TMO S Class Dive times?

[rein1705]

Hey guys. Im assigned to (was assigned to) the S-44 in Aug 1942 doing lifeguard duty in the Solomins. My radar picks up aircraft at roughly 20,000 yards the moment it does and i am informed of this theres 3 things i can do Dive, Dive to PD, or Crash dive... now most wouldnt think Crash dive but if i order any other option it takes my boat roughly 3 minutes to to reach 35-40 FT! though, there not a veteran crew and its in TMO 2.1
so what it comes to is im almost spotted or i actualy "SPOT" the aircraft before my boat is under and i get strafed and bomed a lot more than i think i should be. Prehaps i am wrong? is that normal for anyone else? and what was the real life avrage time to dive an S class sub? S-18/S-41 I thought the S-boats were hard enough to keep aflote in the first place diveing shouldnt be much of an issue unless its caused by how fragile they are wouldnt want to take her down too fast i understand... if i order crash dive she goes down in under a minute.

[TorpX]

I had the same problem some time ago. Oddly enough, this was with RFB. It took about 5 or 6 min to get to periscope depth. Lots of fun! :stare: I finally decided that it couldn't be normal and downloaded a fresh copy of RFB to fix the problem. Even with a green crew you should be able to get to 50 ft. in 65 to 75 sec. for a normal dive. Faster with a crash dive. Hope this helps. :)

[rein1705]

Prehaps i need to redownload TMO 2.1? as i remember i had a heck of a time trying to find the latest version.

[Armistead]

Just order crash dive. You should soon be able to get the special ability man to dive faster, so take him and you'll get under. Still, this is not historical. This article explains it fairly well.

"

In an effort to preserve surface buoyancy, the Government design split the main ballast tanks into upper and lower sections, each with their own vents and flood ports. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the Government design very slow divers. The upper tanks would not begin to flood until the boat had settled enough to submerge the upper flood ports. The later boats had additional upper flood ports added, but this only resulted in a minor decrease in dive times. The Government boats were rated at 100 seconds from fully surfaced to periscope depth, as compared to the EB boats at 75 seconds. In an apparent attempt to further alleviate this problem,
S-8 and S-9 were modified during construction, moving the bow planes to below the water line and making them fixed in place and non-retractable.
National Archives via Daniel Dunham & Navsource "

Even with the bow planes below the water line the average dive was about 80 seconds. In game with crash dive seems I timed it at 45 seconds, but I may have had the special ability guy.

Add to this that they're slow, take forever to charge the battery, but what a beautiful boat and fun to play with. Different versions of the S boat were made with different configurations, but they were all slow divers. TMO gives you a faster dive time of about a minute using crash dive.
Understand in the war there was really no such thing as crash dive.

The complete article.
http://navsource.org/archives/08/pdf/0829291.pdf

[Ducimus]

I wonder if it ever occured to anyone that I was trying to make the S boat dive to a speed that was more historically correct then it was previously. :hmmm: (Note my choice of words in that sentence very carefully)

[rein1705]

I was just unaware of the real time it took to dive the S-class boats, i didnt mean to come off as critical to your work in the least. :oops:
I like your attention to detail in TMO, and now that i know the RL times i was in err in asuming she'd sink like a rock like in stock SH4. See i thought i had gone and done something wrong to the boat or just wasnt doing it right. I'll still take out the S-class boats on partols, there still my faves. :D

[Ducimus]

Personally, i dislike S boats. I liken them as the fleet boat equivlant of a Type II uboat. Too small, too poorly armed, and a waste of my time. :O: I freely and openly admit, they are the red headed step child in TMO.

[Mescator]

I just finished 3 Patrols with a Sboat for the first time (I usually started late war)

Makes you fully appreciate the tactical freedom of stern tubes, being able to get past 13 Knots and having a boat with a bit of mileage.

And I'm only in a Porpoise class =p

On Topic: The dive times on it are crazy, but notice that once the decks wash over it sinks like a stone. If you compare it to a fleet boat, which have a fairly steady rate of descent, the Sboat's delay before going down makes it seem like a eternity. Just order crash dive and hold on :up:

[Armistead]

I started out with an S boat for this career. The game even has the bow planes in the proper place, way above the water line. Wonder who designed em that way historically.:hmmm:

[rein1705]

This is taken from "The visual guide to S-class submarines"


A VISUAL GUIDE TO THE S-CLASS SUBMARINES
1918-1945
PART 3: THE ELECTRIC BOAT SERIES
BY
DAVID L. JOHNSTON
 2010
The Electric Boat Company (EB) of Groton, CT. won the majority of the construction contracts for the S-boats. Not that their product was necessarily superior to the Government or Lake designs, it was that EB had a much greater construction capacity and simply had the capability to build more boats faster. Ironically, EB themselves had never built a submarine before. Construction of all of the company’s products had been contracted out to other firms, mostly the Fore River Shipbuilding Company of Quincy, MA. and Union Iron Works of San Francisco, CA. (Both companies would be later bought out by Bethlehem Steel). EB’s Groton facilities consisted of their New London Ship & Engine Company (NELSECO) engine subsidiary. They would not have a shipbuilding yard there until 1924, too late to build any of their S-boats.


The second group consisted of S-30 through S-41 and these boats were built by Union Iron Works. They were virtual duplicates of the 20 series boats. The only noticeable difference between the groups was the different shape of the housing for the bow plane pivots. The 20 series had a prominent angular cover, while the 30 series had a smaller, rounded cover. This may indicate a change in bow plane operating mechanisms for the 30 series. The photographs of S-33 and S-36 on this page give good views of this group

idk how to poast it compleat as its a PDF format. as to who the exact engineer was and what he was thinking at the time? who knows, but prehaps it just carried over from the older "R" class boats as i know very little about the ones that had come before.

And yes, The S-boat has many many flaws in comparason to its biger better cousions the fleet boats. I've heard them compared to the type 7 U-boats but that is unfair a type 7 is more like a Sargo or P class your right in it being like the cruddy type II in many ways, however the S-boat was better than any type II imo now im rambeling, Fleet boats are vastly superior and now days i mostly cruse around in the Gar and Gato class Boats but i always have at least one Pig way out in Alaska or round Austraila for when i get too comefortable with my 10 tube sea monster :arrgh!:

[TorpX]

I wonder if it ever occured to anyone that I was trying to make the S boat dive to a speed that was more historically correct then it was previously. :hmmm: (Note my choice of words in that sentence very carefully)
He said it took 3min. to get to 40 ft. Did you intend to make the dive this slow?

Personally, i dislike S boats. I liken them as the fleet boat equivlant of a Type II uboat. Too small, too poorly armed, and a waste of my time. :O: I freely and openly admit, they are the red headed step child in TMO.

We never would have guessed. :DL



While on the subject of S-boats, does anybody know what the turning performance was?

[rein1705]

I just found this in reguards to operating an S-class submarine, it seems to be a copy of the Sub School S-boat operations manual.... Outstanding is the fact that it was preserved to today and there isnt a single S-boat in existance.
http://www.hnsa.org/doc/s-boat/index.htm