Patroling submerged

[Steelkilt]

Ok, I'm on station, daytime, at periscope depth. Can I assume some member of the crew is actually looking through the scope while I'm at the map table?

[Ducimus]

Only if you have your periscope up. The periscope does act as part of the watch crew, and your watch officer will call contacts out if its up. Range is limited to 6KM or less.

With surface contacts, odds are your sonarman will hear them first. Once its within visual range, the visual sensor of your periscope has higher priority then your hydrophone, so you will not have hydrophone contact with the same target you have visual contact with at the same time. (game limitation).

If your using a supermod like TMO (and i think RFB too), id advise you to leave your SD radar antenna extended while patrolling submerged at periscope depth, or your going to be in for a nasty surprise before too long.

[Steelkilt]

Thank you sir...scope is up...radar is up with GFO...SK

[Bubblehead1980]

Maybe I like playing with fire lol but since I patrol a lot when playing early war before surface patrol by subs was common , I leave scope up without the SD antenna and run it at 512 time compression, get enough warning to go deeper and avoid the planes.You have to stay on alert so keeps things interesting.

[Steelkilt]

Thanks, I,ll give it a shot...SK

[Rockin Robbins]

Insert standard advice that submerged and patrolling are two words that should not exist in the same sentence. You can search much more than 10 times the area per day on the surface at 9 knots. That means 10 times the contacts, 10 times the tonnage. That is a vastly conservative number, based on visual detection only.

[tomoose]

The Pacific is big enough without further restricting your patrolling by skulking underwater too much. You've got a lot of "ground" to cover so it's better to do as much as possible on the surface. Dive only when you have to.

[sharkbit]

I've been doing the yo-yo method, even in '42. Dive when airplanes are visually spotted and keep a close eye on them when picked up on the air-search radar and dive only when they reach 5 nm range. I surface in about half an hour to an hour after diving.
I have been caught a couple of times and suffered some damage when an airplane has made an accurate drop, but nothing severe enough to cause an early end to a patrol.
I might stay down in the late afternoon-early evening until sunset to give my crew a "rest" before surfacing for the night.

The only time I might stay down all day is if I'm patrolling near a harbor or air patrols have been a really big nuisance. I don't live rigidly by doctrine though, mine or the navy's. I try to adapt as the situation warrants.

:)

[Red Devil]

Running with scope up I get aircraft spotted sir, even if I am not looking.

[Bubblehead1980]

Yes, patroling on surface is much more effective means of patrol BUT in early war or when using slow divers like Narwhal, submerged patrol is warranted.Early war I do this because its historically accurate and adds a whole different level of :damn: to the war patrol.Narwhals dive too slow to patrol on surface, only time I ever get bombed on surface is when when I have a narwhal.I prefer the yo-yo method myself but again in early war, I go with the tactics they used and can tell you that you will see a difference in your contacts and tonnage sunk once you switch.Conduct 3 patrols mostly submerged then 3 patrols yo-yo, you will see a huge difference.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yeah! What? You want to live forever?:D

[BillBam]

Just because early war doctrine and early war captains used faulty methods doesn't mean we are required to follow their mistakes. They didn't sink much in those early years either. I have been using the Donation Narwahl in my current career (7 patrols in) and have found it dives in more than enough time to evade detection with SD radar.

[Captain Vlad]

Keep in mind that every good skipper will develop their own style. If you have good results by using the 'periscope watch' technique, more power to ya'.

My own tactics differ markedly from RR's for example, but I still sink a whole lot of ships.:up:

[Red Devil]

Just because early war doctrine and early war captains used faulty methods doesn't mean we are required to follow their mistakes. They didn't sink much in those early years either. I have been using the Donation Narwahl in my current career (7 patrols in) and have found it dives in more than enough time to evade detection with SD radar.

Thats cause they had crap torps!

[Armistead]

Only time I patrol underwater is to yo you in a S boat since sonar only works dived.

[Bubblehead1980]

Was in no way saying anyone had to patrol submerged.Just saying since the pre war tactic of being a slightly mobile minefield, just staying under during day and surfacing at night was very common first couple years of the war, I began to follow the doctrine if playing in 41, 42 and early 43 because it adds to the challenge.Once I get into late 43 and on I stay on surface most of the time as they did in RL. Up to the player of course. One boo boo they made is giving us the TBT from day one of the war, US subs didnt do night surface attacks ( few brave skippers who winged it and did night surface attacks without training) until 43 or so.Again, up to player.

[Rockin Robbins]

What they don't tell you is that the reason tactics changed wasn't that the captains changed their minds. The ostriches who hid all day were fired and sent to pound sand on the beaches of Japanese infested islands and new blood, who were willing to fight their boats were brought in to get the job done.

The one who made that happen was Admiral Lockwood, who wasn't afraid to make wholesale changes necessary to get some production out of the boats. It wasn't as if they were really safe hiding underwater all day anyway. It wasn't as if changing the plan to surfaced patrol was going to cost more American lives. It was that those sacrifices would actually have some justification when the submarines were producing victory instead of pursuing some pipe dream of just trying to survive.

Lockwood had no sympathy for that view. You fought your boat or you became cannon fodder on a beach somewhere. At least there you weren't endangering 60 other good men.

[Bubblehead1980]

yea, makes you wonder how things wouldve turned out if sub force had not been in the hands of a wise man like Lockwood. I knew Captains didnt suddenly change their mind, the ostrichs were sent packing and the new guys were given free reign for the most part to sink, sink and sink some more.

Not sure if youve ever played a patrol, esp an early war patrol using the old tactics of staying submerged all day and surfacing at night, what a different game, give it a try in early war if you havent, you seem to like a challenge Robbins:salute:

[Red Devil]

Lockwood saved the subs skins no doubt. he also listened to the captains reports about the magnetic detonators. Nobody else did.

[WarlordATF]

Another point is the early war Captains were under orders to stay submerged all day, during pre-war training if even your periscope was sighted during wargames you were disiplined and could even lose your command.

To call these men cowards or ostrichs is a dis-service to them. Many could not fight their boats and lost their commands because alot of the Torps couldn't hit a anchored target at point blank range.

We all have that friend that knows everything and you can not change their minds until they are completely proven wrong. Thats how the Navy Brass was and they risked these mens careers and lives because they just couldn't be wrong.

[Frying Tiger]

I've found that before you get an SJ, patrolling submerged gives you a greater detection range at times with the sonar than your visual search. You can then surface and run down the sonar bearing until you pick them up.

[Diopos]

I've found that before you get an SJ, patrolling submerged gives you a greater detection range at times with the sonar than your visual search. You can then surface and run down the sonar bearing until you pick them up.

I've found that before you get an SJ, patrolling submerged gives you a greater detection range at times with the sonar than your visual search. You can then surface and run down the sonar bearing until you pick them up.

As a player of WW2 subsims I confess my sin ... I enjoy the pre-radar era. I like sonar work. I might also add that even in the "radar era" the passive hydrophone may well be the "sensor" of choice under many circumstances.
BUT
I would never drain my batteries to cover a veeery modest area while a good combination of surface patrolling plus some "dips" for sonar work works better (more area actualliy patrolled and your batteries are always full). Whenever I "dip", I keep my speed is 1 kts or less and I do so for less than 15-20 min. Then on the susrface for 1-2 hours then another dip. Actually It is more role playing on my part, as ingame fleetboats seem to behave with a full sonar capacity even while surfaced (something that doesn't feel quite right :hmmm:).

[Bubblehead1980]

Another point is the early war Captains were under orders to stay submerged all day, during pre-war training if even your periscope was sighted during wargames you were disiplined and could even lose your command.

To call these men cowards or ostrichs is a dis-service to them. Many could not fight their boats and lost their commands because alot of the Torps couldn't hit a anchored target at point blank range.

We all have that friend that knows everything and you can not change their minds until they are completely proven wrong. Thats how the Navy Brass was and they risked these mens careers and lives because they just couldn't be wrong.


Good point warlord, not fair to tag them all as ostrichs or cowards.Many were just operating as trained and ordered.However, some continued to do so even after they were allowed to operate in other manners.LCDR Donald McGregor, the first Skipper of the USS Seahorse comes to mind.Slade Cutter was his XO and they clashed because of McGregor's ultra conservative, ostrich approach, if I recalle correctly he even passed up some prime targets.Read that in the book MARU KILLER by Dave Bauslog, great read.Cutter did say in the book to be fair to McGregor, it's the way he was trained but admits he was on the line of cowardice.McGregor had also been removed from one command but managed to get assigned to Seahorse because he was well connected.McGregor was out after some unproductive patrols and Cutter took over.Sure you know about Cutter but he went on to sink many ships while in charge of Seahorse.

[Ducimus]

I've found that before you get an SJ, patrolling submerged gives you a greater detection range at times with the sonar than your visual search. You can then surface and run down the sonar bearing until you pick them up.

Heh, i know of a better "cheat" then that. Don't bother to submerge, and just man the hydrophones periodicly. The AI crewman will only respond to contacts within the confines of the sensors specs (9km, 15km, 20, whatever), but you the player can hear much much further with them regardless. It's a short coming that was carried over from SH3.

So, a fleetboat with chin mounted passive sonar, need not even submerge. Just man it yourself and scan carefully. Under normal usage (IE, letting your sonarman do his job), upgrades to sonar supercede the WCA sonar. Which only has a 9KM max range in TMO. Other sonar upgrades have a range of 15 to 20KM. So the game will ignore the 9km sonar and use the 15KM sonar. But none of that matters due to this "bug" with the player listening through it. If you know when to stop and listen, you can intercept quite a bit. :shifty:

[Diopos]

Not a bug. Just an incentive for the player to "man" the station himself. Similar effects have been around since Aces Of the Deep in some form or another.



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[Ducimus]

I dunno, being able to hear 30 KM away in a set of hydrophones specified with a max range of 9KM seems like a bug to me. *shrug*

[Rockin Robbins]

I've found that before you get an SJ, patrolling submerged gives you a greater detection range at times with the sonar than your visual search. You can then surface and run down the sonar bearing until you pick them up.
Technically you are correct. Visual range is about 11 km conservatively. Sonar range is a ridiculous 30 km. Provided you are anchored, your area searched is 9 times greater with sonar. But on patrol you are not anchored.

If submerged, you are traveling at 1 knot to save batteries. Let's pretend you can go three knots and still have batteries at the end of the day just to be generous. So in 12 hours you can go 36 miles, searching a path 36 miles wide (18 mile radius is 36 mile diameter). Let's again be generous and square off the corners of your search path, giving you even more unrealistic search area. But we're trying to show that even fudging the numbers in favor of sonar, sonar sucks. Sucks badly. So you have searched an area 36x36 miles or 1,296 square miles.

Now lets take this puppy up on the surface where she belongs. Now we only search a 10 mile radius, but our search path is 9 knots times 12 hours long, 102 miles. 102 times 20 equals 2,040 square miles.

The winner by a resoundingly ludicrous margin: the surfaced boat with the lesser search range. In real life they could actually search a wider radius with high periscope than they could with sonar, resulting in a 10/1 advantage for the surfaced boat. If you have radar that is about the ratio.

No matter how you cut it, Patrolling submerged is foolhardy. You're burning up all your fuel charging batteries. If you are lucky(?) enough to find a target you have depleted batteries and are in no shape to go into combat. Your boat is just a travesty of fatal errors stacked on top of each other.

The ostrich strategy is totally without merit in every respect as a default way of hunting. It is not safe, it does not find targets. Do the math any way you want. It is moral bankruptcy of the highest degree.

[WarlordATF]

I agree its a bad tactic, but if you roleplay then until at least mid 42 its the historical way to do it. Realism is a very subjective subject when dealing with any type of sim so its up to each player to decide how he/she commands the boat. Some say the game is most realistic when set to 100% realism, however i doubt any captain did all the crew members jobs like in the sim. There really is no right or wrong way to play the game, if your having fun then your doing it right IMO.

Also i don't doubt for a minute that some Captains continued to spend the day submerged long after the order was retracted and those men deserved to lose their command. It must have been hard on these men to spend years training one way only to find out it does not work well in wartime and having to unlearn all that. New blood was needed, however before the change these men were just doing it the way the Navy instructed them to do it and their lack of success should reflect more on the people making the rules than the Captains following them.

I roleplay as the Captain, meaning i give the orders and the outcome is based on how well my crew performs. I spend my days underwater until mid to late 42, I use Auto-Targeting, I hardly ever man the sonar station but i will look at the Radar once in awhile. I count on my crew to do there jobs and for me thats the way i enjoy the game the most. I never use time compression when leaving port until i am several miles away and when i return i raise my scope if i have a successful mission (Wish i had a Broom! LOL) and dock the boat before i end the mission. I am not above using the external cameras, but never during combat and i have map contacts on to simulate the crew updating my map. I do use Limited Fuel and batteries, Realistic Repair and Loading Times and the other realistic settings.

Some would say thats unrealistic, but for me it makes me feel like i am a Captain of a Fleetboat. I don't knock anyones playstyle, To each his own.

[Steelkilt]

Nice Thread! Alot of wisdom passed along here, gang. :ping:

It seems to me I read somewhere that hydrophones worked at decks-awash. SOOOO...what I'm gonna do is: stay on the surface and every hour or so dip down a wee bit, all stop, kick "Ears" off the stack and do a sweep or two myself. Back to ahead whatever let the deck air dry in the sun and be on my way...How's that sound? Oh, I'm a pilot and planes just scare the beans outa me so I'm playing '42 with a Gato sporting radar.

[Rockin Robbins]

Your best bet if you want to do the dunk and listen is to listen at periscope depth or slightly below. Your acoustic sonar head is that thing rotating in front of the bridge sticking above the deck. It hears lower frequency sounds, which travel further than the supersonic sounds the two heads below the forward torpedo room do.

What I do is submerge about every 30 to 60 miles. At 9 knots, that's every three hours go to periscope depth, do a couple of sweeps, surface and continue for another 3 hours for 30 miles. Now if you go six hours or about 60 miles, there's a chance you could pick up a new target that will be behind you. It's not a tragedy but can be avoided by dipping every 30 miles.

I think most of us have a tendency to listen too often rather than not often enough. If you dunk every 30 miles you'll pick up as many contacts as if you were able to run the entire distance submerged at 9 knots, which you can't!:D

[Steelkilt]

Ahhh! I thought I was using the doobies under the chin...Thanks RR...SK

[Diopos]

I dunno, being able to hear 30 KM away in a set of hydrophones specified with a max range of 9KM seems like a bug to me. *shrug*

Well passive sonar should be modeled on a "decibel" principle. Your minimum "signal to noise" level (to trigger a "contact situation") could then correspond to a swimmer at 400 m, a merchie at 9000 m or a convoy at 25000 m. So yes you can have a contact at great distances as long as the "nature"/type of the target justifies it... me thinks, anyway :06:.

[Frying Tiger]

Technically you are correct. Visual range is about 11 km conservatively. Sonar range is a ridiculous 30 km. Provided you are anchored, your area searched is 9 times greater with sonar. But on patrol you are not anchored.

If submerged, you are traveling at 1 knot to save batteries. Let's pretend you can go three knots and still have batteries at the end of the day just to be generous. So in 12 hours you can go 36 miles, searching a path 36 miles wide (18 mile radius is 36 mile diameter). Let's again be generous and square off the corners of your search path, giving you even more unrealistic search area. But we're trying to show that even fudging the numbers in favor of sonar, sonar sucks. Sucks badly. So you have searched an area 36x36 miles or 1,296 square miles.

Now lets take this puppy up on the surface where she belongs. Now we only search a 10 mile radius, but our search path is 9 knots times 12 hours long, 102 miles. 102 times 20 equals 2,040 square miles.

The winner by a resoundingly ludicrous margin: the surfaced boat with the lesser search range. In real life they could actually search a wider radius with high periscope than they could with sonar, resulting in a 10/1 advantage for the surfaced boat. If you have radar that is about the ratio.

No matter how you cut it, Patrolling submerged is foolhardy. You're burning up all your fuel charging batteries. If you are lucky(?) enough to find a target you have depleted batteries and are in no shape to go into combat. Your boat is just a travesty of fatal errors stacked on top of each other.

The ostrich strategy is totally without merit in every respect as a default way of hunting. It is not safe, it does not find targets. Do the math any way you want. It is moral bankruptcy of the highest degree.

Heh, I said sometimes it works... specifically when I'm in my patrol area, atop a likely shipping lane, I'll spend an hour or two at periscope depth to see if I pick up anything on sonar. I was south of Truk in the Pike and got a 10000 ton tanker this way, so it's not completely morally bankrupt! (grin)

Even without radar, using late-war tactics in the early war shows how much more effective the US sub force tactics became as the war continued. There really wasn't any way for the captains to have figured out the tactics in advance; the US (along with the Japanese) always assumed subs would be scouts and adjuncts to fleet actions, and trained accordingly.

[Diopos]

Does anyone have some actual data/info on the hydrophones performance on surface (at varius speeds) versus "listening" submerged (at varius depths). I always was under the impression that you must "dip" for proper hydrophone "work".........




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[Bubblehead1980]

I agree its a bad tactic, but if you roleplay then until at least mid 42 its the historical way to do it. Realism is a very subjective subject when dealing with any type of sim so its up to each player to decide how he/she commands the boat. Some say the game is most realistic when set to 100% realism, however i doubt any captain did all the crew members jobs like in the sim. There really is no right or wrong way to play the game, if your having fun then your doing it right IMO.

Also i don't doubt for a minute that some Captains continued to spend the day submerged long after the order was retracted and those men deserved to lose their command. It must have been hard on these men to spend years training one way only to find out it does not work well in wartime and having to unlearn all that. New blood was needed, however before the change these men were just doing it the way the Navy instructed them to do it and their lack of success should reflect more on the people making the rules than the Captains following them.

I roleplay as the Captain, meaning i give the orders and the outcome is based on how well my crew performs. I spend my days underwater until mid to late 42, I use Auto-Targeting, I hardly ever man the sonar station but i will look at the Radar once in awhile. I count on my crew to do there jobs and for me thats the way i enjoy the game the most. I never use time compression when leaving port until i am several miles away and when i return i raise my scope if i have a successful mission (Wish i had a Broom! LOL) and dock the boat before i end the mission. I am not above using the external cameras, but never during combat and i have map contacts on to simulate the crew updating my map. I do use Limited Fuel and batteries, Realistic Repair and Loading Times and the other realistic settings.

Some would say thats unrealistic, but for me it makes me feel like i am a Captain of a Fleetboat. I don't knock anyones playstyle, To each his own.

Well said, we play the same for most part.I do not use auto targeting though.

[Rockin Robbins]

Does anyone have some actual data/info on the hydrophones performance on surface (at varius speeds) versus "listening" submerged (at varius depths). I always was under the impression that you must "dip" for proper hydrophone "work".........
.
There don't seem to be any publicly released figures on the Internet. The advantages of the supersonic hydrophones are higher signal to noise ratio and greater directional certainty.

The disadvantage is that supersonic sounds are refracted, reflected and absorbed much more easily than the lower frequency sounds of the acoustic hydrophone head. So although the precise direction the high freq sounds are coming from can be more precisely determined, they are much more prone to refraction and reflection on the way to your sub than lower frequency sounds. That precise directional determination may not be worth the paper it isn't written on. Range is much shorter with supersonic sound because it is absorbed much more readily.

In order to do a proper long range sonar sweep in real life, they submerged to periscope depth or below, depending on acoustic sonar for long range and supersonic sonar in conjunction with the supersonic to fully develop the characteristics of a closer target.

The game doesn't begin to render the sophisticated (sorry modern submariners! I understand it's not sophisticated by today's standards.) array of filters available to glean hidden information from sound signals that were incredibly more varied than the very few recordings we hear repeated exactly time after time in the game.

With sonar, there is very little similarity between the game and real life.

[Diopos]

Thanks RR,
for a moment I thought Ubi got it right and I was wrong concerning the ART of listening (with and without quotes) :DL



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[rein1705]

UBI getting something right? :haha::har::rotfl2:

[Rockin Robbins]

Look, you gotta realize that for Ubi to "get it right" they would have needed hundreds of recordings. They would have had to have been able to manipulate those hundreds of recordings so you could count propeller rotations, hear continuous and continuously varying background noise.

The would have to have had own ship noises dependent on engine speed, which engines are running, different depth, what activities are going on aboard and the damage state of the submarine.

The would have to have refraction, reflection and absorption of sound varying by frequency of sound, wave state, temperature gradient, thermal layers, underwater obstacles, plant life, etc.

They would have to reproduce all the filters and all he switches in the real sonar, and each of the adjustments would have to realistically change the sound you hear, multiplying the necessary number of sound samples by a factor of at least 10.

And when they were finished, all you would have is a sonar simulator. There would be no more bandwidth left for the rest of the submarine! Ubi did really well, given the state of the art with computers and software.

[Diopos]

Short cut methods, simplified tables, randomization factors and plain old talent may produce an interesting game without the need of a Cray supercomputer. In our case something as per a "dampening" factor for surface hydrophone work could urge the player to "dip" for more "productive" hydrophone work. After all it is a game not the navy's secret nuclear sub training simulator........




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[JoeCorrado]

Short cut methods, simplified tables, randomization factors and plain old talent may produce an interesting game without the need of a Cray supercomputer. In our case something as per a "dampening" factor for surface hydrophone work could urge the player to "dip" for more "productive" hydrophone work. After all it is a game not the navy's secret nuclear sub training simulator........


Amen brother!

And I for one, "play" the game for enjoyment. Not for the white knuckled realism that others enjoy. To me, it is an enjoyable way to spend a little down time. Not a nifty new way to sit in front of the monitor waiting for something to happen. If I spend more than an hour (real time) without "something happening" then I feel that I am just wasting my time!

Having said that...

I prefer the yo-yo method of patrolling while out in the vast expanses stalking shipping lanes- but when my patrol area allows for it, I am perfectly willing (eager) to approach a suitable (some water beneath me) near coast position by stealth at night and then dive at dawn to simply sit and "listen" throughout the day, hoping to nab a coastal freighter or two.

[Steelkilt]

Hmmm Lt. Corrado :hmmm:...That sounds like a nifty plan. I'm gonna try that on my next patrol. How far offshore do you lay in wait? Do you hang around harbors? I was thinking about that...SK

[Captain Vlad]

But when my patrol area allows for it, I am perfectly willing (eager) to approach a suitable (some water beneath me) near coast position by stealth at night and then dive at dawn to simply sit and "listen" throughout the day, hoping to nab a coastal freighter or two.

Yeah, this is my favorite prowling method, too. Find a nice spot of deep water somewhere where there's GOING to be a ship, stay submerged when the sun's up, and then aggressively chase down anything I happen to hear.

'Crocodile method', versus the more free-roaming 'shark' method, I suppose. Both have their merits, and I'll happily use whichever I think is best for my situation. I tend to run in Southeast Asia a lot, though, and there's lots of good places to lie deep and listen for prey down there.

And cast my vote for 'more fun before radar' are well.

Steelkilt: Look for someplace near a nice choke point, where shipping lanes enter or leave narrow straights. A lot of really good spots aren't near ports, actually.

[Steelkilt]

The Bungo Straits is ringing in my ears...SK

[Rockin Robbins]

Choke points good!

[Steelkilt]

While we're talking submerged...What's the max depth a torp can be launched from using sound?...without coming out of the water like an SSN (that's gotta be a ride)...

[raymond6751]

I think you'll find that periscope depth is required for a WW2 attack, perhaps that goes to 100 ft. I have not experimented to find out. You will get a message when too deep.

WW2 subs were not expected to be ASW platforms, but to attack surface vessels. A few subs were sunk by others, but usually when surfaced or at periscope depth.

[WarlordATF]

It depends on the mod, in stock its about 100 ft like Raymond said. In TMO and (I Think) RFB its about 140-150 ft. After that the tube doors won't open.

[Steelkilt]

Thanks for the info. Playing 1.5 w/RFB2+april upgrade and easyplot...SK

[Bubblehead1980]

In TMO you can fire in Gato/Balao and Tench class down to 150 feet , then too deep to launch.In pre Gato subs its 100 feet i believe.

[Rockin Robbins]

That's a shame because the factory specs for Cuties was not to fire them above 199 feet. Obviously we aren't mirroring the capabilities of the real subs even at this late date...

[raymond6751]

That's a shame because the factory specs for Cuties was not to fire them above 199 feet. Obviously we aren't mirroring the capabilities of the real subs even at this late date...

I think it is realistic to have the limits mentioned. As we have all seen in real life, specs are wishful thinking. To be able to fire is one thing, but to get a hit another. WW2 torpedoes were also prone to failures.

At least two were hit by their own torpedoes.

The deep firing, without scope, would be like a shot in the dark due to the primitive nature of the sound equipment. Torpedoes were expensive too.

I think I read somewhere that each torpedo was costing about the same as the average family home in America.

[BillBam]

The deep firing, without scope, would be like a shot in the dark due to the primitive nature of the sound equipment. Torpedoes were expensive too.

I think I read somewhere that each torpedo was costing about the same as the average family home in America.

Each torp cost about $10k

[Ducimus]

199 feet? I wonder what the sea pressure would be on the inner tube door at that depth.

[Sailor Steve]

199 feet? I wonder what the sea pressure would be on the inner tube door at that depth.
103.125 psi :D

http://www.calctool.org/CALC/other/games/depth_press

So the total pressure on the inner door of a 21" tube at 199 feet would be 11,369.53 pounds.

[Ducimus]

Next question, obviously is, can the door withstand that much pressure?