist at first, soon found Mitchell’s ideas worthy of further investigation and supported the experimental work in the Firth of Forth (chapter 4). Mitchell’s ideas were independent of the Admiralty, and there continued to be a cooperative effort between the officer and the civilian.

The Board of Invention and Research was created by Lord Balfour, First Lord of the Admiralty, in July as a way to insert scientific insights into the development of antisubmarine technologies by integrating teams of scientists and engineers into the various experimental stations under Admiralty control. Because the submarine had became a problem of national significance as more and more ships were sent to the bottom, victims of U-boat torpedoes, the BIR was given submarine detection as a high priority. The next step was to assign BIR staff members to the Admiralty Experimental Station at Hawkcraig. They arrived in November, while Commander Ryan was still in the midst of moving from Granton Pier at Edinburgh to this (his) new experimental station. It soon became evident that Ryan was less than enthusiastic about the influx of civilians and what he likely perceived as a disruption in his own approach to solving the submarine detection problem.

A CRITICAL LACK OF COOPERATION

[A]t the time of our arrival at Hawkcraig the state of our knowledge of underwater sound propagation in the sea was very primitive…. It became immediately apparent, however, that this early work was essentially empirical, and that the serving officers at the station were not greatly interested in the physical properties involved.¹⁴

These comments by Albert B. Wood, a research assistant from Liverpool University, now on the BIR staff at Hawkcraig, summarized the different approach that would be taken by the BIR over that of Commander Ryan and his naval staff. By the time Wood and his colleagues arrived, Ryan had been demonstrating successful submarine detection with his hydrophones to his Admiralty bosses, who were already authorizing shore-based listening stations using Ryan’s designs.¹⁵

There was never a true spirit of cooperation between Ryan’s staff and the BIR, and by the spring of 1916, complaints began to arrive on the desk of BIR chairman, Admiral Fisher. Professor William H. Bragg, from the University College in London and in charge of the BIR efforts at Hawkcraig, wrote to Fisher complaining about the lack of ability to build the various apparatus his team needed for their experimental work. “What holds us back is the lack of instrument fitters and workshops…. It is quite exasperating that so much should turn on getting hold of the instrument makers.”¹⁶

Not only was it difficult to have equipment built, the scientists also experienced frustrations having access to test vessels, one of the most important being the British submarine, B-3. In March, Albert Wood wrote to Sir Ernest Rutherford, a principal civilian scientist serving on the BIR in London:

The usual difficulties in obtaining a second ship or submarine still exist. Commander Ryan informs that we have no right to demand two ships and we are only allowed to have them when he considers it convenient … With regard to submarine B-3 … he said that it was to be used by both of us (Navy and BIR). He could not tell us, however, when we could have it for our own use; indicating that it would be possible for us to have it only on those occasions when he did not require it himself—which occasions from our previous experience will probably be rare.¹⁷

Rutherford continued to receive negative reports from Hawkcraig, revealing the lack of cooperation between his scientists and naval interests; he also sensed similar attitudes from members of the Admiralty. Rutherford reportedly “attacked the view taken by ‘certain parties’ in the Admiralty which appeared to suggest that research and development of listening apparatus was useless and irrelevant.”¹⁸ With pressure being put on the Admiralty, some improvements were made in the operations at Hawkcraig after April, but by the end of summer, rivalries continued to exist. In November, Admiral John Rushworth Jellicoe was appointed Britain’s First Sea Lord; a month later, in response to the growing U-boat threat, he created the Admiralty’s Anti-Submarine Division (ASD). The effect was to re-emphasize the importance of attacking the submarine problem with both research and development, stressing the immediate tactical needs at sea.

One impact was the transfer of the Hawkcraig scientists to the Admiralty Experimental Station at Parkeston Quay, Harwich, where there was access to test ships and laboratory facilities. Ryan would be left to his resourcefulness and his own staff at Hawkcraig. The year 1916 had come to an end, and the United States would soon enter the war. When Rutherford joined other colleagues from Britain and France during a scientific mission to America at the end of May, 1917, the submarine problem was a principal topic (chapter 12). Among the technical discussions, however, it was likely that the friction between British scientists and the military, which had seriously hampered the rapid development of submarine detection devices, was included. To avoid a similar lack of cooperation, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who was aware of British technological developments, created the Special Board on Antisubmarine Devices (chapter 11), which was instrumental in the rapid integration of science and technology into wartime naval requirements.

A FISH, AN EEL, AND A PORPOISE

All such praise the Nash’s fish

Are frankly forced to own,

It’s nothing near as swish

As the porpoise hydrophone¹⁹

British P-class vessels were designed primarily for antisubmarine warfare. P-33 is shown here supporting U-boat hunting operations along the northeast shore of Scotland. (Wilson, 1920)

These lines are from a song sung on board a British submarine hunting vessel, P-33, operating off the northern coast of Scotland. By 1918, in addition to destroyers, British antisubmarine work was carried on by motor launches, trawlers, and drifters, as well as larger P-class vessels used in convoy work and capable of twenty-five knots. Hundreds of these various vessels patrolled the waters around the British Isles and into the North Sea, each carrying one or more of the many hydrophone designs available, including those provided by American designers. Lieutenant Wilson, in addition to his work at Hawkcraig with Ryan, also served on P-33. Wilson described the friendly competition between the listeners on his ship and those on the destroyer HMS Dee:

The Nash fish was the rival form, fitted on the Peterhead trawlers, with which Dee and P.33 hunted. When we were ashore, the Club was often the scene of fierce arguments as to the rival merits of Nash’s fish and the porpoise.²⁰

Spring of 1917 had brought about the development of new directional listening devices, but the most important improvement in their capability was providing a streamlined housing, which could be towed behind the hunting vessel. Prior to this, hunting groups had to stop and then deploy their hydrophones for a listening period. When in pursuit, continuous listening while underway was the goal. With the BIR scientists working from the Parkeston experimental station, the Admiralty also encouraged universities and industries to tackle the submarine detection problem. A very promising device was that created by George H. Nash, chief engineer of Western Electric Company’s British subsidiary. Nash began his work with hydrophones early in 1917. His first trials occurred in June, with final acceptance by the Admiralty four months later. His device was comprised of a free-flooding, one-foot diameter cylinder approximately five feet long with conical ends (several versions were built, see top image above). The fish held two hydrophones—one bi-directional, which provided a measure of the direction to the source; and one uni-directional, which the operator could rotate with an electric motor to provide a more precise bearing. All of this was accomplished while the ship was underway.²¹

A variety of Nash Fish towed listening devices.

A British assembly and test facility. (Courtesy George Malcolmson)

When the BIR scientists moved from Hawkcraig, Commander Ryan continued his hydrophone development unencumbered by the civilian scientists. His inventive mind, however, was also able to tackle the underway pursuit problem. Ryan had designed two systems that could be towed aft of a ship; one referred to as the “porpoise”, the other his “rubber eel.”

Porpoise towed listening devices developed by Captain Ryan at the Hawkcraig Experimental Station. (Wilson, 1920)

We now reach the era of the rubber ‘eel’ and ‘porpoise’ hydrophones…. Both these instruments spelt a new departure. They could be towed from the stern of a vessel under way—a marked advance—and furthermore the latter instrument was a direction finder.²²

The rubber eel was available by 1918, with 463 being issued to a variety of vessels, including trawlers and P-class ships. The device was a free-flooding, three-inch diameter rubber cylinder, eighteen inches long—the sensor consisting of a two-inch diameter button microphone with a phosphor-bronze diaphragm. When towed at speeds up to eight knots, the listener could detect a submarine at ranges up to four miles. Because the microphone was non-directional, two eels were often towed and the operator relied on binaural listening to obtain a target bearing.²³

Ryan’s most effective device, the porpoise, was not available until September, 1918. The porpoise was similar to the Nash fish, but only carried a single, improved uni-directional hydrophone, also rotated by an electric motor. In comparison trials with the Nash fish, the porpoise had a longer range to detection, performing well at speeds up to six knots. By Armistice, only thirty-one of the one hundred units ordered by Admiral Jellicoe’s Anti-Submarine Division were in operation.²⁴ Nonetheless, the British hydrophone service was glad to have them.

A new school of porpoise instruction was started at Elie for training personnel in its use; and hunting flotillas, using the porpoise, commenced operations in the summer, and carried on until Armistice …”²⁵

Whether hunting at sea or from shore, it was hoped that with all the new technology available, including American listening devices being installed on destroyers and other British submarine hunting vessels, neither a U-boat nor a lovesick mermaid could avoid detection.