The Immediate application accompanying this request required floats for sup- 

 porting a towed cable which formed, approximately, a catenary loop when the 

 ends were secured to two vessels towing abreast in rainesweeping operations, 

 as shown in Figure 1 . Based on the specifications for the catenary- svreep 

 problem, the first design was a steel float geometrically similar to the TMB 



Direction of Motion 



Figure 1 



Towing Arrangement for a Catenary-Type 

 Mine sweeping Arrangement 



planing float which is used as an indicator of the position of underwater 

 bodies (2). After this float was developed, the Taylor Model Basin was re- 

 quested to investigate the possibilities of designing a displacement float 

 with a hull of balsa wood (3). It was thought that such a float would devel- 

 op ample buoyancy with a large saving in weight as compared with the metal 

 planing float. In addition to these two floats, a third float submitted by 

 the Naval Mine Warfare Test Station (NMWTS), Solomons, Maryland, was also 

 tested for load-carrying applications. This float is of hollow, sheet-metal 

 construction and consists simply of a cylindrical body with conical bow and 

 stern. 



Although initial tests to determine the hydrodynamic characteris- 

 tics of these floats were primarily intended to check the practicability of 

 the final designs, sufficient data were subsequently gathered to serve as a 

 basis for a rather complete analysis of performance characteristics. The 



