Undersea Secrets

One month after the first live German magnetic mine was captured on Nov. 24, 1939, Britain had produced a completely successful counter-weapon. That weapon, the Admiralty announced last week, was a pair of long electrified cables towed behind two minesweeping tugs. The cables set up a magnetic field strong enough to explode all mines within a ten-acre area, thus cleared wide shipping lanes in a hurry.

The Allies were less successful in coping with another once-secret Nazi weapon, according to a German submarine commander at Flensburg last week. He said that the acoustic torpedo (TIME, Oct. 11, 1943), fitted with a microphone-controlled steering apparatus which made it follow the sound of a ship's propellers, proved 90% more effective than older models.

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