Early acoustics research at the Navy’s Pacific research and development laboratory

Abstract

Few organizations have a more essential connection to underwater acoustics than the US Navy; the Navy’s mission success has been critically dependent on understanding and exploiting underwater acoustics since the advent of submarines. In its several manifestations since WW II, the Navy’s San Diego-based R&D laboratory (currently SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific) has played an important role in the development of the underwater acoustics field. This progress has been in conjunction with other San Diego institutions, such as Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Marine Physics Laboratory, and other Navy laboratories. We provide a historical overview of acoustics research at SSC Pacific and predecessors in the era following WW II, including the impact of the environment, Arctic acoustics, fielded systems, sonar and active acoustics, and marine mammal acoustics, and the scientists and researchers such as Homer Bucker, Sam Ridgeway, Shelby Sullivan and others who worked in developing our modern understanding of underwater acoustics on the edge of the Pacific.