Poking holes below the waterline

[JCB]

I generally try to sink lone unarmed merchants with my deck gun whenever possible. Shooting below the waterline will send even the biggest freighter to the bottom eventually. However!: When I am shelling my foe I try to poke holes along the whole waterline. My question is this: shuld I rather consentrate on making a BIG hole amidship under the waterline or should I continue making many small holes along the ship? Anyone done some research?

And by the way: What are the armour piercing shells good for? I would never, NEVER, engage in a gunfight with something armoured, as it would probably shoot back with a bigger gun... A theory: Since HE rounds are supposed to detonate upon impact, wouldn´t the shells explode upon impact with the water (on its way to hit below the waterline) detonating harmlessly meters away from the hull. (Just imagine the hardness of the water, hitting it at a couple of hundred meters pr second...) Maybe the AP rounds, being made for penetration rather than fragmentation, will serve my needs better? :88)

[Sailor Steve]

If you're playing the stock game, it doesn't matter where you make the holes. Put more hits on it than it has hit points and it will explode and sink, period.

If you're playing NYGM or GWX you need to spread the holes out under the waterline, to make it flood more.

The real ones didn't use armor piercing shells, or starshells. This is fixed in both supermods.

[JCB]

It doesen´t matter?! A waste of time, all of that careful aiming! Can´t run GWX because of crappy hardware... :cry:

Thanks for the fast answer anyway. :D

But does that mean I can sink for example a C3 by ONLY hitting one point, well above the waterline? What use is it in giving my crew orders to aim for waterline or superstructure in vanilla sh3?
If this is the case the only order that is necessary is; "hit anything - anywhere!" :stare:

[kenijaru]

Since HE rounds are supposed to detonate upon impact, wouldn´t the shells explode upon impact with the water (on its way to hit below the waterline) detonating harmlessly meters away from the hull....
Maybe the AP rounds, being made for penetration rather than fragmentation, will serve my needs better? :88)
what you say makes sense, makes a lot of sense :yep:

but if you hill the side of a merchant with AP, the shell will probably slip through the ship like a hot knife through warm butter and explode harmlessly in the air or water. (thats the same problem argentine pilots had in the malvinas/falklands, the bomb fuse was delayed to protect the airplane from the blast but that made the bombs go through the british destroyers, with some "lucky" exeptions.)*

HE shells arent ment to throw sharpnel, but to open big holes on whatever they touch, the actual sharpnel they throw is a secondary effect (or an evolutionary leftover, like our coxis or apendix) :hmm: anyhow, you dont need sharpnel as you are not trying to kill the crew.

just shoot with HE and then use external camera to make sure you are leaving holes on the bugger.


*please, lets not start a discusion about that, specialy not here, it was just an example that poped into my head.

[Hanomag]

Oh and BTW...

Welcome aboard Kaluen JCB!! :arrgh!:

[Pisces]

Since each ship has it's weakzones, a torpedo hit or (a couple of) well aimed shell hits there might have the same effect of early sinking. And by well aimed I mean those zone's in the recognition manual that show up in stock SH3 (under certain conditions). This won't be as easy in GWX/other mods as they removed those zones showing up in the recognition book, and also changed the damage model altogether. And maybe the ships have different weakspot locations in them. But it's worth a try finding them in stock SH3 and shelling them instead of torpedoing.

[Uncle Goose]

Well, since a ship's hull is quite thick those AP might come in handy. However, in the real deal they carried HE and incendiary munition (Kretschmer made a note on the use of incendiary ammunition to set a ship ablaze so the U-boats carried not only HE ammunitions)

[DirtyACE]

When firing torpedos, one aims for the weak points in the ship such as the engine/boiler room, fuel tanks, the propellers, or ammunition bunkers. Would aiming for those same places apply to the deck gun?

[JCB]

Thanks for welcome! Nice forum indeed! :-)

So from what I´ve learnt so far, naval gunnery in stock SH3 works like this (please correct me if I´m wrong):
- Ships don´t sink because of flooding primarily, but because I score a certain amount of hitpoints that is higher than the shiptype in question can withstand. If I hit the bow, well above the waterline, hitting no critical parts, the ship will sink regardless if only I hit it with enough shells. :stare:
- There are weak points that I can hit repeatedly for inflicting more damage, sinking the ships faster.

If I combine these two I figure it is best to hit the hull right under, or slightly forward of the funnel, repeatedly, until the ship is destroyed. You know - I´m slightly disapointed, but hey, it´s still a great game! :D

As to the HE vs AP sidenote: I figure the deck gun in SH3 is much simpler to aim than in real life. Perhaps the subs didn´t bring AP since it wasn´t probable that the gun crew would be able to hit consistently below the waterline anyway. Since the AP round would be much less damaging than HE rounds, unless it actually makes holes under the waterline, it may seam rational to bring only rounds that will do the greatest amount of damage to the biggest target (the parts of the ship that is above the waterline) But what do I know... :88)

[kenijaru]

i'm prety sure it DOES :yep:

shoot just below the waterline of a target, then press "." or "," and watch for yourself if you indeed scored any hits.

[Sailor Steve]

Or if you're playing with external views of, you'll still get a telltale: sometimes you'll see a splash very close to the target, and then a hit. Sometimes the hit will even be obviously submerged. A beautiful thing.:sunny:

[DirtyACE]

You can also use the UZO to lock onto the ship and observe all the hits.

[JCB]

Yes, I have seen many a hit below waterline with HE in my games. But does anyone know if it actually was possible IRL for a HE round to penetrate 2-3 meters of rock hard water (at the speed we are talking here...) and successfully explode upon impact with the hull? :hmm: My gut tells me that it won´t work as it does in game. However; it is still a game, so it doesn´t really matter. Any naval ordanance experts here? If my suspicions are true I will bring AP rounds for waterline shots as flavour. :)

[Hondo314]

If you're playing the stock game, it doesn't matter where you make the holes. Put more hits on it than it has hit points and it will explode and sink, period.

I'm not convinced this is the case. When I have focused my shots on the engine room to approximate a torpedo, small merchants have continued sailing relatively unaffected until getting the "she's going down" message. They sink quickly thereafter. However, when I spread my shots to multiple compartments, the ships roll over on the side I targeted before they sink. They tend to roll before getting the "she's going down message" but once they start rolling, they're as good as gone. Seems I have been able to conserve HE rounds doing this. Haven't done a real experiment though.

[bobchase]

Yes, I have seen many a hit below waterline with HE in my games. But does anyone know if it actually was possible IRL for a HE round to penetrate 2-3 meters of rock hard water (at the speed we are talking here...) and successfully explode upon impact with the hull? :hmm: My gut tells me that it won´t work as it does in game. However; it is still a game, so it doesn´t really matter. Any naval ordanance experts here? If my suspicions are true I will bring AP rounds for waterline shots as flavour. :)
JCB,
In my experience HE shells don't usually explode when they strike the water. (At least not the Russian and Chinese ones.) Whether it explodes when it hits the hull depends on the downward angle of the shot and the depth when it strikes the ship. I used to hear the 105's bounce off the hull all the time. You'd hear a big 'Ker-Plunk' followed by a 'ting' when the shell hit the hull and, maybe, a delayed 'boom' if it did actually explode. However, most of these rounds were shot near maximum range - not close in like your deck gun is. So the angle of the strike on us was nearly vertical. If you were unlucky enough to be on deck when they came in you'd see a 80' high plume of water followed by a huge 'KER - PLUNK'.

Bob

[JCB]

Yes, I have seen many a hit below waterline with HE in my games. But does anyone know if it actually was possible IRL for a HE round to penetrate 2-3 meters of rock hard water (at the speed we are talking here...) and successfully explode upon impact with the hull? :hmm: My gut tells me that it won´t work as it does in game. However; it is still a game, so it doesn´t really matter. Any naval ordanance experts here? If my suspicions are true I will bring AP rounds for waterline shots as flavour. :) JCB,
In my experience HE shells don't usually explode when they strike the water. (At least not the Russian and Chinese ones.) Whether it explodes when it hits the hull depends on the downward angle of the shot and the depth when it strikes the ship. I used to hear the 105's bounce off the hull all the time. You'd hear a big 'Ker-Plunk' followed by a 'ting' when the shell hit the hull and, maybe, a delayed 'boom' if it did actually explode. However, most of these rounds were shot near maximum range - not close in like your deck gun is. So the angle of the strike on us was nearly vertical. If you were unlucky enough to be on deck when they came in you'd see a 80' high plume of water followed by a huge 'KER - PLUNK'.

Bob
Wow! Perfect! That is what I was waiting to hear! Thanks a bundle Bobchase! :D
Now, as you say, the downward angle of the shots affects the shell. Say I aim to hit a merchant about a meter below the waterline 1200 meters away. At such a short distance the angle would be just a couple of degrees off the horizontal plane making the travel through the water a rather long one. Unfamiliar with the ballistics of the naval 88 used on the VII´s I would guess the shell would act like a torpedo for at least 3-5 meters before actually hitting anything. If your experience is true for the german shells as well we might suspect HE shells not performing the way it was intended to do, hitting and detonating upon impact with the ships hull, when traveling underwater first. A HE shell that don´t detonate is not a wery potent weapon, being relatively light and frangible compared to AP. This is very interesting information indeed, bobchase. The "ker-plunk" sound you heard - was that the sound of the shell hitting the water not detonating? In that case I´m fascinated by the ability of a compact lump of metal making those plumes. :huh:

[bobchase]

JCB,

Here is a picture of a plunging round (Ker-Plunk shot) that was taken from my ship on its 1st Nam cruise back in '67. (I was on the 3rd Nam cruise in '72)

http://www.uss-newport-news.com/nnpix/1967_69_pix.htm (http://www.uss-newport-news.com/nnpix/1967_69_pix.htm)

Click on the upper left picture for a close-up. The upper right picture is a very good picture of a fall storm in the N. Atlantic. In a couple of months the seas would be twice as big...winter in the N. Atlantic is not for the frail and timid.

Another good site for pictures of incoming rounds is:

http://home.att.net/~dgoad/photos3.html (http://home.att.net/~dgoad/photos3.html)

One of the 1st pictures is the USS McCormick taking incoming from a small coastal gun. These rounds are coming in from an angle so they were very close to the NVA gun.

Down farther is a picture of typical 'near miss' where a 105 round prematurely detonated before actual penetration. The funnel of our ship would be approximately the same thickness steel as merchant hull.

Still further down this page is a picture of HMS Perth. If you click on the picture of HMS Perth, you will see a better picture of where she is surrounded by shore battery fire. The Perth took a round in the fantail that day sending some good Aussie's to meet Davy Jones.

As far as far a 'flat trajectory' goes - no - or at least, probably not. Unless you are point blank, running down the side of the merchants' hull, a gun's shot has a trajectory like a lopsided rainbow. When a shot leaves a gun, no matter what the angle of elevation, the shot goes straight out only at first. But it's wind resistance vs. gravity and gravity always wins. As the speed of the shell drops, the forward & upward vectors become less and gravity becomes the largest vector operating on the shell. So the downward side out at far end of the 'rainbow' is always much steeper than nearer, upward side. The very top of the arc is always past the middle of the range and for a very high elevation round (+41 deg) can be nearly at the end. Which is why rounds fired at maximum range are called 'plunging fire' .

All of the water plumes you see in the pictures are non-exploding shots. A contact fuses' detonator should not detonate on water. A timed fuse or a proximity fuse could but you wouldn't be using them from a sub's deck gun. When plunging fire comes in, it sounds and looks just like what dropping a very big rock off of a pier only enlarged by a factor of 100 or more. A tight vertical water column 80' high was very common from a plunging 105. 207's made a bigger splash because they reached higher altitudes and weighed more.

I can't really tell you how far below the water line the shells exploded. when I was out on the weather deck and saw incoming, I nearly always went to my general quarters station. The few times they didn't call way GQ was when we already had downed the gun or tank.

When I was down below and heard the 'tink' sound, again, they almost always called away 'NOW GENERAL QUARTERS...' And when there was an explosion, it was almost always delayed from the 'tink' sound.

However, we where a heavy cruiser (CA) and if the shell did explode on contact, the shell would have exploded against the belt armor. Our armor was 8" thick at the water line and tapered down to 3" at the under curve of the hull. So we could have taken a hit from a 207 shell and been OK.

Above the water line is a very different story and a lone 88 could have done some damage, started fires, and killed shipmates. On the other hand, the life expectancy of a surfaced submarine against us would have been measured in seconds...

As far the games' deck gun goes, it seems to me to be a fairly accurate representation of what it might have been like. Yes, the HE shell could explode below the water line and after penetrating a hull. AP rounds have less explosive power than HE rounds because of the thick armor steel that they are made of. (More steel = less space for the explosives.) So an AP round would only be used against armored targets or if all the HE shells had already been expended. The fuse on an AP round is typically a delayed contact detonator. The delay is for armor penetration, not for the water or the thin skin of a merchant. Fired a close range, it might be possible for an AP shot to go through the ship and then explode, doing little or no harm. But it's a sim/RTS game, not an *exact* simulation of the real thing.

Hope this helps,

Bob

[johnno74]

Very interesting reading Bobchase, thanks a lot :up:

[JCB]

This is super, bobchase! Couldn´t have asked for a better reply. :D

SH3 is exiting, but real life experience sort of knocks the wind out of it... A very interesting read!

*loading HE-rounds*


By the way: Welcome to the forum! (I´m sort of a newbie myself, but somebody got to say it. :sunny:)

[bertle]

Since HE rounds are supposed to detonate upon impact, wouldn´t the shells explode upon impact with the water (on its way to hit below the waterline) detonating harmlessly meters away from the hull....
Maybe the AP rounds, being made for penetration rather than fragmentation, will serve my needs better? :88) what you say makes sense, makes a lot of sense :yep:

but if you hill the side of a merchant with AP, the shell will probably slip through the ship like a hot knife through warm butter and explode harmlessly in the air or water. (thats the same problem argentine pilots had in the malvinas/falklands, the bomb fuse was delayed to protect the airplane from the blast but that made the bombs go through the british destroyers, with some "lucky" exeptions.)*

HE shells arent ment to throw sharpnel, but to open big holes on whatever they touch, the actual sharpnel they throw is a secondary effect (or an evolutionary leftover, like our coxis or apendix) :hmm: anyhow, you dont need sharpnel as you are not trying to kill the crew.

just shoot with HE and then use external camera to make sure you are leaving holes on the bugger.


*please, lets not start a discusion about that, specialy not here, it was just an example that poped into my head.


At least you sunk HMS invincible ;)

[Fusek]

In the stock game, I always put a few AP in the areas there the fuel is supposed to be, and after that a few HE shells, resulting in a big fire or explosions.

Or am I imagining things?

[JCB]

In the stock game, I always put a few AP in the areas there the fuel is supposed to be, and after that a few HE shells, resulting in a big fire or explosions.

Or am I imagining things?

From what I´ve heard about the game engine so far - the latter...