SPURV

SPURV, or Special Purpose Underwater Research Vehicle, was an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle built in 1957 at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory.

Construction
The original engineers of SPURV were Bob Van Wagennen (mechanical) and Wayne Nodland (electrical). Terry Ewart calculated the hydrodynamics design on a Berkeley EASE analog computer. SPURV was machined by Boeing from a forging of 7078-T6 aluminum. 4 additional SPURVs were built in later years.

Capability
SPURV had an operating depth of at least 3000 meters. It could go about 4-5 knots for about 4 hours.

Operations
SPURV was first operated from the ATA-195, the Navy Seagoing Tug Tatnuck in a 1957 cruise to Cobb Seamount. A tracking system had been built for the Tatnuck that could plot the range to SPURV on a strip chart recorder and the x-y position on a chart plotter.

The later SPURVS were utilized on 1-2 cruises per year, conducting over 20 month-long cruises in total to study small scale ocean variability, dye diffusion, and acoustic transmission.

In a few operations, two SPURVs were run at once in lock-step, 1 above the other or one beside the other at constant spacings. This was to study spatial coherences of the small scale ocean structure. Most of the SPURVs operated with a vertical rake of temperature and conductivity sensors using what later became the Seabird sensors. In all cases, they could be tracked from the ship -- usually with the capability of using a bottom or other reference system, and pitch, roll, and heading corrections for the ship.

The last operation of SPURV was in 1979 in the submarine wake study experiment. APL still has all 5 hulls, but they have not been used since then.