Sonar and Radar Contact Reporting System

[Patchman123]

I was looking at the hydrophones recently and I was wondering, why is it when you acquire a contact on the hydrophones on the notepad it says "Warship" instead of "Minekaze (Class Destroyer?")

This is irritating because there's more that one "merchant" ship up there on the surface and I don't know which one I am looking at or listening to.
In real life, each ship has its own machinery signature to be able to be listened into by a sonar operator on a sub. There should be a mod for the hydrophones, where it says "Minekaze or whatever" class destroyer is chasing you or if its a Yamato class battleship. In a task force setting, it's annoying to have "warship" on the hydrophone notepad instead of just "warship" on there, when you would like to know what warship is up there.

I would like to see, Akagi class carrier or Yamato class battleship, when I'm tracking these ships with the hydrophones. on the hydrophone notepad instead of just "warship."
Or for the merchants,
Biyo Maru for the merchant contact or "Small Medium Tanker" for the merchant contacts. In a convoy setting, it would help to know what merchant ship you are listening to because there's more than one merchant up there, instead of just one tiny merchant ship in the whole vast Pacific Ocean. It would be helpful if knew what I was looking at up there. The sonar operator in real life would say, "Sonar contact, Battleship Yamato Class, Bearing 034" instead of "Sonar contact, Warship, 034 long range." You see a destroyer instead of a "warship" Each ship had its own signature.

Radar,
same thing. Instead of radar contact, it should be the type of contact coming after you, like for example, a Japanese Zero. A Zero fighter had its own radar signature. The radar operator should say, "Radar Contact, Enemy Airplane, bearing 350 if it's a plane or destroyer if it's a destroyer." so I know what radar contact it is. It's too vague. In real combat, with a contact system like that, a captain and his crew would surely get killed.

There needs to be a change to the whole contacting reporting system in Silent Hunter IV before more people get killed not knowing what contact is out there. In the real military, sonar and radar operators are REQUIRED to specify which class of contact it is so that men don't get killed. It would be so much easier if the system was changed. That's all.


It sure helps to know what's out there. I can't see for myself when I'm underwater and the periscope doesn't see what's up there because I'm underwater. The Periscope can't detect ships underwater anyway, it's a visual instrument as you all know.
:damn:
This would require a rework of Silent Hunter 4 to get the triggers correct so that the sonar operator says, "Minekaze" Class or Asu****o class, when there are these EXACT types of ships, instead of Yamato Class, when in fact it's a Minekaze class destroyer.

The sound files should be changed to have the machine signature of the Minekaze and Yamato class destroyers on the screen and sound files, so that it actually sounds like a Minekaze destroyer or a Yamato class battleship. You see what I'm saying,

If I knew what was out there, I could sleep at night, sorta speak and I wouldn't have to worry about getting killed. As I said, it sure helps to know what's out there, especially when there's more than one radar or sonar contact out there.

You see.

Why doesn't the port hydrophone work? That just annoys me as well, because one should be able to see what's on the port side of the ship as well because sometimes the enemy comes from that way. It would sure be nice if the annoying green light went anyway, and the port hydrophone was working as well.


The German files should be edited too.

Auf Deutsch,
Der Funker sollt sagen, "Zerstörer Hunt Klasse 034, kommt näher. Er sagt, "Kriegschiffe, eins drei nol" Geringe Entfernung" Er sollt sagt, Kontakt, "Zerstörer Hunt Klasse oder V&W klasse für V&W Klasse Zerstörer aus England or Schlactschiffe Nelson Klasse" fur eine Schlactschiffe des Nelsons Klasses"
Hören sie mich? Alle ist Klär. Gut.

[Nisgeis]

Hi Patchman,

What do you mean when you say that the port hydrophone doesn't work? Do you mean the left hand sonar stack in the conning tower? The right hand sonar stack will allow you to listen all round the sub, so I'm not sure what you mean here.

[Bubblehead1980]

Simple answer, it would be HIGHLY unrealistic for sonar man to say warship, minekaze DD etc because they couldnt tell the specific class of merchant or warship.However, warships and merchants do sound different, so they could tell the difference and report if they heard a warship or merchant but not the specific class, they didnt have sound recordings of what a Yamato etc sounded like. YOUR job as skipper is to identify the ship reported by sound, so in RL of WW II subs the sonar operator would not call out warship, yamato class.Modern sonar operators can call our "submarine, alpha class etc" if their system has a recording of said ship and matches it once contact is made.Again, they did not have this in WW II so SH 4 is correct on only calling out warship or merchant.

As far as SD(air radar) goes, the SD was pretty low tech as it was non directional.Basically, the SD could only tell you it had an air contact and the range, no bearing etc and certainly could not tell you the type of plane, had to get that visually but should be under water before planes in sight, fighting planes is waste of time unless no other option such as shallow water or too close for you to dive.

Remember, youre using a WW II era fleetboat, no a Seawolf or LA class nuke sub in modern times.

[Patchman123]

Hi Patchman,

What do you mean when you say that the port hydrophone doesn't work? Do you mean the left hand sonar stack in the conning tower? The right hand sonar stack will allow you to listen all round the sub, so I'm not sure what you mean here.

What I mean is that,
when you look at the port projector on the hydrophone station, the green button just flickers and the listening bearing mover just won't move. It does nothing. The port projector just does nothing. I was hoping for a change to the contact reporting system for Silent Hunter IV also.

Didn't submariners have aircraft recognition manuals? Surely, they did. They would have them wouldn't they? I mean they were going after your ship, it would sure help to know if the aircraft you're looking at is friend or foe.

In Silent Hunter V, they have a system a system where it says, "It's one of ours", but it doesn't say if it's a Sunderland flying boat or an Arado seaplane, which is irritating because submariners were taught to identify friendly or hostile aircraft. After all, they traveled mostly on the surface, because subs at this time couldn't travel mostly underwater because of their limited battery life.

[Patchman123]

Simple answer, it would be HIGHLY unrealistic for sonar man to say warship, minekaze DD etc because they couldnt tell the specific class of merchant or warship.However, warships and merchants do sound different, so they could tell the difference and report if they heard a warship or merchant but not the specific class, they didnt have sound recordings of what a Yamato etc sounded like. YOUR job as skipper is to identify the ship reported by sound, so in RL of WW II subs the sonar operator would not call out warship, yamato class.Modern sonar operators can call our "submarine, alpha class etc" if their system has a recording of said ship and matches it once contact is made.Again, they did not have this in WW II so SH 4 is correct on only calling out warship or merchant.

As far as SD(air radar) goes, the SD was pretty low tech as it was non directional.Basically, the SD could only tell you it had an air contact and the range, no bearing etc and certainly could not tell you the type of plane, had to get that visually but should be under water before planes in sight, fighting planes is waste of time unless no other option such as shallow water or too close for you to dive.

Remember, youre using a WW II era fleetboat, no a Seawolf or LA class nuke sub in modern times.

That's true, but I would like to know what's out there. So, how would I judge if it's a destroyer or not? The machine signature of a destroyer would be different from a battleship, wouldn't it?

I mean it would be different because a BB is slower than a DD for example and the screw noise would be different. Or what about aircraft identification? I would like to know if the plane that's attacking me is a Zero or a Hellcat fighter plane from opposing sides because it sure helps to know what's out there if you're being attacked, so that I can take cover if a Mavis floatplane or a PBY Catalina is coming at me, so I make the proper judgements in that situation. That would be helpful, wouldn't it?
Sure would be nice.

Then what would World War II sonar operators say when a contact was sighted or heard?
They certainly wouldn't say warship.


How come the screw noise for the destroyers sounds the same? The screw noise from a Japanese Minekaze class would certainly sound different from a Yamato class battleship? The screw noises all sound the same, which is technically inaccurate. There are no recordings of Yamato class battleships, but I'm sure there's a way to approximate as to what it could have sounded like in real life, which won't be easy because recordings don't exist.

[Nisgeis]

What I mean is that,
when you look at the port projector on the hydrophone station, the green button just flickers and the listening bearing mover just won't move. It does nothing. The port projector just does nothing. I was hoping for a change to the contact reporting system for Silent Hunter IV also.

Ah, OK, that's just an environment thing. You don't lose any functionality by not being able to access the left hand station.

[Armistead]

Larger warships do sound different than DD's, even with faster screws, they have a heavier beat and less rotations than DD's. They don't sound the same to me.

Enemy or allied planes would attack subs in the war, just do yourself a favor and dive when you get a contact. Still, you won't get a plane sighted message if it's allied like you get options in it's the enemy

[Raven79]

They certainly wouldn't say warship.
Aye, I think they would rather call out "Sonar contact, Sir, bearing 035, heavy screw sounds, may be a warship" They'd not really know if it's a big ship running medium speed or a medium ship running slow, though. There also was no way to tell how far away that contact was, so our "sonar lines" are in fact unrealistic the more accurate they are in length.
(My thought on making this more realistic always was, make them all the same length and increase line thickness slightly for close contacts, so you can at least guess which one is nearest.)
The only way to get a contact's range was to send a ping to it and measure it's running time, revealing your presence to everything and everyone within about 20 (or more) miles.

Turn up your volume when listening to the sonar. You can train to hear different screw sizes, as smaller ones rotate faster. In a TF or convoy, everyone is at the same speed anyway. So if you find slow noises, that's a big one.. if you find rather fast ones, that should be a DD/escort.
Enemy DD/escorts usually break from the group and return to it to enlarge its search radius, this is done at higher speeds. So if your contact changes speeds quite regularly, it's got to be an escort, too. The first of a convoy or TF almost always is a DD/escort running faster than the rest, doing zigzags, so knowing this will help you sort out what is what.
Nice place to practice hearing is in the navigation training mission, lots of different size and type ships there, just dive slowly around the left of the island.

As for identifying planes.. if you can see them, it's already too late to dive and that Zero will sink you on it's first approach. They're some 400 knots faster than you. You can't make any judgements anymore. As soon as they see you (which is earlier than you see them), you're toast - they will radio your position and course home and attack before you even manned the flak gun. So why ID them, or when?
Radar air contact in enemy waters -> battle stations, crash dive, (until you're submerged, 30-50 seconds may pass if you've got a decent crew - and a plane can see you in the water until you hit 90ft depth so being submerged isn't being safe yet) call up the clock then and wait for 5 Minutes, surface and stand down, hoping he's not coming back too soon. (If he does, repeat.)
Standard US WWII practice even was to run submerged as long as there was daylight. Yes, with the small batteries this meant going real slow in daylight and only gaining some miles after dark, when the enemy planes were on the ground.
Planes back then were the ultimate weapon, only countered effectively by other planes.

[green_abobo]

the thing that annoys me is that when you do get a contact, unless it's right on top of you,the radioman doesn't even acknowledge it even though the hydrophone light is lit at bearing X.

i can usually tell though because if i'm running time compression, it will start to hiccup and the FPS will take a slight hit. that's when i know to manual hydrophone sweep from the station.

[Bubblehead1980]

The machine signature is different between a DD and BB but was just telling you that couldnt tell the specific class such as a Yamato BB or Minekaze DD etc Sure they can tell if its a warship of some type of a merchant and they report so, but cant single out a certain class via listening.

As far as identifying the plane, as someone else mentioned it just happened too fast to do that and Allied planes sometimes got overzealous and bombed any submarine so as in RL, your best option is to DIVE unless youre unable..Now I think someone gave some bad advice when saying crash dive and battlestations everytime a SD contact comes up.first thing is when SD contact is reported, go to nav map, quickly draw a line to the contact on distance, crash dive if its 6 miles and below or two fast moving contacts which will be the dreaded Zeros on ASW patrol(bugged me since stock, such bs Zeros routinely flying ASW patrol) .Early war SD models detect most planes at 9-10 miles and improved SD as far as 14 miles out, just order ahead flank and hit the D key and take the sub to 165-200 feet.I chance it and only go to 100 unless I was spotted but thats me.I wait about 2 hours most of the time to surface since the plane will fly back within an hour, I do this to avoid having to dive again, within two hours, I surface and continue on my way.

So to cover it once again, they simply couldnt ID a specific class of ship by its sound back then thus all you get is a warship.Planes just move too fast and couldnt be ID'd anyway.Just remember the word DIVE.

[nappy]

during wwii, submarines did not have any recordings of ship engine(noice) for the sonar operator to compare with. In fact i dont think the concept of recording different ship noice was even "invented". Normal procedure would be
for the sonar man to listen to the noice and make an educated guess on what was up there. Like what has already been said, destroyers, merchants Battleships, etc sounds different, but it would take a highly skilled sonar man to catch the difference between 2 destroyer types. The way sonar is simulated in this game with "merchant" or "warship" contact i find quite adequate and close to the real thing as well.

As for plane reconation manual? i have no idea. but at the time when you finaly can make a fairly adequate guess on the plane type it would be way too late to actually do anything about it. Also, from a practical view, it really doesnt matter if its a zero or kate, or whatever that is heading your way. A uboat captain has 2 options. 1 is to crash dive, which was the prefered option and would be done if at all possible. option 2 is to fight back which you did if you could not execute option 1 fast enough. In other words, yes a plane recognition manual may help you identify what plane is attacking you, but only in the last few seconds before the attack would it be usefull, and most importantly. your behaviour would not change. You either dive, or fight if you cant, not matter which plane is coming for you.


my 0.2 cents.

nappy

[razark]

Regarding aircraft recognition:

These were taken from a reproduction 1943 deck. If you are being approached by each of the following aircraft,
A. Identify the aircraft.
B. Is it a possible threat?
C. What should you do?
You have, let's say, 20 seconds to decide what to do.
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/5696/planes.jpg

[Fincuan]

My guesses in the order of appearance, based on me being onboard a US sub:


F4F, not likely, show identification
Ju-87, yes, dive
P40, not likely, show identification
BF-109, yes, dive
F4U, not likey, show identification
A6M, yes, dive
Spitfire, possibly, show identification
D3A, yes, dive

[Fincuan]

On second look some of those aren't even close, but at least I tried :D

[razark]

On second look some of those aren't even close, but at least I tried :D

Yes, some were a bit off, but you tried. Hopefully this shows what a problem aircraft identification can be.

In order of appearance, as listed on the cards:
F-4F Wildcat, U.S. Fighter
Kawasaki Type 97 "Mary", Japanese Light Bomber
P-40 Warhawk, U.S. Fighter
Mitsubishi Type 97 "Kate", Japanese Torpedo Bomber
SBD Dauntless, U.S. Dive Bomber
Mitsubishi Type 0 "Zeke", Japanese Fighter
P-39 Airacobra, U.S. Fighter
Aichi Type 99 "Val", Japanese Dive Bomber

The following answer is also acceptable:
It's an aircraft in visual range, heading straight for us.
It's quite possibly a threat, even if it's friendly.
Fight it on the surface, it's too late to run and dive now.


Showing identification is a good idea, but... How good are the pilot's recognition skills? Does he have today's recognition codes? Is he paying attention?

Any aircraft can make a mistake in identification. You only have a short time to decide what to do. It's better to run away from a friendly aircraft, than to say "Oops, I guess I was wrong, man the AA guns!"

[Platapus]

I don't think identifying the aircraft would be that important. Every aircraft is a threat.

[Tommy Adams is starting look-out duty] Keep your eyes peeled Kid... we're *nobody's* friend! Even our *own* ships'll shoot *first* and ask questions *later*! Destination Tokyo (1043)

[razark]

I don't think identifying the aircraft would be that important. Every aircraft is a threat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Dorado_%28SS-248%29
And so are escorts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Seawolf_%28SS-197%29