Tips for hunting in bad weather, pre-radar?
 

I'm in the old S-boat north of Luzon, 1st patrol out of Manila. Clouds, precipitation, heavy fog, high winds for days.

Got incredibly lucky to find an unescorted merchant traveling alone --- and when I say "find" I do not mean visually. Fired blind from astern after tracking four hours on sonar, and incredibly got a hit. Finished with deck gun, sighting by the flames.

Two days later, same storm, I'm tracking a northbound convoy which includes both high-speed and low-speed screws. Can't afford to ping for range due to the escorts. Really not sure how to approach this problem. If I try to pull ahead it will mean trusting my fix on their course, because submerging to get a fix will slow me down too much.

Probably I'll end up firing a blind spread, hoping to hit something --- unless someone has a better idea?

My advice would be to end-run. Using the sound data you can establish a general idea of the convoy's heading and range. The initial part of the attack - when you are BVR and listening to their distant screws - you have all the time in the world; you can stop your vessel (for ease of calculating), and record numerous marks at the point at which the sound heading indicators fade out. Enough marks give you sufficient information to give you the convoy's general heading and speed. Using that data, surface and race like hell to a point far ahead of the convoy's path.

Bad weather is a gift from the Gods for sub Captains; you don't need sight - you have sound. Once you're in their path ready your torps and prepare for quick, sharp observations the moment a ship looms out of the darkness. Bad weather is difficult for you, but it renders destroyer escorts to almost useless - at least in the early-war vanilla game. Be satisfied with one successful hit per attempt; unlike the surface-dwellers you have the advantage of time.

This turned out to be excellent advice. Thank you. Bagged three merchants in three attacks during the storm without any visual cues. It is difficult to trust the course/speed estimates without visual confirmation but it must be done.

Accurately guessing the convoy's destination (Toko, Formosa) was hugely beneficial to the calculation of course and speed. In future storms I may just camp within striking distance of an enemy port for this reason.

Excellent, Captain :) SH4 provides sufficient information to work up a crude TMA on the target. The math can be done but I, for one, am terrible at math and can build up a visual plot instead; it may not be as accurate but when your torpedoes slam into the enemy's bow it's definitely as satisfying. ;)

I'm experiencing a situation where rough water is actually a bad thing. I've stripped off the escorts from a 9 ship convoy. They travel in a tight 3x3 formation. Have done an end-around set up three times. Because the water is so rough, my sub is exposed as the swell travels over me at peri depth. With 9 ships so close to me, somebody always spots me and they do the headless chicken fire drill.

The rough water makes the deck gun problematic, not to mention the wall of in-coming ordnance from so many merchants.

I'm actually having to shadow the convoy waiting for calmer water that won't expose my position.

one video, one line... Gotta wait for the singin'...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMGHMSM2Tk8

Smile - I ran into the same thing in hurricane conditions in the (IIRC) South China Sea; ridiculously frustrating. The good thing was that the surface-dwellers were making lousy time so I got ahead of them out of sight, surfaced, recharged then dove and hummed along at 2kts. and 200ft. until the storm blew itself out. Horribly annoying; I REALLY wish I had a Captain's Bed as in SH5 but it got the job done.

Of course, once I WAS in attack position came the second kind of frustration: underrun...underrun...miss...dud...underrun...dud. ..AAAAAAAAUUGH! :wah:

chuckle - cheers!

To avoid being spotted in heavy seas, you might try staying submerged a little deeper than periscope depth. Watch the sonar, then come back up at the last moment to attack.

If you want to stay submerged (as much as possible), but the waves keep washing over your periscope, spoiling your aim, try manually setting your depth to shallower than periscope depth, or set it to radar depth. You'll be more visible but you'll have a better view.

You can also attack from below periscope depth using only sonar. (You can't go too deep or the torpedo tubes will close - 100 ft? I'm not sure.) Once you have done it once or twice it's not much different from using the periscope. The easy way is to set it up with the scope at longer range where you won't be seen, then just use sonar to pull the trigger. The harder way is to use sonar to set it up. There are one or two video demonstrations here on Subsim (in the Skipper's bag of Tricks, I think), and also on YouTube.

Attacking via sonar can be used to stay hidden, so they can't see you - but it is ALSO very useful when you can't see them, due to fog, weather, fog, darkness, fog, or damaged periscopes. Or fog. (It's really useful in fog.)