Dowty Boulton Paul - Customers

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• Hello Les… many thanks for the correction, we will edit the caption accordingly….

  By John Redfern (19/03/2021)

• The ship you show is not a Cable Laying Vessel.
  This is the Hecla Class Admiralty vessel pennant number A319, HMS Bulldog. Marconi were developing a stabilised underwater sonar known as Hydrosearch around 1974-77. The idea was that if the sonar head was stabilised and could be automatically actuated so that, as it swept an area, the head stayed on its fixed sweep even if the vessel itself was being buffeted and thrown about by the seas.
  The cylindrical actuation module holding the sonar head was designed and made by Dowty Boulton Paul and fitted in the fore hull of this vessel in a tube together with a power supply externally. When not in use it retracted into the vessel. The equipment was a success and discovered sunken items not normally noticed including an alleged sunken U-Boat. Its most popular scans were of the submarine M2 in Lyme Bay.
  The fact that this sort of computer control, so that the equipment moved but the head could stay still in space, could be done (the exact opposite of a normal crane) led to the company later becoming involved with the BAe Skyhook/Skydrant projects.

  By Les Whitehouse (18/03/2021)