Sonar technology and underwater warfare from World War I to the launch of USS Nautilus in 1954, the first nuclear submarine

Sonar research began in the First World War to curb the U-boat menace. Radical methods had to be devised both organizationally and technically to combat this new form of warfare. Civilian scientists were drafted into naval research. A new field of science was created: underwater acoustics for passive listening, and ultrasonic echo-ranging for active detection of submarines. If the war had lasted only a few more months, prototype Asidic equipment (the Royal Navy’s name for sonar) would have gone operational. During the interwar years the American and Royal Navies developed their sonar “searchlight” systems, while before 1935 the German Navy concentrated on sophisticated passive listening arrays (incorporating American WWI research) to protect their capital ships from enemy submarines. Searchlight sonar technology evolved sharply in WWII. The nuclear submarine in 1954 required a complete rethink of the sonar scanning techniques developed over the previous 40 years. This lecture is based on full access to naval documents and interviews with scientists involved in this work in Britain and the USA for my book Seek and Strike (HMSO, 1984).