Transmission of Light in Coastal Water

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Transmission of Light in Coastal Water

W. S. Plymale / G. L. Stamm

The prospect of signaling between submerged submarines and airplanes in flight is a very interesting and potentially useful one to the Navy. Pulsed light signaling from a submarine to an aircraft was achieved with limited success in previous experiments. The most successful runs were made off the east coast of Florida where horizontal air ranges up to 8600 feet for keel depths at 127 feet were obtained with the airplane at a height of 2000 feet. In recent months the transmitter has been completely redesigned optically to give greater horizontal ranges for low flying aircraft. In addition the firing circuit has been improved to give 0.4-microsecond pulses and peak dissipative energies near 20 megawatts at flash r at e 5 up to five flashes per second. Reported here is a daylight to night series of runs made in the Block Island area off Rhode Island on September 18, 1957. The USS TUSK transmitted signals to a P2V-5 flown from the Naval Air Station, Brunswick, Maine. In spite of the high optical density of these coastal waters, the data were fairly good. A typical night run was made at a keel depth of 90 feet for the submarine and an aircraft altitude of 1000 feet. The horizontal range was 1.9 statute miles. For daylight runs the ranges were near zero. These and other data have been tabulated to summarize the work thus far on this problem.