Chickenboy
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Joined: 6/29/2002
From: San Antonio, TX
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ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
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ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
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ORIGINAL: AW1Steve
Actually England has a place of fondness in my heart , and my spouse's family. Her Uncle , MM3 Oland Paradis was aboard USS LST 342 off Tulagi when RO-106 torpedoed her. England got her.
The Wiki on her last sub kill is amusing-as much as such things can be 'amusing'. You can get a sense of the frustration of the other ASW ships as they send her in and she immediately scores:
RO-105
The three destroyer escorts reached Manus at 1500 on 27 May. After taking on fuel, provisions, and ammunition, they sailed at 1800 28 May with Spangler (DE-696) to rejoin the search. Hazelwood detected RO-105 on RADAR at 0156 on 30 May and missed with a depth charge attack. George and Raby joined Hazelwood and made sixteen Hedgehog and depth charge attacks over a period of 25 hours. RO-105 came up for air at 0310 on 31 May and was immediately detected by George and Raby. RO-105 stayed directly between the two destroyer escorts for five minutes before submerging so neither Raby nor George could fire without endangering the other. Sequential Hedgehog attacks were then made by Raby, George, Raby, and Spangler. All missed. Division Commander Hains then radioed, "Oh, hell. Go ahead, England." [6] England then scored six to ten detonations in a Hedgehog attack at 0736. A major explosion followed at 0741 and a fountain of oil and debris appeared on the surface.[7]
This anti-submarine warfare performance was never matched in World War II, and won for England a Presidential Unit Citation, and the assurance from the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral E. J. King, "There'll always be an England in the United States Navy." His pledge was fulfilled on 6 October 1960, when DLG-22 was assigned the name England.
My guess is that England had a really good SONAR man at work. To get that degree of accuracy with old style active SONAR is hard. To get it accurate as to be able to score 1st try , especially in "blue-out" conditions (the water really screwed up by previous depth charge attacks) is to say the least , impressive. This sounds like a very talented skipper , actually listening to an equally talented SONAR man.  
Who was actually the one to 'pull the trigger' on the Hedgehog in these cases? He/they need to be taken into consideration as well. The SONAR operator wasn't the one, was he? I also doubt the Captain would order the firing per se. Isn't there another link in the chain that's overlooked?
I don't know for certain , but generally the SONAR operator gave the info, the skipper made the call and someone else would "press the button" , maybe a gunners mate , maybe a junior officer (as portrayed in "The Bedford Incident"). Unless of course there was a senior officer aboard .
I guess what I meant was that there are moving parts between the sonar operator identifying contact and pinpointing the range and the destruction of the submarine by Hedgehog fire.
Who would identify inflexion or bearing to target? Would SONAR call out recommended course corrections? What about adjusting speed so as to get the right spread on target when the appropriate range is called out? Is this targetting charted in a CIC or some such on board? Is there a central control of fire direction like there is for the guns, or are hedgehogs 'locally operated' only? Are the Hedgehog launchers fixed in place or can they be rotated for angled fire like a turret?
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RE: OT: Name that plane / ship - 
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