Guides and Training

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Kapitan Soniboy

Hey

I downloaded the Cromwell attack and the Dick (by god!!) tutorials. Want to say thanks because this is really fun to do. Still have some trouble with the Cromwell attack method though, but with a little more practice it will turn out good in the end. Very satisfying to sink a ship with sonar only.

Did they really manage to sink enemy ships without ever raising the periscope?? I mean really... at that time?

Thanks

(sorry if it's anything wrong with my english)

Your english is great!

With the Cromwell attack, the main hazard is that the target sees the approaching torpedoes. Then he only has to turn 45º into the torpdoes to avoid them. During the daytime, this is a good time to use Mark 18s. At night use the fastest torpedo you have.

At the beginning of the war, doctrine was that all shots were to be taken with sonar only, as it was thought to be too dangerous to raise the scope in close combat with the enemy. In practice before the war they did have success hitting single ships that way.

However in the real war, a single target was pretty rare. Even in the game, it's difficult to use sonar only in a crowded situation. What happens if you ping one target on your first observation and another for your second? You've just created a fictitious target and will hit nothing! There are many ways to miss using sonar only and our submarines found most of them.

Then successes started to come when aggressive younger commanders who were willing to buck the system and use their periscopes to obtain more accurate targeting information. They obtained several times the hit ratio.

As a matter of fact, after the advantages were discovered, Admiral Lockwood made periscope attacks official policy. Even then the real life ostriches (we don't just have them in the game, they were a real life problem) had to be rooted out and relieved of their commands when they were unwilling to take necessary risks to obtain success. Later, Lockwood had to go through round 2 of removing ostriches for those captains who insisted on remaining submerged all day, ruining their combat readiness during their nighttime recharging ritual.