Degaussing for VictoryIn the early years of World War II, the greatest threat to Allied ships next t

Degaussing for VictoryIn the early years of World War II, the greatest threat to Allied ships next to German U-Boats were the tens of thousands of German magnetic mines which had been placed along busy shipping lanes or snuck into Allied ports.  The new German mines had a unique form of detonation, by detecting the magnetic field of a nearby ship’s hull.  Many British and Allied ships were sent to Davy Jones Locker by those dastardly mines.To solve this problem, a Royal Canadian Navy officer named Commander Charles F. Goodeve developed a method to minimize a ships signature.  By exposing a ship’s hull to an electric charge, the magnetic field of the ship could be reduced to the point that a magnetic mine could not detect it.  Since the German mines measured magnetic fields with a unit of measurement called the “gauss” (after Carl Friedrich Gauss), Goodeve termed the new method “degaussing”.  For most major warships the common form of degaussing was to run a copper cable along the ships hull and deliver an electric charge.  However for smaller ships, which made up the bulk of the fleet, this was not practical or economical.  Another method was called “wiping”, which involved trailing a cable charged with 4,000 amps next to the ship and steaming in a zig zag pattern. However this was the least effective method.  The third method was an American invention called “deperming”.  This involved moving the ship through a large degaussing station while in port.  The station featured a degaussing coil, either constructed out of solid metal or cable, which would erase the ships magnetic signature.  By the end of the war, all major Allied ports in Britain and mainland Europe and many in the Pacific featured a degaussing station.The use of degaussing greatly minimized the hazard of magnetic mines, saving the lives of many thousands of Allied sailors and soldiers.  Today most military ships still undergo the process of degaussing for the same reasons its was done during World War II.  Degaussing of civilian ships traveling through the English Channel and North Sea continued until the 1970’s as there were many thousands of magnetic mines unaccounted for after the war. -- source link

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