Picture of the day

Ganderite said:
This is an after action report on a U-boat attacked off our east coast. My father took some excellent pictures of the sub on each of the two passes. I am having difficulty in finding them.

SNYKDEx.png


Found the picture. With a glass I can clearly see 2 deck guns, and a face looking up from the conning tower. I can't lip read German... Picture taken with a K20 hand held camera with a K2 yellow filter and TriX:

w3pPqy9.jpg
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The story and photo appears in Canadian Military History, Vol 21, Issue 1, on page 73. Link here.

The U-boat was U-165, a Type IXC on her first war patrol. She survived this Hudson attack, and was sunk 18 days later by a Vickers Wellington west of France.
 
CV32 said:
The story and photo appears in Canadian Military History, Vol 21, Issue 1, on page 73. Link here.

The U-boat was U-165, a Type IXC on her first war patrol. She survived this Hudson attack, and was sunk 18 days later by a Vickers Wellington west of France.
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I have an original photograph of the other sub shown in that link. Dad was involved with 3 sub attacks within the same week. One was because of radar. Airborne radar really tipped the balance and doomed the subs. Dad said he could pick up a periscope and a snorkel. When they switched over to the new radar (very short wave length) the German radar detecting radios would not pick it up.

Another attack was blind luck. The plane was dropping through cloud cover and as they saw the ocean, a sub surfaced in front of them.
 
Ganderite said:
This is an after action report on a U-boat attacked off our east coast. My father took some excellent pictures of the sub on each of the two passes. I am having difficulty in finding them.

SNYKDEx.png


Found the picture. With a glass I can clearly see 2 deck guns, and a face looking up from the conning tower. I can't lip read German... Picture taken with a K20 hand held camera with a K2 yellow filter and TriX:

w3pPqy9.jpg
Click to expand...

I had a high school friend who's father first saw Canada through a U-Boat periscope. Second time was as a prisoner of war
 
Ganderite said:
I have an original photograph of the other sub shown in that link. Dad was involved with 3 sub attacks within the same week. One was because of radar. Airborne radar really tipped the balance and doomed the subs. Dad said he could pick up a periscope and a snorkel. When they switched over to the new radar (very short wave length) the German radar detecting radios would not pick it up. Another attack was blind luck. The plane was dropping through cloud cover and as they saw the ocean, a sub surfaced in front of them.
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This highlights the difference between the earlier German Metox receiver, which had been designed to detect the earlier generation ASV Mk II radar (which was never terribly good at detecting submarines, let alone periscopes or snorkels), and the later Naxos series receiver.
 
Dad was disappointed in what he saw as relative ineffectiveness of the ASW effort on the east coast. A number of ships were sunk. His album has pictures of tankers blown in half, that he took from the air. He felt guilty a bit.

I read some German accounts of the U-boat war on the east coast and the Germans noted that whenever they surfaced in the Canadian waters there seemed to be aircraft about and it was safer to go south along the American coast.

My take on it was that the Canadian air effort had the effect of reducing the casualties in our waters.

I was surprised to learn just how thorough the Canadian effort was. Dad was taken to a Navy base and the aircrew were taken on a short submarine trip, so they would have a better understanding of their quarry. That seems like a brilliant idea.

Unbeknown to the aircrew, they were dispatched to patrol certain areas because thanks to Ultra decrypts, we knew where the subs were. This made the aircraft much more effective.

Dad died a few years ago, and I don't think he ever knew the reason why (code breaking) they were assigned certain places to patrol.

I have spent sometime on anti-sub patrol, and it is a huge ocean. I would guess that the chances of finding a sub just by patrolling would be quite small.
 
Ganderite said:
Dad was disappointed in what he saw as relative ineffectiveness of the ASW effort on the east coast. A number of ships were sunk. His album has pictures of tankers blown in half, that he took from the air. He felt guilty a bit. I read some German accounts of the U-boat war on the east coast and the Germans noted that whenever they surfaced in the Canadian waters there seemed to be aircraft about and it was safer to go south along the American coast. My take on it was that the Canadian air effort had the effect of reducing the casualties in our waters. I was surprised to learn just how thorough the Canadian effort was. Dad was taken to a Navy base and the aircrew were taken on a short submarine trip, so they would have a better understanding of their quarry. That seems like a brilliant idea. Unbeknown to the aircrew, they were dispatched to patrol certain areas because thanks to Ultra decrypts, we knew where the subs were. This made the aircraft much more effective. Dad died a few years ago, and I don't think he ever knew the reason why (code breaking) they were assigned certain places to patrol. I have spent sometime on anti-sub patrol, and it is a huge ocean. I would guess that the chances of finding a sub just by patrolling would be quite small.
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The Gulf of St Lawrence - with this island sitting at its mouth - has a very pronounced effect in channelling marine traffic. The map that can be found at the link I provided earlier shows this quite well.
 
I'm not quite sure they are all German solders.I think some of them are Italians and at least one could be Hungarian but it's a long shot.
 
https://books.google.ca/books?id=52...hUKEwjpxP6BqqLeAhXLJt8KHbEmAPAQ6AEwEHoECAQQAQ

Page from uploaded book chronicling the loss of two USN Tracker a/c in S.E.A. The circumstances of the USN losses are mysterious. This resembles RCN Tracker losses although ours were in peacetime operations and far more details of the RCN Tracker losses exist. One RCN Tracker was lost within eyeshot of many on HMCS Bonaventure. Iirc that incident is described in Soward's Hands to Flying Stations. The craft went down with some or all the crew aboard with a full load of practice depth charges. Once the wreck reached the depth the fuzes were set for, every one of them went off.
 
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/88160313@N03/24661459759

It is hideous to think our boys went down on that Tracker with a load of armed explosive charges aboard.


Sensors and armament:

The Tracker carried an internal torpedo bay capable of carrying two lightweight torpedoes or one nuclear depth charge. There were six underwing hard points for rocket pods and conventional depth charges or up to four additional torpedoes. A ventrally mounted retractable radome for AN/APS-38 radar and a Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD) AN/ASQ-8 mounted on an extendable rear mounted boom were also fitted. Early model Trackers had an Electronic Surveillance Measures (ESM) pod mounted dorsally just aft of the front seat overhead hatches and were also fitted with a smoke particle detector or 'sniffer'. Later S-2s had the sniffer removed and had the ESM antennae moved to four rounded extensions on the wingtips. A 70 million candlepower searchlight was mounted on the starboard wing. The engine nacelles carried JEZEBEL sonobouys in the rear (16 in early marks, 32 in the S-2E/G). Early Trackers also carried 60 explosive charges dispensed ventrally from the rear of the fuselage used for active sonar (JULIE) with the AN/AQA-3 and later AQA-4 detection sets, whereas the introduction of active sonobouys and AN/AQA-7 with the S-2G conversion saw these removed. Smoke dispensers were mounted on the port ventral surface of the nacelles in groups of three each.

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Sharps '74 said:
Are those soldaten wearing puttees?
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I believe those are jodhpurs and would extend to ankle height - they would be tight fitting from the knee to ankle (usually no puttees) to avoid chaffing while mounted (presumably on a horse or polo pony) — there are also riding breeches that end around the knee and use a tight fitting high boot (but I have also seen knee high puttees substituted for full wellingtons which are expensive) - either way they would be worn by ‘mounted’ troops. This form of dress is sometimes carried over by cavalry/armoured units whose officers would claim to bring ‘tone’ to a battlefield without which it would ‘simply be a common brawl’ — pompous aholes!! ���� There are photos of Patton wearing jodhpurs — in deference to his riding prowess (he was a very capable military pentathlete) AND also to his cavalry/armoured service.
 
fat tony said:
Lest we forget. They were not really practice depth charges, they were part of the active sonar weapon system, it was possibly a way to throw the enemy off although the concept is similar to seismic survey technology which is common knowledge.
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I recall dropping practice depth charges from a RCAF Neptune in the 60's. It carried several pounds of high explosive. After a few direct hits on our target subs (RCN) that did some damage, the payload was reduced to about 1.5 pounds. Still a significant bang.

We used them for practice. Not used in conjunction with a sonobouy.

OUR PDCs had a safety wire, so were safe until deliberately dropped. They could be dropped "safe" too (jettisoned).
 
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