Submariners

Clip 2: Acoustic warfare

3 min 13 sec ( skip to teachers’ notes)

Taken from the documentary Submariners (2005)

Original title classification not known – this clip chosen to be PG

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Curator’s clip description

HMAS Rankin is taking part in Silent Fury, an exercise with the US Navy. The submarine must avoid detection and make it past ‘enemy’ ships and helicopters to be victorious. Acoustic warfare specialists explain how they won the exercise.

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows the Australian submarine HMAS Rankin as it takes part in a naval exercise with the US Navy off the coast of Hawaii. The captain, Steve Hussey, plans and executes a strategy to elude detection by the US fleet. This involves initially encouraging his crew to ‘make a bit of noise’ so that the US ships will become accustomed to a high level of sonar ‘noise’. This is followed by a period of silence in which they hope to evade detection. The plan appears to work. The clip includes music, narration and interviews with crew members.

Educational value points

  • Sonar is commonly used by ships and submarines to detect underwater obstacles and search for other vessels, and by fishers searching for schools of fish. There are two types of sonar – passive sonar is a listening device, an acoustic receiver that emits no sound but listens for and analyses the sounds of other vessels, while active sonar sends out a pulse of sound into the water and locates objects by timing the returned ‘echo’ of the sound pulse. Sonar reception depends on water temperature, other activity in the area and the weather on the surface but it is possible to detect noisy vessels more than 100 km away.
  • Silent Fury, the exercise depicted in the clip, was part of the multinational maritime warfare exercise RIMPAC 04, carried out in July 2004. It was the nineteenth in a series of RIMPAC (rim of the Pacific) exercises that have been conducted since 1971. RIMPAC 04 involved seven nations, Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the USA and the UK, practising their warfare and communication skills. The RIMPAC exercises involved training in tactical proficiency, non-combatant evacuation operations, antisubmarine warfare and humanitarian assistance.
  • During the RIMPAC activities in July 2004, between 150 and 200 melon-headed whales were stranded in nearby Hanalei Bay on Hawaii. Investigations by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Navy suggested that the active sonar transmissions from the RIMPAC activities did at least contribute to the mass stranding. Scientific knowledge of the effects of sonar on marine animals is rudimentary, although NOAA laboratory data indicates that sonar systems are audible to many marine animals and may affect their behavioural and physiological responses.
  • The clip shows the crew of HMAS Rankin involved in naval exercises with the US Navy, in a military activity operating under the security treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the USA (ANZUS). The ANZUS treaty was signed on 1 September 1951 and bound the participating countries to recognise that an armed attack in the Pacific or on any one of them would endanger the peace and safety of the others, to consult with each other in the event of a threat and to maintain and develop individual and collective capabilities to resist attack.
  • Australia is only the second country in the world after Norway to allow women, such as the sonar operator seen in the clip, to serve on submarines. A 1996 Australian Defence Force (ADF) report examining the cultural, social and institutional barriers to women’s careers in the ADF recommended a more strategic and systemic approach to eliminate sex-based discrimination. Within the Australian armed forces, women are now allowed to work in support (non-combat) roles in battle zones.
  • The filmmaker has used a variety of techniques to engage the viewer. The use of a hand-held camera allows the audience into the confined conditions of the submarine, and these shots contrast with the outdoor shots of the US frigates and helicopters, and of the submarine gliding through the water. A voice-over narration, the voice of the captain reading from his diary of the event, various crew members describing events as they unfold, rain-like sounds from outside the submarine, and music all add to the sense of an unfolding drama.
  • The Submariners series was devised to give insight into life on board an Australian submarine deployed overseas and this clip displays the cramped, noisy and claustrophobic conditions of submarine life. Series director Hugh Piper found the crew of HMAS Rankin to be a tightly knit group, interdependent and highly skilled.
  • Hugh Piper has also made A Case for the Coroner, a six-part series for the ABC about the workings of the Coroner’s Court, and The Post, about the reporters on Cambodia’s English-language newspaper the Phnom Penh Post.
australian screen