How Submarine Sonar Works (There's a Shadow Zone)

The baseball arrived in the mail yesterday. So cool! Thank you. And.... believe it or not... this is the first time I've actually held a baseball. It's smaller than I thought. In school we only ever played softball and cricket. :) (I'm South African... now living in Australia. Two nations both famous for their baseball teams. HaHa) Thanks for the cool gift!

derekadk

Thank you Wesley. I'm authoring the note now.

JP Cruz

Wesley, I served on USS Daniel Webster (SSBN-626) and USS Grayling (SSN-646) from 1964-70. Was a great experience. Hope you weren't on San Francisco when it bumped the bottom! Great to connect with another bubblehead on Destin's channel.

Probably the best way to get in touch with the boat, or attempt to, is to contact their Ombudsmen. https://www.facebook.com/groups/717687618638395 Here's their FB page.

That's awesome! It's crazy the amount of things you were able to get done in 24 hours. Just imagine if you were able to go to the engine room. You should check out the book "Complete Idiot's Guide to Submarines." It's a pretty good read to be honest.. And has quite a bit of accurate things from the Engine Room side... I think that's why it's not sold in stores or made at all anymore. Thanks for all you do, man!

I decide the edits! It usually depends on what footage I have to work with. I was only on board for 24 hours so I have a limited amount of shots to tell the story.

Smarter Every Day

I love it.

Smarter Every Day

I work with an animator! This sort of thing takes weeks.

Smarter Every Day

It's an inside joke for them. I thought it would be fun for the ongoing coners vs nukes debate.

Smarter Every Day

Thank you!

Smarter Every Day

I know right!?

Smarter Every Day

Yep! Just Audition!

Smarter Every Day

Not quite. Once the hatches are closed the whole submarine is considered good for up to secret material. The radio room is your fun locked air conditioned closet stuffed with tired people that is a SCIF without actually being a SCIF, and when needed the officers wardroom has loud yellow signs put up on the tiny door windows to turn it into a SCIF. As for day to day mission work in the control room the de facto procedure is "don't think about it too much".

Alex Podgorski

Having a clearance myself, it’s really funny/cool to see how you guys navigate around some of the stuff. I am wondering is the whole considered a SCIF?

Aaron

This morning I didn't know what a Sound Velocity Profile was. Now, I think they are awesome.

Greg Strike

Does anyone know if there's a good way to contact the CO, XO, and others involved to thank them for their participation in this series? I was hoping to write to thank them for encouraging education and understanding of their tech, community and for their service. I think videos like these provide important insight into our military and also provide insight into the lives of our brothers and sisters in arms. Ideas?

JP Cruz

That's the occasion for you to make a video on body language ;-)

You had them worried...or impressed.

Edward Burton

I've read a lot of Tom Clancy over the years which gives a decent grounding in the basics of sonar, like thermoclines and range shadows and the like and I have to say that this was an excellent explanation and visualization.

Domenico Bettinelli

We learn so much from you Destin - thank you!!! We are S.E.D Patreons :)

Traci Stephenson

look up why is called a cockpit....

lesto

I think the funniest thing I saw in sonar was when our sonar senior chief walked in underway and saw that we’d been following a whale for at least a good 24 hours... and nobody realized it. Also, not this episode, but I’ve noticed certain things in the past that have made me wonder if the Navy gave you specific thing they wanted edited certain ways, or did they edit things themselves before giving it back? One in particular is how you can be walking one way and in the complete opposite direction of where you say you’re going, but you end up in the right spot anyways. Like they make you edit it to mask the layout.... maybe a DM topic... just curious.

So the ears of a submarine are its eyes... does that mean the nose of a submarine is its booby?? Damn, these nautical terms are confusing.

Michael Lambert

Great as always, Destin! Can you share the name of spectrogram software you used in the video? **Update** Ah, never mind, I found it at time 4:53, you're using Adobe Audition. Thanks for another great video!

Vincent Engler

...one ping only please.

Dustin

It was a great video Destin. And you didn’t need any clips from Hunt for Red October. 👍👍

A colloquialism used routinely for biologics is whale farts. And each whale has a different sounding fart.

I have to agree! This series is probably the best I’ve seen from Destin, the best on YouTube, maybe the best series on any platform. Destin’s character and smarts mixes so well with these super serious professionals, and I have no doubt that gets them to open up way more than most presenters could get them to do.

Jason Williamson

Thank you

Wow! This video was totally mind opening! Makes me wish I paid better attention in geometry class in school.

Bryan S. Holder

the graphics you have are great - how did you do that?

Bleeding edge isn’t reliable or repeatable. They need backlogs, multiple inventory for this tech in pipeline, AND for repair. Radar is reliable AND OLD 😁💯

Cerity

Thank you for your service ❤️

Cerity

Just got those enlisted on international espionage recruitment lists👍 gg

Cerity

I taught math/computer science for 50 years. I have had many former students say the same thing. Including my master plumber son-in-law.

My guess is he submits a draft to a Navy contact who runs it past a classification panel, gathers notes, then returns to Destin with their notes on what he was to change or cut. Haven't seen this video yet, but I've noticed in the past he's had to blur or black out screens in the background, just as an example of something that probably got "noted" during his scrub process with the Navy.

Ian Crawford

Nice video but... why do "Nukes Drool" ? XD

I think we all agree that the Submarine Series is beyond special. And kudos to whoever is doing your graphics for this; they really helped explain the concepts and were beautiful. Complexity presented with simplicity.

Kristy

Interesting... I looked in Wikipedia and found: "Target Motion Analysis" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_Motion_Analysis#Ekelund_ranging

Matisse Enzer

I love baseballs being fired from a cannon just as much as any other child stuck in a grown ups body would. And my experience is much like the Navigator's own; I never believed I'd use math once out of school. Although, in the 60s when I was in school vocational arts was still fully funded and I took every vocational class that was offered. I went on to become a Welder / Pipe Fitter as an adult and had to eat those words. I used more math than I would have ever believed possible back when I was a kid still in school. I'm enjoying this submarine series of videos and can't wait to see what's next!

Great content! Hope y'all have a Happy, Safe, and Sane New Year!

Yes, it's great that you managed to make this video and it was super exciting. Thanks for your hard work!

VitAnyaNaked

As a former submariner, this took me back 50 years, sequestered 75 days or more each deployment, tracking contacts. The ocean is one of the noisiest place on earth, where you can hear whales a hundred miles away. Thank for a great reminder of a memorable experience on the boats.

The more I learn about submarines and submariners the more respect I have. I recently finished RED NOVEMBER, by W. CRAIG REED. It a first hand account of submarine activities after WWII to almost the present day. 'Peace Time' was as, or perhaps, even more exciting than wartime. Highly recommended!!

As a submariner myself I'm still loving the series, and you're doing a great job. The one downside is that there is so much more cool stuff to cover that I suspect you didn't even know to ask. Namely in this case being "Ekelund ranging". Where you do a deliberate dog leg maneuver to get more info on your contacts. It at first looks like a confusing equation of all the rates and ranges but as soon as you illustrate it graphicly you develop something I think is very elegant.

Alex Podgorski

Good stuff, Destin, thank you. BTW, I'm a retired geophysicist. I worked in oil and gas exploration using seismic data. Welcome to the world of the problems we work thru using seismic to map where to drill for oil and gas. Radar, active sonar, using seismic in oil and gas exploration...all the same thing. :-)

Rick Corbitt

That was very informative and enjoyable please keep up the great work!!

I was wondering the same. It would be interesting to know if your own outbound active sonar could get anywhere, and if so, where it would "appear" that the sound was coming from!

Steve Jones

ANOTHER fantastic video.. Every time I watch one of these things, I get a renewed sense of how lucky we are to have these dedicated men and women willing and eager to do these jobs, and how amazing their jobs are, but now at Christmas time it hits home even more that they are out there, voluntarily, missing the holidays with their family to protect us.. Tnanks for your service! And thanks Destin for making us all smarter every day!!

Steve Jones

Before watching these videos, my entire bank of Submarine knowledge was based off Tom Clancy books. The amazing part is how much of that has been confirmed, especially with this video! Thanks for the great Christmas gift, Destin!

And Destin, now you're ready to play my game, "688(i)" We won a Guinness World Record for 688 (i) in 1997, for the "Most Intellectually Challenging Computer Game." which still stands. "Phased array" hydrophones... We modeled the sonar suite as much as the Navy would allow (and the Royal Navy used the game as a training aid)

I love your input prior to the bearing rate graph. "This seems intimidating at first, but it's not. I promise you will understand it. Stick with it." Something I had to tell my students a lot when teaching them about airspace and cloud clearance requirements as they worked towards there private pilot's certificate. Curious about the shadow zone though. If you could get yourself into that zone, would your own sonar/passive sonar be useless at that point? Would the sonar you send out also not be able to come back to the submarine?

Wow ! This is so much fun watching you probing your path through these tricky waters... this one got me on board for the patreon ! Happy and Holy Christmas to you and your family from Quebec city.

Thomas Malenfant

Thanks for making these videos! Out of all this, I'm curious if the Navy censored your "final" video or just the raw footage from the boat?

Travis Macie

Why haven’t they switched to something more reliable like Lidar or something like it. wouldn’t that be much more accurate and reliable and avoid that problems of active/passive sonar? Or am I must a dumbass who has no idea what he’s talking about it?

Jose Martinez

You know this is one of the best series on YouTube when “Nautiloptimupusses” are brought up. I loved how you were crossing the classified line Destin. Excellent video once again!

Fantastic video Destin. I stand by the fact this is the most interesting series of videos on Youtube for a long time.

This is a great series!! We live relatively close to Kings Bay and every now and then see a nuke sub coming or going in and out of the Atlantic. Interesting stuff.

KC

Very interesting video, thanks Destin! Hope you and your family had a merry Christmas.

It is a very nice Christmas present. And it's funny how you are walking the line of classification. A merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

Simon Priisholm

Merry Christmas