Transcript of Bda. Sun Article.
The Bermuda Sun Weekly Saturday September 14, 1974
SOFAR TO TEST NEW LONG RANGE MISSILE
Station stays right on track! BY PHILIP DILKS
HIGH in St. David's by the light-house, a group of scientists - three of them Bermudians -
are working on secret experiments for the US Government.
Much of the work done by the privately run Sofar Station is for the Navy department and
has long been concerned with the problems of tracking down missiles as they land in the sea.
And in the 25 years since its establishment a number of significant inventions and developments
have stemmed from the station.
Of the 38 staff based there only 11 are Americans and the rest Bermudian. Over the years
there has been little change in the personnel.
In fact, director Mr. Carl Hardigan has been there since 1955 and his chief electrical engineer
joined the original staff of the station soon after the opening in 1949.
The station, located on part of the naval base, was established as an outgrowth of the early
work on sound transmission through the deep ocean sound channel by two doctors Maurice
Ewing and J.W. Worzel.
Dr. Ewing discovered aircraft which went down in the sea by using hydrophones to record
sound waves. He gave the phenomenon the acronym SOFAR - sound fixing and ranging.
Trapped
Mr. Hardigan explained that between certain depths a sound wave is trapped and has to
travel horizontally as it cannot reach the surface or the ocean bed.
This was emphasised some years ago when the station recorded sound waves from a 300 lb.
depth charge dropped on the other side of the world. "It took the sound just three hours, 47
minutes and 50 seconds to come half way round the globe - about 12,000 miles from a
destroyer off Perth, Australia", said Mr. Hardigan.
The two doctors had already established the Lamont Geological observatory of Columbia
University and they wanted in set up a field station near the deep ocean to save long sailing
times to get off the American Continental shelf.
Bermuda was ideal from which to lay hydrophones to record noises in the sea and soon also
became a useful place to test new oceanographic instruments.
Tuning Fork
In 1952 the precision depth ocean recorder was developed at the station.
"This instrument was a precision tuning fork, which drove an amplifier and a synchronous
motor and proved to be a far more accurate method of giving a picture of the bottom of the
ocean, which after all covers seven tenths of the globe", said Mr. Hardigan. Use of the
instrument became world wide and led to the discovery of the mid-Atlantic ridge - an
underwater mountain range.
It also determined that an area on the sea-bed to the south of Bermuda was absolutely
flat plains, whereas previous readings on more primitive instruments had showed small
variations through inaccurate timing.
The station also tested and developed the air gun, an instrument used to measure the
sediment layers on the ocean bed.
The importance of this development has been to indicate the presence of oil and has
saved millions of dollars in wasted test drilling.
Penetrated
Up to a kilometre below the ocean bed can be penetrated by the air gun, which is
now used by almost all oceanographic ships. The Bermuda Sofar station has its own
research ship, the 137 feet "Sir Horace Lamb". They also retain a work-boat and a
barge.
Mr. Hardigan who is married and has a family, served with the US Navy through
the Korean War and before that was working in the US Naval Office of Oceanography
and Research.
He came to the Bermuda station as a research scientist. "At first we were purely
experimental but as the years went by we found ourselves taking on more and more
ad-hoc research for the military in fairly applied problems", he said.
But in 1969, Columbia University decided to discontinue classified research, so the
two doctors who established the station set up a non-profit making corporation called
Palisades Geophysical Institute to carry on the work.
Mr. Hardigan travels to the States to sell the work of the station and has recently returned
from what he described as "a profitable trip".
The station first became involved with the problems of missile impact locations using
acoustic techniques in 1954 when its hydrophones measured the sound output of 1000 lb.
inert bombs dropped from aircraft.
In the following year they installed a temporary hydrophone off Grand Bahama Island
and did similar experiments from the impacts of American missiles.
In the early sixties the station's research and development programme improved the missile
impact location system (MILS). And until the late sixties the operation of the Polaris
MILS was monitored in the Atlantic and Pacific and problems were solved as they arose .
Mr. Hardigan was reluctant to talk about the present work of the station. "That's classified",
he said.
However, he did reveal that in recent years the main impetus of the missile work has been
the development of a MILS for the Poseidon - the successor to Polaris.
"We have done extensive tests on the missiles and I must say we are looking forward to
testing the new missile the Trident, which I understand has an even greater range than
the previous two".
(Photo caption.) Carl Hardigan (right) director of the Sofar Station.
Below: Miles Mayall and Keven Laudadio prepare a tape recorder which will be
sealed in a glass sphere and dropped in the sea off Bermuda to record sound.
Jan 15th. 2014
The Bermuda Sun Weekly Saturday September 14, 1974
SOFAR TO TEST NEW LONG RANGE MISSILE
Station stays right on track! BY PHILIP DILKS
HIGH in St. David's by the light-house, a group of scientists - three of them Bermudians -
are working on secret experiments for the US Government.
Much of the work done by the privately run Sofar Station is for the Navy department and
has long been concerned with the problems of tracking down missiles as they land in the sea.
And in the 25 years since its establishment a number of significant inventions and developments
have stemmed from the station.
Of the 38 staff based there only 11 are Americans and the rest Bermudian. Over the years
there has been little change in the personnel.
In fact, director Mr. Carl Hardigan has been there since 1955 and his chief electrical engineer
joined the original staff of the station soon after the opening in 1949.
The station, located on part of the naval base, was established as an outgrowth of the early
work on sound transmission through the deep ocean sound channel by two doctors Maurice
Ewing and J.W. Worzel.
Dr. Ewing discovered aircraft which went down in the sea by using hydrophones to record
sound waves. He gave the phenomenon the acronym SOFAR - sound fixing and ranging.
Trapped
Mr. Hardigan explained that between certain depths a sound wave is trapped and has to
travel horizontally as it cannot reach the surface or the ocean bed.
This was emphasised some years ago when the station recorded sound waves from a 300 lb.
depth charge dropped on the other side of the world. "It took the sound just three hours, 47
minutes and 50 seconds to come half way round the globe - about 12,000 miles from a
destroyer off Perth, Australia", said Mr. Hardigan.
The two doctors had already established the Lamont Geological observatory of Columbia
University and they wanted in set up a field station near the deep ocean to save long sailing
times to get off the American Continental shelf.
Bermuda was ideal from which to lay hydrophones to record noises in the sea and soon also
became a useful place to test new oceanographic instruments.
Tuning Fork
In 1952 the precision depth ocean recorder was developed at the station.
"This instrument was a precision tuning fork, which drove an amplifier and a synchronous
motor and proved to be a far more accurate method of giving a picture of the bottom of the
ocean, which after all covers seven tenths of the globe", said Mr. Hardigan. Use of the
instrument became world wide and led to the discovery of the mid-Atlantic ridge - an
underwater mountain range.
It also determined that an area on the sea-bed to the south of Bermuda was absolutely
flat plains, whereas previous readings on more primitive instruments had showed small
variations through inaccurate timing.
The station also tested and developed the air gun, an instrument used to measure the
sediment layers on the ocean bed.
The importance of this development has been to indicate the presence of oil and has
saved millions of dollars in wasted test drilling.
Penetrated
Up to a kilometre below the ocean bed can be penetrated by the air gun, which is
now used by almost all oceanographic ships. The Bermuda Sofar station has its own
research ship, the 137 feet "Sir Horace Lamb". They also retain a work-boat and a
barge.
Mr. Hardigan who is married and has a family, served with the US Navy through
the Korean War and before that was working in the US Naval Office of Oceanography
and Research.
He came to the Bermuda station as a research scientist. "At first we were purely
experimental but as the years went by we found ourselves taking on more and more
ad-hoc research for the military in fairly applied problems", he said.
But in 1969, Columbia University decided to discontinue classified research, so the
two doctors who established the station set up a non-profit making corporation called
Palisades Geophysical Institute to carry on the work.
Mr. Hardigan travels to the States to sell the work of the station and has recently returned
from what he described as "a profitable trip".
The station first became involved with the problems of missile impact locations using
acoustic techniques in 1954 when its hydrophones measured the sound output of 1000 lb.
inert bombs dropped from aircraft.
In the following year they installed a temporary hydrophone off Grand Bahama Island
and did similar experiments from the impacts of American missiles.
In the early sixties the station's research and development programme improved the missile
impact location system (MILS). And until the late sixties the operation of the Polaris
MILS was monitored in the Atlantic and Pacific and problems were solved as they arose .
Mr. Hardigan was reluctant to talk about the present work of the station. "That's classified",
he said.
However, he did reveal that in recent years the main impetus of the missile work has been
the development of a MILS for the Poseidon - the successor to Polaris.
"We have done extensive tests on the missiles and I must say we are looking forward to
testing the new missile the Trident, which I understand has an even greater range than
the previous two".
(Photo caption.) Carl Hardigan (right) director of the Sofar Station.
Below: Miles Mayall and Keven Laudadio prepare a tape recorder which will be
sealed in a glass sphere and dropped in the sea off Bermuda to record sound.
Jan 15th. 2014