RN CORSAIR Sonar System

[JFC Fuller]

I have long been fascinated by this project, it was essentially a UK equivalent (and complimentary to) the early US fixed sonar array research that lead to SOSUS undertaken in the 1950s. Last night I found a fantastic, very detailed, on-line article about it here:

http://arl.g3w1.com/Corsair/index.htm

The below is a piece I wrote at the never were warships forum about this system last year that gives some other sources for details of CORSAIR:

Corsair is referred to as a British system (and one that may be useful as a coastal sonar system) here: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/047223.pdf and that is further backed up by a brief paragraph in The Royal Navy, 1930-2000: Innovation in Defence, the footnotes include a very brief overview of the system and point the reader to ADM 204/2547, ARL/R43/L, EJ. Risness, "Some Thoughts on the Recent History, Present Status and Future Prospects of Passive Acoustic Submarine Detection" for the history of Corsair. British Intelligence by Stephen Twigge, Edward Hampshire and Graham Macklin also gives a brief history of Corsair and states that arrays up to 1,200 ft were laid off the coasts of Scotland, Cornwall and the Shetlands but that a combination of short range (70NM max), interference from fishing vessels and difficulty in results interpretation lead to its abandonment. Hackmann mentions a Type 188 sonar that was allocated to harbour defence but abandoned a few years later, he gives no further details.