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Anti-submarine warfare (ASW, or in older form A/S) is a branch of underwater warfare that uses surface warships, aircraft, or other submarines to find, track and deter, damage or destroy enemy submarines. Successful anti-submarine warfare depends on a mix of sensor and weapon technology, training, experience and luck. Sophisticated sonar equipment for first detecting, then classifying, locating and tracking the target submarine is a key element of ASW. To destroy submarines both the torpedo and mine are used, launched from air, surface and underwater platforms. Other means of destruction have been used in the past but are now obsolete. ASW also involves protecting friendly ships. ==History== The first attacks on a ship by an underwater vehicle are generally believed to have been during the American Revolutionary War, using what would now be called a naval mine but what then was called a torpedo, though various attempts to build submarines had been made before this. The first self-propelled torpedo was invented in 1863 and launched from surface craft. The first submarine with a torpedo was ''Nordenfelt I'' built in 1884-1885, though it had been proposed earlier. In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, the submarine was a significant threat. By the start of the First World War nearly 300 submarines were in service. Some warships were fitted with an armoured belt as protection against torpedoes. There were, however, no means to detect submerged U-boats, and attacks on them were limited at first to efforts to damage their periscopes with hammers. The Royal Navy torpedo establishment, HMS ''Vernon'', studied explosive grapnel sweeps; these sank four or five U-boats in the First World War. A similar approach featured a string of charges on a floating cable, fired electrically; an unimpressed Baron Mountevans considered any U-boat sunk by it deserved to be. Also tried were dropping hand-thrown guncotton bombs. The Lance Bomb was developed, also; this featured a cone-shaped steel drum on a shaft, intended to be thrown at a submarine. Firing Lyddite shells, or using trench mortars, was tried. Use of nets to ensnare U-boats was also examined, as was a destroyer, , fitted with a spar torpedo. To attack at set depths, aircraft bombs were attached to lanyards which would trigger their charges; a similar idea was a guncotton charge in a lanyarded can; two of these lashed together became known as the Depth Charge Type A. Problems with the lanyards tangling and failing to function led to the development of a chemical pellet trigger as the Type B. These were effective at a distance of around . The best concept arose in a 1913 RN Torpedo School report, describing a device intended for countermining, a "dropping mine". At Admiral John Jellicoe's request, the standard Mark II mine was fitted with a hydrostatic pistol (developed in 1914 by Thomas Firth & Sons of Sheffield) preset for firing, to be launched from a stern platform. Weighing , and effective at , the "cruiser mine" was a potential hazard to the dropping ship, but was also on the right track. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Anti-submarine warfare」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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