Quote:
Originally Posted by Fidd
15. "Soaping" depth charges.
I forget the range bands of standard British (Or US) depth-charges were, but at least early in the war, they could not reach the depths U-boats could get down to. Standard practice when a U-boat sank to beyond the nominal depth setting was to stuff the hole through which water pressure (and therefore depth) was admitted with normal soap. This dissolved as it sank, allowing the DC to explode lower than would otherwise be the case. If this were featured, and the depth attained by any DC be a random amount beyond the nominal set-value, then it would allow an escort to remain something of a threat and suppress the u-boat even if he can't officially reach the correct depth. At some point, probably circa 1942, the Royal Navy DC's were given deeper possible settings to clobber those "hard to reach" u-boats! I also suggest that manned ASDIC's on escorts be allowed, if no thermal layer intervening, to successfully ping off a u-boat at 185m or more.
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The standard RN DC in September 1939 could reach 500 feet. Yes, technically a U-Boat could have gone underneath, but in the early days, U-Boat commanders rarely took their boat as deep as they could go since no one knew how deep they could really go. By the time it became standard practice to go "deep", the RN had DCs that could reach them.
The issue in any subsim is whether you want to put the player in a similar situation to skippers at the time or whether you should be able to use hindsight to avoid enemy weapons, always a tricky balancing act.
Again revisiting U-Boat damage is already on the roadmap so we will see what comes out of it.