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.
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.
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.
Wow, you weren't kidding. Can you recommend any shorter tomes on history of naval technology?
https://www.amazon.com/History-United-States-Naval-Operation...
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.
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).
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.