This brief U.S. Navy film provides a look at MAD, a towed Magnetic Airborne Detection system deployed by a Grumman Tracker S-2F airplane, and used in anti-submarine warfare. The USS Daniel Boone, SSBN-629 is shown in the film for demonstration purposes. The vehicles shown in the film were apparently part of a development program and painted in test colors. It’s not clear if they were ever deployed. The narrator mentions that the vehicles held a magnetometer and were made of plastic and epoxy, and consist of a fuselage with a swept-wing design. They were tested at Johnsville, Pennsylvania as well as Alberta, Canada and in Florida.
A magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) is an instrument used to detect minute variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. The term refers specifically to magnetometers used by military forces to detect submarines (a mass of ferromagnetic material creates a detectable disturbance in the magnetic field); military MAD equipment is a descendant of geomagnetic survey or aeromagnetic survey instruments used to search for minerals by detecting their disturbance of the normal earth-field. The use of magnetic field measurements for airborne detection of submerged submarines has a history that goes back to at least World War II. The technology makes use of the fact that a submarine is in effect a large magnet, and its magnetic field causes localized changes (“anomalies”) in the earth’s magnetic field, which can be detected by field measuring instruments – magnetometers.
The base shown in the film at (1:35) is apparently the Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster, a U.S. Navy military installation located in Warminster, Pennsylvania and Ivyland, Pennsylvania. For most of its existence (1949–1993), the base was known as the Naval Air Development Center (NADC) Warminster, but it has also been referred to as Johnsville Naval Air Development Center, NADC Johnsville or simply, Johnsville.
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