Depth charge safe depth?
 

So far (mid-1941) it looks like my u-boat is perfectly safe from both depth charges and water pressure at 200 meter depth. I can run at flank speed, reload torpedoes, repair boat and do whaterver I want at this depth, when escorts are near.

So questions are:
1. Will it continue until the end of the game, or later depth charges would be able to hit me at such depth?
2. How realistic this situation is (I believe I have read that depth charges don't going gelow 150m are realistic, but what about u-boat staying at 200m depth as long as it has oxygen)?

Are you playing stock, GWX, or NYGM? (Listed in order of increasing lethality to the player.)

Sorry, forgot to mention. GWX 3.0 (+SH commander), no additional modes.

In real life, in the early war, (1939-1941) allied depth charges had a maximum depth of 152m. If you sit at 157-160m, they cannot hit you.
By 1942, they fixed that problem, if they find you, they will kill you.

Also, once they have hedgehogs, those things go to any depth you can go to.

Steve

I can't find it for the life of me, but there is a depth at which stock SH3 depth charges "unspawn". But it is irrelevant, because it is beyond the crush depth of any of our subs.

No idea if that is hard coded and, if not, whether it was modded by GWX or NYGM to better simulate the development of technology. (and I actually don't want to know... the game is more fun for me if I don't know every twist the modders added, peace be upon them!)

My own, purely subjective, "feeling" is that inexperienced AI crews rarely toss depth charges to explode deeper than about 125 m. As the war goes on and the AI crews get better, they can and do happily send them down to crush depth.

surviving in your iron coffin
 

The small bombs carried by aircraft normally weigh in at 150lbs, the ones by destroyers, up to 500lbs. At a depth of 350ft, the lethal radius extends to roughly 275-350ft.
To destroy a submerged U-boat, depth charges don't have to hit, they need only to explode within the so-called 'lethal radius'. Water transmits pressure much more strongly than air. If an intense shock wave hits the boat, the pressure can rip it apart at the seams.
The most dangerous charges for the average U-boat are the ones that explode diagonally under the keel. The underside has the largest concentration of flanges, outboard valves and plugs. The deeper you go, the smaller the lethal radius becomes. The water pressure, itself a threat because of the overloading on the seams, also limits the effective radius of the bombs.
Once the "tommies" fixed their depth charge limitations, they can drop them to go off at virtually any depth. Which forces you into some hard choices. Try to go deeper and it won't be the blasts that gets you, it will be pressure hull failure. Surface, and you are dog meat. They will shoot you, they will ram you, surrender isn't really an option. You get 4 chances to die and only one to live. Those are pretty bad odds. And still we keep coming back...

Well, surrender IS an option with SH3 Commander :up:

I recall SHII had an option to abandon ship.

Wow, I never realised that.

Just for clarification: is not an in-game option... in the game you still "die" and your career finish. But SH3 Commander will recognize a "dead" carrer and will let you edit the "career state" in the context of SH3 Commander so now you have two choices:
1) if you and your boat died when submerged then you should stick with the "you are dead" case;
2) if you surfaced your boat and then you were killed you can instead roleplay the fact that you and your crew came on the surface just to scuttle the boat + surrender to the enemy and so should stick with the "you are taken as pow" case.

That would be useful when generating (with SH3C) your Kaleun "Personell File", so it is only cosmetic, after all :03:

That is still quite interesting, I might just have to accidentally surface the boat in the middle of a convoy, like Dönitz, to test it out. :D

Don't forget: SH3 Commander randomizes the depth range of enemy sensors to simulate thermal layers. It could be that the escorts aren't hearing you because you're under this artificially created layer through SH3 Commander.

Also... Depth charges automatically Unspawn at 300 meters, if you manage to get to 305 meters the depth charges won't reach you HOWEVER the blast wave if one blowing up at 299 meters will get you