NAVIGATION

How does a submarine navigate?

Image by Linnaea Mallette. Public Domain

A modern submarine has no windows. How does a submarine navigate? A submarine uses sonar to move through the depth below. There are two types of sonar that I will explain.

ACTIVE- Active sonar involves sending a sound or ping. This is the sound you hear in submarine movies and loved by many fans. The sound hits the object underwater and measures the returns or echo. From the return of the sound, a position or distance is able to be calculated through electronics. Believe it or not, this form of sonar was used in World War II by both sides. It was also used to locate enemy submarines or objects below from a surface ship like a Destroyer or Destroyer Escort protecting shipping convoys to deliver their supplies for the effort in Europe and the Pacific Theaters. This is an illustration of ACTIVE SONAR below. You can see in the picture the sound hitting the boat on the surface and its echo is returning to the submarine.

PASSIVE SONAR- This is what is used on modern ships today. It is like an ear listening for a sound. Like the active, it measures distance. However, it does not use a ping to give away a position and is used for stealth by US Navy submarines. (Schwab, 252)

Active Sonar Diagram.

Georg Wiora (Dr. Schorsch), CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

A video on steps the US Navy is taking to reduce the impact of SONAR. It is believed that sonar is responsible for harm to marine life and the US Navy is looking to take measures to reduce the threat to marine life

A modern submarine also has GPS (Global Positioning System) This means its location on earth can be tracked from a satellite. A US Navy submarine's exact location is only known to a couple people in the crew. The main ones who know are the Captain and Navigator.

Submarines process information and have a brain center. The US Navy refers to it as "The Con." It is in its full term, a CONTROL ROOM. The CONTROL ROOM does several functions. It processes incoming communication, controls navigation including speed and heading. Here is a typical example of a control room on a submarine, in this instance, the USS Sea Wolf. Note all of the electronics. Machinery and electronics cover most of the submarine's interior. There are two sailors manning what look like aircraft controls. These are the diving plane controls that control the submarine much the same way an airplane flies through water. A plane flies in the air using AERODYNAMICS. A Submarine moves through the water using HYDRODYNAMICS.

U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Dean Lohmeyer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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