ADVANCEMENT OF JMARINE SCIENCES 29 



The submarine navigator has been required to substitute sound for 

 sight, acoustics for vision. Scientists have invented instruments that 

 send sound pulses to the ocean floor and record the echoes that bounce 

 back. The time lapse indicates the depth of bottom. If the ocean 

 floor has been well charted indicating elevations and depressions the 

 charts can be used as a guide or roadmap. 



President Kennedy referred to these charts in his March 29 letter 

 to Vice President Johnson in which he stated: 



Knowledge of the oceans is more than a matter of curiosity. 

 Our very survival may hinge on it. Although understanding 

 of our marine en^'ironment and maps of the ocean floor could 

 afford to our mihtary forces a demonstrable advantage, we 

 have thus far neglected oceanography. We do not have 

 charts of more than 1 or 2 percent of the oceans. 



Submarine instruments also send out sound pulses to record obsta- 

 cles in the path of the submarine or objects around it. 



Sound transmission through the waters is complicated by the fact 

 that sound beams are distorted by changes in water temperatures at 

 varying ocean layers, by variation in salinity, by chemical content 

 of the waters, by schools of plankton or other minute organisms, or 

 by other phenomena, not all of it explained. There are mysterious 

 noises in the ocean also to compete with the man-created sound pulses. 



As he attempts to evaluate the sounds around him, the submarine 

 commander will vdsh to avoid his own submarine being lieard by a 

 possible enemy. He will seek layers in the ocean — for the ocean has 

 many layers of varying density although they are not constant— 

 where he can best hear the enemy and where the enemy will least 

 hear him. Or he may seek to adjust the buoyance of his submarine 

 so that it can balance silently between different density layers of the 

 sea. 



Operations, therefore, require great knovdedge of the ocean at all 

 depths, and great knovvdedge of the floor beneath it. Knowledge 

 demands research, as Dr. Hargis noted m his statement to the com- 

 mittee. 



With its goal of naval supremacy based on submarines, Soviet 

 Russia a verv few A'ears ago embarked on an unprecedented and mas- 

 sive program of oceaiiographic research. 



Today, to complement its submarine fleet, Russia has the world's 

 largest research fleet. Included in this fleet are many of the world's 

 largest research ships, some new and some conversions, and new 

 "floating laboratories" as tbe Russians call them, are being added 

 annually. 



Research on these ships is conducted by the world's largest corps of 

 oceanographers. To supplement this corps the Soviet Government is 

 training more oceangraphers in its institutions than are being trained 

 in any other nation. 



Soviet research ships, as previously stated in this report, are oper- 

 ating in all oceans. 



Soviet scientific efforts in the world ocean present a formidable 

 chaUenge to the United States where, as President Kennedy has 

 stated, oceanography has been "neglected." 



Major military responsibilities for meeting this oceanographic 

 challenge are vested in the Office of Naval Research, created in 1946 



