5 ms·

I'm not normally one to promote Hollywood but the film Greyhound (2020) with Tom Hanks does an _excellent_ portrayal of this technology (albeit slightly more pr

I'm not normally one to promote Hollywood but the film Greyhound (2020) with Tom Hanks does an _excellent_ portrayal of this technology (albeit slightly more primitive) in fighting German U-Boats in WW2. Well worth a watch if this interests you.

jonplackett 6y ago
I was just going to say exactly this. It’s amazing to see them doing this with such incredibly basic technology. - Having to draw their ship and the submarine and constantly update its movement. - sonar guy is just looking at a screen that blips every now and then. - all communication by morse code - must be horrendously slow in the heat of battle - even communication within the ship is passed between multiple people so big chance of Chinese whisper type errors. I don’t know how realistic it is to real life but it gives you an appreciation for how smart and situationally aware the captain of the ship needs to be.
- stormdennis 6y ago
  They wargamed live during North Atlantic convoy attacks on the floor of a building in Liverpool. Players received instructions through letterboxes around the room perimeter and each could only see a fraction of the the battle. They could not see the u-boats at all as those were same color as filters they looked through. Information was radioed in from convoy escorts and scenarios were played out. Battles could last a couple of days.
  - finnh 6y ago
    Game of Birds and Wolves! Great book
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    There is a nice video of Lindibeige about that, with some old photos of the setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ
- wcarey 6y ago
  The book by C.S. Forester that the movie is based on is even more realistic, though the movie is pretty good. To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job talking through the development of both the technology and organization of naval operations. Not all communication was by morse code. We did use ship to ship voice radio, but it was a tradeoff. RDF allowed the enemy to triangular the position of the broadcasting ship, and (often) the enemy could overhear messages and infer some tactical details. Sensor systems changed wildly throughout the war. Sonar improved markedly, and radar went from non-existent to able to identify altitude and distance to individual planes. The weight of the additional sensor systems and controls systems made some ships unstable, so we removed weapon systems from them. Being a captain (or, heaven forbid) and admiral, was very demanding. Sleep was hard to come by, and the fog of war was intense. We had meaningful problems with friendly fire in night engagements even with radar and radio communications.
  - khazhoux 6y ago
    > Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II Wow, you weren't kidding. Can you recommend any shorter tomes on history of naval technology? https://www.amazon.com/History-United-States-Naval-Operations/dp/0762854316 https://www.amazon.com/History-United-States-Naval-Operation...
    - wcarey 6y ago
      It's surprisingly readable. Good history is storytelling, and Morison was there for much of the history he relates. You could get a great picture of the variety of modern naval warfare by picking up the volumes on Midway and the Struggle for Guadalcanal. C.S. Forester's novels, while historical fiction, are also excellent. I'd also recommend Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara, another powerful first hand account. Reading Hara and Morison's accounts of a battle in which both participated is really interesting.
  - Goronmon 6y ago
    To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job talking through the development of both the technology and organization of naval operations. Man, that looks like a hard series of books to actually get a hold of. Either spending multiple hundreds of dollars for a used set, or struggle to find individual copies for $15+ each (a quick google search seems to show Vol 2 unavailable anywhere I looked).
- sandworm101 6y ago
  What you are seeing is the very evolved version, the later-war version of this battle. Early in the war it was much more primitive. There were incidents of ships literally hunting their own propellers. Only once procedures and training evolved did the real cat-and-mouse game become even possible.
- extrapickles 6y ago
  The military has a partial solution to the “chinese whisper” type error where the person receiving the command will repeat it back so the other person can make sure it was understood correctly. This has the downside of slightly slowing down communication.
pchristensen 6y ago
That movie and Master and Commander are two movies that helped a digital nerd like me understand how an incredibly complex system can be managed by lots and lots of humans playing very specific roles.
- jonsen 6y ago
  Your comment made me remember the book Cognition in the Wild: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cognition-wild https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cognition-wild
- dylan604 6y ago
  A film set is the same way. Also, sounds like a lot of "machine learning" shops. Hire a squad of humans to do the work until the ML/AI graduates from schooling.
noir_lord 6y ago
Massive history nerd and I really enjoyed Greyhound because they didn't over dramatise it (much) and the attention to detail in the roles, speech etc was all very well done.
microfen 6y ago
I personally haven't seen Greyhound, but if you found this article interesting, the 2019 French film Le Chant du Loup is entirely about sonar crews on modern submarines. It's definitely a fun movie that seems (to an uninitiated) pretty technically accurate. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7458762/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7458762/
- gregoriol 6y ago
  That movie is indeed very good to watch, intense, and portraying what is described in the article: war on a submarine through the eyes (or ears) of a sonar man.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  The French trailer looks good. It looks like the film has been dubbed in English. Thank you for the suggestion!
briandear 6y ago
Tom Hanks wrote the film as well. He has done a lot of good in terms of WWII history. Greyhound was one of those movies that really brought to life just what combat looks like on the water. To an outsider, naval combat seems rather benign and “far away” compared to Infantry, but the reality is that naval combat is terrifying and up close. It was an incredible film in capturing the horrors of naval warfare. Just seeing how hard it was to be a captain (or even a sonar man,) gives me redoubled respect for those that serve on the seas.
- wcarey 6y ago
  And Greyhound depicts a relatively calm series of engagements, compared to what actually happened. Consider the U.S.S. Borie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Borie_(DD-215) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Borie_(DD-215) which rammed (!) a U-Boat in high seas, was repeatedly picked up by waves and dropped on top of the surfaced U-boat, whereupon a small arms engagement broke out (!) until the U-boat attempted to disengage and was damaged by the Borie's main guns. Both ships sinking, the Borie attempted to rescue the German submariners until a torpedo from another nearby submarine caused them to reconsider. The Borie then promptly sank from seams opened by being repeatedly bounced off the top of a submarine and most of the crew were rescued.
justanotheranon 6y ago
the British cracked Enigma in 1941, and from then they were able to completely destroy the 300-400 German u-boats, because they were intercepting and decrypting u-boat radio traffic, so they always knew where the u-boats were going. The only reason the Allies allowed the u-boats to continue winning small victories was to preserve the illusion that Enigma was still secure to prevent the Germans from switching to another cipher system. So when you see depictions of exciting historical battles against u-boats, keep in mind that it was not a level playing field due to the strategic advantage of superior SIGINT by the Allies.
- valuearb 6y ago
  IIRC 75% of U-Boat crew members were killed in action during WW2.
- vmh1928 6y ago
  The book "Marching Orders" by Bruce Lee tells the story of Magic intercepts of the Japanese military and diplomatic code and reviews the daily summaries read by Marshall and other US leaders in the context of what was happening in the war at that time The point of the book, c.1995, was that signals intelligence played a huge role, but unknown role, in influencing the actions of the U.S. and U.K. And that without understanding what the leaders knew there is a tendency to overestimate their skill / leadership ability.
- pgreenwood 6y ago
  And Poland cracked Enigma in 1933, and then shared their techniques and Enigma clones with the British in 1939!
aksss 6y ago
Having read the book and then watched the movie, it’s amazing how much technical detail you don’t even get to approach in the film. This is just the nature of the medium, but the book is very focused on the captain’s inner thoughts and technical descriptions, awareness of limitations, and homages to the mental math involved. Highly recommend the book if you at all appreciated the movie.
- criddell 6y ago
  Which book did you read? I just looked and it looks like there are two books by Forester. One is The Good Shepherd which is the original book and the other is Greyhound which is also by Forester and is sold as the movie tie-in. They have different number of pages, so I assume they are different. Edit: I ended up buying The Good Shepherd because it was only $0.99 for the ebook.
  - wcarey 6y ago
    If you enjoy The Good Shepherd, The Ship is a similar book about surface combat in the Med.
pjc50 6y ago
For a detailed and in places dramatic book on the primitive technology of WW2 surface naval warfare, I can recommend "Neptune's Inferno": https://erenow.net/ww/neptunes-inferno-the-u-s-navy-at-guadalcanal/ https://erenow.net/ww/neptunes-inferno-the-u-s-navy-at-guada... While radar existed, it had similar problems of manual plot, was only on a few ships, and the commanders had not updated their training and doctrine to match. Several of the key engagements around Guadalcanal were fought at night. Without radar, and without any reliable means of telling friend from foe other than eyeballing the shape. Total chaos.
- skmurphy 6y ago
  Thanks for this reference to Neptune's Inferno by James Hornfischer, it was a fantastic book. I like two quotes in particular "The epic of the Pacific war found new chapters for everyone. The endless game of personnel-rotation musical chairs saw the continuous replacement of the experienced by the inexperienced, until, by the end, only the experienced remained." "Ascending to theater command had never been his ambition, for ambitions, he felt, were meant not for personal gain but to pursue common goals within the established order of a group." A description of Chester Nimitz I like this description of ambition as a model for leadership: "pursue common goals within the established order of a group." I think it's a good one for startup CEO's as much as any other leader.
epiphanitus 6y ago
There's actually a former US Navy Sonarman who has a youtube channel called Sub Brief and it's amazing. He left the service in 90s (IIRC) but he shares all kinds of interesting knowledge on how torpedos and mines work, all the different kinds of accidents and mishaps that happen - he even analyzes different disasters like the Kursk and how they likely happened. I highly recommend it if you're into subs. https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew/featured https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew/featured
- GCPGCP 6y ago
  JiveTurkey and Aaron Amick (author of this article) are the same person :)
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    I recently got into realistic combat simulators (Squad, Arma, DCS, Cold Waters ... there are some other sub sims out there too) and I had no idea JiveTurkey and Aaron were the same person. Maybe I just missed it or wasn't paying attention. Anyway, if you're a military geek and want to get into realistic naval combat sims play Cold Waters (Uboat is also good, but way different play style). Like all realistic sims the learning curve is pretty steep, but during lockdown having something to concentrate on and enable a bit of a disconnection from the rest of the world for a while is nice.
    - GCPGCP 6y ago
      688(I) Hunter/Killer with the Jane's manual is great too. I find it more immersive than Cold Waters as you are in charge of the waterfall and have to move the cursor like a true sonarman to find the good signature.
      - mezentius 6y ago
        If you liked 688(I), I strongly recommend giving Dangerous Waters a shot. It’s a sequel made by the company, featuring submarines as well as surface and helicopter platforms, and is currently on sale. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1600/Dangerous_Waters/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1600/Dangerous_Waters/

jonplackett 6y ago

I was just going to say exactly this. It’s amazing to see them doing this with such incredibly basic technology. - Having to draw their ship and the submarine and constantly update its movement. - sonar guy is just looking at a screen that blips every now and then. - all communication by morse code - must be horrendously slow in the heat of battle - even communication within the ship is passed between multiple people so big chance of Chinese whisper type errors. I don’t know how realistic it is to real life but it gives you an appreciation for how smart and situationally aware the captain of the ship needs to be.

stormdennis 6y ago
They wargamed live during North Atlantic convoy attacks on the floor of a building in Liverpool. Players received instructions through letterboxes around the room perimeter and each could only see a fraction of the the battle. They could not see the u-boats at all as those were same color as filters they looked through. Information was radioed in from convoy escorts and scenarios were played out. Battles could last a couple of days.
- finnh 6y ago
  Game of Birds and Wolves! Great book
- gus_massa 6y ago
  There is a nice video of Lindibeige about that, with some old photos of the setup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVet82IUAqQ
wcarey 6y ago
The book by C.S. Forester that the movie is based on is even more realistic, though the movie is pretty good. To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job talking through the development of both the technology and organization of naval operations. Not all communication was by morse code. We did use ship to ship voice radio, but it was a tradeoff. RDF allowed the enemy to triangular the position of the broadcasting ship, and (often) the enemy could overhear messages and infer some tactical details. Sensor systems changed wildly throughout the war. Sonar improved markedly, and radar went from non-existent to able to identify altitude and distance to individual planes. The weight of the additional sensor systems and controls systems made some ships unstable, so we removed weapon systems from them. Being a captain (or, heaven forbid) and admiral, was very demanding. Sleep was hard to come by, and the fog of war was intense. We had meaningful problems with friendly fire in night engagements even with radar and radio communications.
- khazhoux 6y ago
  > Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II Wow, you weren't kidding. Can you recommend any shorter tomes on history of naval technology? https://www.amazon.com/History-United-States-Naval-Operations/dp/0762854316 https://www.amazon.com/History-United-States-Naval-Operation...
  - wcarey 6y ago
    It's surprisingly readable. Good history is storytelling, and Morison was there for much of the history he relates. You could get a great picture of the variety of modern naval warfare by picking up the volumes on Midway and the Struggle for Guadalcanal. C.S. Forester's novels, while historical fiction, are also excellent. I'd also recommend Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara, another powerful first hand account. Reading Hara and Morison's accounts of a battle in which both participated is really interesting.
- Goronmon 6y ago
  To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job talking through the development of both the technology and organization of naval operations. Man, that looks like a hard series of books to actually get a hold of. Either spending multiple hundreds of dollars for a used set, or struggle to find individual copies for $15+ each (a quick google search seems to show Vol 2 unavailable anywhere I looked).
sandworm101 6y ago
What you are seeing is the very evolved version, the later-war version of this battle. Early in the war it was much more primitive. There were incidents of ships literally hunting their own propellers. Only once procedures and training evolved did the real cat-and-mouse game become even possible.
extrapickles 6y ago
The military has a partial solution to the “chinese whisper” type error where the person receiving the command will repeat it back so the other person can make sure it was understood correctly. This has the downside of slightly slowing down communication.

pchristensen 6y ago

That movie and Master and Commander are two movies that helped a digital nerd like me understand how an incredibly complex system can be managed by lots and lots of humans playing very specific roles.

jonsen 6y ago
Your comment made me remember the book Cognition in the Wild: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cognition-wild https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/cognition-wild
dylan604 6y ago
A film set is the same way. Also, sounds like a lot of "machine learning" shops. Hire a squad of humans to do the work until the ML/AI graduates from schooling.

noir_lord 6y ago

Massive history nerd and I really enjoyed Greyhound because they didn't over dramatise it (much) and the attention to detail in the roles, speech etc was all very well done.

microfen 6y ago

I personally haven't seen Greyhound, but if you found this article interesting, the 2019 French film Le Chant du Loup is entirely about sonar crews on modern submarines. It's definitely a fun movie that seems (to an uninitiated) pretty technically accurate. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7458762/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7458762/

gregoriol 6y ago
That movie is indeed very good to watch, intense, and portraying what is described in the article: war on a submarine through the eyes (or ears) of a sonar man.
RandomBacon 6y ago
The French trailer looks good. It looks like the film has been dubbed in English. Thank you for the suggestion!

briandear 6y ago

Tom Hanks wrote the film as well. He has done a lot of good in terms of WWII history. Greyhound was one of those movies that really brought to life just what combat looks like on the water. To an outsider, naval combat seems rather benign and “far away” compared to Infantry, but the reality is that naval combat is terrifying and up close. It was an incredible film in capturing the horrors of naval warfare. Just seeing how hard it was to be a captain (or even a sonar man,) gives me redoubled respect for those that serve on the seas.

wcarey 6y ago
And Greyhound depicts a relatively calm series of engagements, compared to what actually happened. Consider the U.S.S. Borie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Borie_(DD-215) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Borie_(DD-215) which rammed (!) a U-Boat in high seas, was repeatedly picked up by waves and dropped on top of the surfaced U-boat, whereupon a small arms engagement broke out (!) until the U-boat attempted to disengage and was damaged by the Borie's main guns. Both ships sinking, the Borie attempted to rescue the German submariners until a torpedo from another nearby submarine caused them to reconsider. The Borie then promptly sank from seams opened by being repeatedly bounced off the top of a submarine and most of the crew were rescued.

justanotheranon 6y ago

the British cracked Enigma in 1941, and from then they were able to completely destroy the 300-400 German u-boats, because they were intercepting and decrypting u-boat radio traffic, so they always knew where the u-boats were going. The only reason the Allies allowed the u-boats to continue winning small victories was to preserve the illusion that Enigma was still secure to prevent the Germans from switching to another cipher system. So when you see depictions of exciting historical battles against u-boats, keep in mind that it was not a level playing field due to the strategic advantage of superior SIGINT by the Allies.

valuearb 6y ago
IIRC 75% of U-Boat crew members were killed in action during WW2.
vmh1928 6y ago
The book "Marching Orders" by Bruce Lee tells the story of Magic intercepts of the Japanese military and diplomatic code and reviews the daily summaries read by Marshall and other US leaders in the context of what was happening in the war at that time The point of the book, c.1995, was that signals intelligence played a huge role, but unknown role, in influencing the actions of the U.S. and U.K. And that without understanding what the leaders knew there is a tendency to overestimate their skill / leadership ability.
pgreenwood 6y ago
And Poland cracked Enigma in 1933, and then shared their techniques and Enigma clones with the British in 1939!

aksss 6y ago

Having read the book and then watched the movie, it’s amazing how much technical detail you don’t even get to approach in the film. This is just the nature of the medium, but the book is very focused on the captain’s inner thoughts and technical descriptions, awareness of limitations, and homages to the mental math involved. Highly recommend the book if you at all appreciated the movie.

criddell 6y ago
Which book did you read? I just looked and it looks like there are two books by Forester. One is The Good Shepherd which is the original book and the other is Greyhound which is also by Forester and is sold as the movie tie-in. They have different number of pages, so I assume they are different. Edit: I ended up buying The Good Shepherd because it was only $0.99 for the ebook.
- wcarey 6y ago
  If you enjoy The Good Shepherd, The Ship is a similar book about surface combat in the Med.

pjc50 6y ago

For a detailed and in places dramatic book on the primitive technology of WW2 surface naval warfare, I can recommend "Neptune's Inferno": https://erenow.net/ww/neptunes-inferno-the-u-s-navy-at-guadalcanal/ https://erenow.net/ww/neptunes-inferno-the-u-s-navy-at-guada... While radar existed, it had similar problems of manual plot, was only on a few ships, and the commanders had not updated their training and doctrine to match. Several of the key engagements around Guadalcanal were fought at night. Without radar, and without any reliable means of telling friend from foe other than eyeballing the shape. Total chaos.

skmurphy 6y ago
Thanks for this reference to Neptune's Inferno by James Hornfischer, it was a fantastic book. I like two quotes in particular "The epic of the Pacific war found new chapters for everyone. The endless game of personnel-rotation musical chairs saw the continuous replacement of the experienced by the inexperienced, until, by the end, only the experienced remained." "Ascending to theater command had never been his ambition, for ambitions, he felt, were meant not for personal gain but to pursue common goals within the established order of a group." A description of Chester Nimitz I like this description of ambition as a model for leadership: "pursue common goals within the established order of a group." I think it's a good one for startup CEO's as much as any other leader.

epiphanitus 6y ago

There's actually a former US Navy Sonarman who has a youtube channel called Sub Brief and it's amazing. He left the service in 90s (IIRC) but he shares all kinds of interesting knowledge on how torpedos and mines work, all the different kinds of accidents and mishaps that happen - he even analyzes different disasters like the Kursk and how they likely happened. I highly recommend it if you're into subs. https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew/featured https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew/featured

GCPGCP 6y ago
JiveTurkey and Aaron Amick (author of this article) are the same person :)
- remarkEon 6y ago
  I recently got into realistic combat simulators (Squad, Arma, DCS, Cold Waters ... there are some other sub sims out there too) and I had no idea JiveTurkey and Aaron were the same person. Maybe I just missed it or wasn't paying attention. Anyway, if you're a military geek and want to get into realistic naval combat sims play Cold Waters (Uboat is also good, but way different play style). Like all realistic sims the learning curve is pretty steep, but during lockdown having something to concentrate on and enable a bit of a disconnection from the rest of the world for a while is nice.
  - GCPGCP 6y ago
    688(I) Hunter/Killer with the Jane's manual is great too. I find it more immersive than Cold Waters as you are in charge of the waterfall and have to move the cursor like a true sonarman to find the good signature.
    - mezentius 6y ago
      If you liked 688(I), I strongly recommend giving Dangerous Waters a shot. It’s a sequel made by the company, featuring submarines as well as surface and helicopter platforms, and is currently on sale. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1600/Dangerous_Waters/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1600/Dangerous_Waters/