Tailships: The Hunt for Soviet Submarines in the Mediterranean, 1970-1973

Obsolete, except for the experimental anti-submarine warfare sensor they carried, the USS Hammerberg, DE-1015, the USS Courtney, DE-1021 and the USS Lester, DE-1022 went to the Mediterranean to demonstrate the potential of a technology that relied on a passive towed array detection system; what the Navy officially designated as the Interim Towed Array Surveillance System (ITASS).

These ‘Tailships’ entered the Med in 1970. It was then that the US and NATO navies operated in a naval environmen...