Well, first of all, no American sub skipper would attack a boat the way you do. They would use radar and their problem and accuracy of information is precisely duplicated in the nav map. A real captain with radar would not use the stadimeter at all.
You and I use basically U-boat attack procedures, which don't require ship ID. Dick O'Kane used it and I've seen a couple reports where Fluckey used it too, called constant bearing technique by Americans. But the standard stadimeter stuff was what was primarily taught to American skippers. I don't understand why, knowing better, you insist on using the stadimeter now. After all, the Dick O'Kane attack method was developed after extensive conversations with YOU.
You would think that with a superior TDC with a position keeper that would mean that Americans would have a much better hit percentage than the Germans. In fact the opposite is true. The reason is that more than half the targets sighted during the war were misidentified. All that fiddling with the recognition manual exposed the fatal flaw of the stadimeter technique. Most of the ships on the ocean were not in the manual. And even when it was, the sub crew picked the wrong one. Of course, picking a ship with the wrong dimensions results in a wrong range. And wrong range results in misses.
Using constant bearing techniques eliminates target identification from being a factor in the attack setup. That results in a higher hit percentage. Using radar to get the range makes all that academic.
As Dick O'Kane said when his radar went out, "@#$#, there goes half my torpedoes, wasted." He said this because now he would have to use the freakin' stadimeter. You DID know stadimeter is a four letter word, didn't you?
