Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/203

1918] When all three vessels obtained the direction as well as the sound it was a comparatively simple matter to define pretty accurately its location. The middle chaser of the three was the flagship and her most interesting feature was the so-called plotting-room. Here one officer received constant telephone reports from all three boats, giving the nature of the sounds, and, more important still, their directions. He transferred these records to a chart as soon as they came in, rapidly made calculations, and in a few seconds he was able to give the location of the submarine. This process was known as obtaining a "fix." The reports of our chaser commanders are filled constantly with reference to these "fixes"—the "fix" being that point on the surface of the ocean where three lines, each giving the direction of the detected sound, cross one another. The method can be most satisfactorily illustrated by the following diagram:



In this demonstration the letters A, B, and C, each represent a subchaser, the central one, B, being the flagship of the division. The listener on A has picked up a noise, the direction of which is indicated by the line a a. He telephones by wireless this information to the plotting-room aboard the flagship B. The listeners on this vessel