Some hardly known aspects of the GHG, the U-boat’s group listening
apparatus

1996 Sonar paper, in pdf

Introduction

It is surprising that so little has been published in the last fifty years about sonar devices utilized by German U-boats, although sonar systems were of the utmost importance to them, as they were also for the Allies. Probably various forms of 'Secrecy Acts' and/or company policy requirements were the cause of the lack of the adequate post war publications.
 

This paper will briefly focus on some aspects of Germany's passive sonar developments, as far as the end of the hostilities of the past World War. (The 'Gruppenhorchgeräte' here after referred to as GHG or group listening apparatus, was not only utilized by submarines, but was fitted into all sorts of other vessels as well)
 

During this century there were, on the whole, great advances in technology between 1920 and 1945. Sophisticated technology is (nearly) never the result of one man's mind, but rather the culmination of sequences of scientific work, often from different disciplines, and the course of the sonar history is certainly no exception. Although most fundamental sonar inventions took place in the US and France, several important aspects were brought to maturity firstly in both Britain and Germany.

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