I have transcribed an except from Norman Polmars book "Cold War Submarines" that describes just how good SOSUS is. Might be handy for you scenario developers out there.

 

SOSUS

SOSUS was a network of hydrophones emplaced on the ocean floor to detect low frequency noise sources. During WWII, the US, British, and Soviet navies installed limited capacity acoustic arrays on the ocean floor in shallow waters, primarily at the entrance to harbors. After the war, the US Navy began the development of deep ocean arrays. The first developmental SOSUS type array was installed at Eleuthera in the Bahamas in 1951-52, followed by a small experimental array off Sandy Hook, south of Manhattan. The first operational test of SOSUS was conducted from 26 April to 7 June 1954 during an exercise labeled ASDevEx 1-54. Additional SOSUS arrays were placed along the Atlantic coast and, from 1958, from the Pacific coast of the United States and off of Hawaii. In 1960 arrays were emplaced in Hudson Bay to detect Soviet submarines operating in that area. Overseas installations followed in areas that Soviet submarines were expected to transit, for example, the north cape, the GIUK gap, the deep channel running north to south in the Atlantic basin, and in the straits leading to the Sea of Okhotsk in the Far East.

 

The SOSUS arrays are linked to shore stations by cable. At the stations, called “Naval Facilities” or NAVFACS, technicians scrutinize the readouts of the cacophony of ocean sounds and attempt to discern sounds or “signatures” of submarine types and even specific boats. The first NAVFACS were established in 1954 at the Ramey military facilities in Puerto Rico, Grand Turk, and San Salvador. Eventually, at the height of the cold war, there were some 20 NAVFACS located around the world. The NAVFACS would advise or cue regional ASW commanders of their detections to enable air, surface, and submarine forces to be directed against suspected Soviet submarine locations. SOSUS was vital for the effective use of aircraft and submarines in the ASW role because of the limited search rates of these platforms. According to a 1954 report on the performance of the SOSUS in the Bahamas, ranges out to 600nm were obtained. However this was not the average. The average was about 300 to 400 miles reliable. Later improvements in arrays and processing increased detection in SOSUS ranges. Published material indicates that in optimum SOSUS areas a submarine could be localized to within a radius of 50 nm. Signifigantly it was also found that SOSUS could detect and track overflying aircraft.

 

 

I HIGHLY recommend finding a way to obtain this book, it is simply a must for any serious enthusiast for submarines and how they were built, used, and misused.

I have transcribed an except from Norman Polmars book "Cold War Submarines" that describes just how good SOSUS is. Might be handy for you scenario developers out there.

 

SOSUS

SOSUS was a network of hydrophones emplaced on the ocean floor to detect low frequency noise sources. During WWII, the US, British, and Soviet navies installed limited capacity acoustic arrays on the ocean floor in shallow waters, primarily at the entrance to harbors. After the war, the US Navy began the development of deep ocean arrays. The first developmental SOSUS type array was installed at Eleuthera in the Bahamas in 1951-52, followed by a small experimental array off Sandy Hook, south of Manhattan. The first operational test of SOSUS was conducted from 26 April to 7 June 1954 during an exercise labeled ASDevEx 1-54. Additional SOSUS arrays were placed along the Atlantic coast and, from 1958, from the Pacific coast of the United States and off of Hawaii. In 1960 arrays were emplaced in Hudson Bay to detect Soviet submarines operating in that area. Overseas installations followed in areas that Soviet submarines were expected to transit, for example, the north cape, the GIUK gap, the deep channel running north to south in the Atlantic basin, and in the straits leading to the Sea of Okhotsk in the Far East.

 

The SOSUS arrays are linked to shore stations by cable. At the stations, called “Naval Facilities” or NAVFACS, technicians scrutinize the readouts of the cacophony of ocean sounds and attempt to discern sounds or “signatures” of submarine types and even specific boats. The first NAVFACS were established in 1954 at the Ramey military facilities in Puerto Rico, Grand Turk, and San Salvador. Eventually, at the height of the cold war, there were some 20 NAVFACS located around the world. The NAVFACS would advise or cue regional ASW commanders of their detections to enable air, surface, and submarine forces to be directed against suspected Soviet submarine locations. SOSUS was vital for the effective use of aircraft and submarines in the ASW role because of the limited search rates of these platforms. According to a 1954 report on the performance of the SOSUS in the Bahamas, ranges out to 600nm were obtained. However this was not the average. The average was about 300 to 400 miles reliable. Later improvements in arrays and processing increased detection in SOSUS ranges. Published material indicates that in optimum SOSUS areas a submarine could be localized to within a radius of 50 nm. Signifigantly it was also found that SOSUS could detect and track overflying aircraft.

 

 

I HIGHLY recommend finding a way to obtain this book, it is simply a must for any serious enthusiast for submarines and how they were built, used, and misused.

 

See here for a more complete history:

 

http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/usw/issue_25/sosus.htm

 

And the Cuban missile crisis shows how capable (though with some big holes...) tracking of Soviet subs was:

 

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB75/#III

 

SOSUS would have been a war winning weapon in the 60s and early 70s but newer, quieter submarines were tougher to detect and track so it needed the reinforcement of SURTASS, which ran into a big snag in the 70s...

 

http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/Anti_Sub_warefar...07171322091.pdf

 

In the 80s, the Soviets clued up to environmental conditions and the Walker Spy ring clued them about the importance of quieting all tonals (previously they had concentrated on pumps and propellers IIRC), enabling them to launch operations Aport (1985) and Atrina (March 1987):

 

 

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Operation+At...ons-a0151652726

Very good stuff, thanks.

Needless to say, this stuff was put to good use, "Cold War Submarines" included a short paragraph of a Yankee SSBN trail in 1978:

 

"This particular Yankee trailing operation – given the code name Evening Star – began on March 17, 1978 when USS Batfish (SSN-681) intercepted a Yankee SSBN in the Norwegian Sea. Batfish, towing a 1,100-foot sonar array, had been sent out from Norfolk specifically to intercept the SSBN, U.S. intelligence having been alerted to her probable departure from the Kola Peninsula by the CIA-sponsored Norwegian intelligence activities and U.S. spy satellites. These sources, in turn, cued the Norway-based SOSUS array as the Soviet missile submarine sailed around Norway’s North Cape. After trailing the Soviet submarine for 51 hours while she traveled 350 nautical miles, Batfish lost contact during a severe storm on March 19. A U.S. Navy P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft was dispatched from Reykjavik, Iceland, to seek out the evasive quarry. There was intermittent contact with the submarine the next day and firm contact was reestablished late on March 21 in the Iceland-Faeroes gap. The trail of the SSBN was then maintained by Batfish for 44 continuous days, the longest trail of a Yankee conducted to that time by a US submarine."

 

But for Guardfish (SSN-612) there's more!

 

http://guardfish.org/missions/saga_of_the_...fish_patrol.htm

http://guardfish.org/missions/missions.htm