Holy crud! 90 degree active arc!!

[pythos]

So my most experienced comander is out on patrol in the oldest boat of my fleet. A well worn type VIIC with all the trimmings. After cruising in the Mediterainian (spelling) for a couple of days and shooting down 2 cats 1 welli, and sinking one Pyro, his crew is feeling pretty good.

The following is comander Johan Scum's account of a very harrowing experience.

On Novemember 24 1942 the boat is less than 24 hrs from it's patrol zone for the 24 hr patrol we all know. My radio operator announces that he is getting radar signals. The last times this happened a hapless aircraft bumbled into our sites, and so I preparred for another air assult, by manning the AA guns. Unfortunately a few minutes later we learn the contact was in fact a destroyer.

Alaaaaaarm!, and down to 70 meters. I am not playing around with this kinda threat before getting to the patrol zone. We get to 70 meters and silent running is ordered.

Several minutes pass during which I have the boat's narrow profile presented to the incomming ship. Despite this a couple of minutes later his active strikes my hull. There are only three "search" pings, which are imeadiatly follwed by the pounding of the "gotcha" pings. I order flank speed and head right toward him, and take the boat down to 120 meters. As he passes over me, I order a 90 degree turn, and wait for the charges.

This is the part where things go wierd.

BEFORE the charges go off, he starts pinging me again, and these are not search pings but instead the pounding and repetitive gotcha pings. The charges start going off and my boat gets tossed about. It must have been a fluke for him to start pinging me so fast. I repeat the evasion tactic again. He passes right overhead, as we descend to 180 meters.

Once again, before the charges go off, I am getting pinged. WTH?

This scenerio repeats its self an uncounted number of times, I have the boat down past 200 meters, and wondering when things are gonna start popping.

It seems to me that his passive arc is actually acting as his active. Or his turn rate is unbeleivable. During this little dance I have lost three crew members, and gotten a boat sevearly pounded. This evasion tactic usually does not get such results.

Finally after ordering "deeper still chief" I come to a decision. This super boat is not gonna let us go. In my stearn I have loaded a new weapon of the kriegsmarine, a homing torpedo know as the TIVes falke. I have had some good luck with these getting rid of escorts that don't know what skipper they are messing around with . and which boat he thinks he has got. U-555 will not go down today!

I wait for one more pass of the bastard. Before he passes over us I order flank speed (now reduced by two damaged motors), and blow ballast. With this the boat at first slowly starts climbing, but is soon soaring up to the surface. I can only guess that we passed right through the next lot of charges, cause their thuds were heard below and behind us, which did cause a little rocking. We didn't care, the boat was already hurting.

Unfortunately I miscalculated the rate of ascent, and order periscope depth too late. This also didn't matter. Our advesary was the whole time pinging us again. The depth meter is starting to slow down around 20 meters, but not slowly enough, seconds later the tower pops above the surface, just long enough for these british supermen, to lock their sights and start pounding away with their cannon.

We are rocked by the impact of the shells, damage reports start comming in. While getting the scope on the bastard the boat gets rocked by another shot. Then I see him, all lit up with his searchlights, not more than 700 meters away, but closing. His pings are still hitting us. I order tube 5 opened, while the weapons officer gets what he needs. When I see the solution set, I offset the aim so the falke passes to his side, and order the shot. As the torpedo shoots out, I order the scope down and a dive back to 120 meters, full flank.

Then we wait.

Did the falke fail to acquire?

The screws approach nearer as we continue our dive.

Thud! Torpedo impact!!!!

We hit the bastard!

But his pings continue?

This goes on for a few more minutes, after which I ask the soundman what our friend was doing. The response; "He's stationary herr kaluen"

I order the boat to periscope depth. Several long minutes later we get there, all the while still being pinged. When I get him in the sights I am astonished. Despite the fact I am looking at his broadside, I am still getting pinged.

That's enough!!! I finally look at my chart, and click on his icon.

I discover that his active arc is a huge 90 degree, 2000 meter arc! No wonder he could lock on more before the charges went off!

Then he does something astonishing. He fires starshell after starshell over my position, then starts pounding my scope the best he can.

He has to go!!!

We swing around (with the scope down) to bear our forward tubes at him.

Scope back up, full four salvo, I want him gone.

Minutes later it is all over but the screaming. Four fish into his side, and the pinging finally stops.

For the first time, I, Johan Scum, have to abort the patrol zone and get to a friendly port.

On Novemember 28, 1942. U-555 entered the port of Salimas, for emergency repair.

This patrol was done with GWX and the destroyer escort was a River class.

Is this actually what the boats had to deal with later in the war, or did someone goof with specs for the river's sonar?

[Rhodes]

:o Woooohhhh...:o :o :o :o :o :o :huh: :huh: :huh: :huh: :huh:

Hope I don't find one of thoose...

[Myxale]

Wow, that was a helluva trip mate! Kudos you made it!:rock:

[robbo180265]

:huh: Speechless!

[Nippelspanner]

Personal Note:

River Class Escort?
Open all Valve´s in the Sub and get outta there...

:rotfl:

[Ducimus]

Re sonar cone:

It's my understanding that in the real world, sonar acutally has a narrow cone (15 degree's?) and sweeps side to side. In Sh3, this is NOT how it works, and sonar does NOT sweep. It behaves much like a flashlight. When its on, it projects a beam of predetermined dimensions based on the type of active sonar being used against you.

Now, you can alter the gemotry of the cone to be narrower, but what ends up happening is the AI becomes rather stupid, and the game becomes trivialized. The dimensions of the active sonar cones are really to compensate for the AI's stupidity.

[Paajtor]

As the torpedo shoots out, I order the scope down and a dive back to 120 meters, full flank.


You were lucky the torp didn't come for your own engines. :lol:

Great story...gl on your next patrol.

[Brag]

Good description . You've earned a few shots of Ouzo in Salamis.:up:

[pythos]

the actually have not chased my sub when running on electrics. There was a shot I did on the surface not realizing I had released on of these little hunters.

Sure enough my boat went boom. But not before my looking at the TDC screen to set up the next shot and seeing the little icon following my boat.

It was quite funny when the scene from red October, when the second in command onf the VK Carnivolev says to his captain "you arragont ass, you killed us." shot through my mind just before my boat jumped into the air in a geyser of blast.

It actually did not destroy my boat, but the patrol was over, and it did not make it back to base, it was just short of the shore running on batteries, at a very shallow depth, when we ran out of juice.

In reality, I probably would have gotten a tow.

[Payoff]

the actually have not chased my sub when running on electrics. There was a shot I did on the surface not realizing I had released on of these little hunters.

Sure enough my boat went boom. But not before my looking at the TDC screen to set up the next shot and seeing the little icon following my boat.

It was quite funny when the scene from red October, when the second in command onf the VK Carnivolev says to his captain "you arragont ass, you killed us." shot through my mind just before my boat jumped into the air in a geyser of blast.

It actually did not destroy my boat, but the patrol was over, and it did not make it back to base, it was just short of the shore running on batteries, at a very shallow depth, when we ran out of juice.

In reality, I probably would have gotten a tow.

:rotfl: :rotfl: Now thats funny. " Remove all safeties, set the firing range to zero".
" But captain....."

[badhat17]

Some food for thought, contrary to popular belief RN asdic was capable of a full 360 degree traverse and it was standard practice for the operator to swing the transducer astern and attempt to re-acquire the target as the ship passed over the target during the attack run. The transducer was also slaved to the ships gyro compass and at the flick of a switch the operator could engage the system so that the asdic head would stay on the target bearing regardless of own ship manoeuvering.

[DrMilton]

I dont know if it could sweep 360 degs but it certainly had 90 deg to each side of the bow, so if you were in front of him he would get you.

[Mush Martin]

There are Two Kinds of River Class

The River Class DE type 3 that was included in vanilla
SH3 distinguished by two funnells and torpedos.

And

The River Class Frigate Type 2
the best ASW type 2 Frigate in the game Bar None.
distinguished by one funnel and a hedge hog launcher.
and a major agression problem.
available on my file front page.

do you know which one it was.

MM

[ref]

Some food for thought, contrary to popular belief RN asdic was capable of a full 360 degree traverse and it was standard practice for the operator to swing the transducer astern and attempt to re-acquire the target as the ship passed over the target during the attack run. The transducer was also slaved to the ships gyro compass and at the flick of a switch the operator could engage the system so that the asdic head would stay on the target bearing regardless of own ship manoeuvering.

That's correct, even with the early asdics which had a narrow cone (about 15º), the operator rotates it to cover 360, although the own ship sounds make impossible to hear anything in the ship baffles.

I dont know if it could sweep 360 degs but it certainly had 90 deg to each side of the bow, so if you were in front of him he would get you.

I've been messing a lot with the sensors, using the submarine sensor structures which have rotating capabilities and assigning them to the AI sonar, but the "AI" isn't capable of tracking the target, they detected me only when the sonar sweeps over my position, and doesn't follow me, it just keeps spinning so in fact I was able to evade them every single time...
So for the playability of the game the sensors should remain more or less as they are, only small tweaks are possible.

Ref

[badhat17]

That's correct, even with the early asdics which had a narrow cone (about 15º), the operator rotates it to cover 360, although the own ship sounds make impossible to hear anything in the ship baffles.

Ref
RN asdic sets did not use a fixed baffle, they had the baffle attached to the rear of the transducer so it rotated along with the head. The baffle then would blank out noise which would otherwise have been picked up at the transducer.
The USN however placed another baffle at the rear of the dome fixed to the dome itself which blanked off a portion of the rearmost arc.
Remember the operator was not listening for the sound of the submarine, rather he was watching for the return echo on his display which would have been a range recorder during an attack. Often overlooked but the range recorder proved a major advance over the CRT display as it provided a history of events and allowed the operator time to examine the trace so enabling him the chance to spot returns that would have been missed on a CRT. The signal fed to the recorder was also processed by passing it through a filter set which removed unwanted frequency bands from the source and was then amplified. By mid war the processing had moved further on so that frequency shift effects could be exploited to a small degree.