The invention as disclosed is of a buoyant cable antenna for use with underwater vehicles having improved bandwidth through the use of discrete distributed loading along the antenna. The buoyant cable antenna is designed with an antenna wire that is divided into N equal length segments of length d/2. A capacitor is coupled between every other segment such that capacitors are separated by a distance d. A shunt inductor is coupled to the antenna wire between the adjoining segments not separated by a capacitor such that the shunt inductors are separated by a distance d. This antenna design provides a substantially improved impedance bandwidth over existing prior art antennas at high frequency without increasing the physical profile of the antenna and without the use of active circuit elements.