Torpdedo targeting

[ddiplock]

Is there a page or manual someone has created that details how to use the protractor etc to properly set up a torpedo solution?

does anyone know the address or location of such a guide?

[Kaleun]

Hi,

Try this - it's a link that seems to be the bible of all things manual targetting!!

http://www.paulwasserman.net/SHIII/#Section%20VI%20-%20Advanced%20Speed%20Calculation%20-%20Using%20the%20Nomograph

Kaleun

[Twelvefield]

That's a beauty, eh? Definitely an excellent page. For more recreational reading (although from an American point of view), try:

http://www.hnsa.org/doc/attack/

And then, if you want it all from the German perspective, and you have a little extra money and a lot of time:

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0939631210/qid%3D1127413210/701-9419929-9447550

The latter should be the Amazon link to The U-Boat Commander's Handbook. It's not expensive, but it takes an extremely long time to ship. I ordered it and waited six months for it to ship, but in that time, my contract for work never got renewed, so now that money is tighter, I cancelled the order.

[FAdmiral]

Lock the triangle on the target ship, load the torp & open outer
door, when the triangle turns green, fire the torpedo....
How simple is that !!!


JIM

[ddiplock]

ARGGGGHHHH!!!!

Manual torpedo targeting is extreamly frustrating. I hate having to do the AOB calculation.....i can never get it right. Is there a tool that can work it out for you?

Despite it being frustrating, i'm continuing to fire torpedos manually because i want any ships i sink to be MY kills, that I've earned. Not some stinking AI officer who can magically generate a crappy solution in about 1 second. lol

[Trustworthy]

^ It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Plot a ship's distance and bearing; mark it on the map.
Wait a bit.
Do it again.
Draw a line through the two marks to find the ship's course, then measure the angle between your location and that course to find a rough AOB.

It's not a super-quick process, but not terribly complicated once you figure out how to do it just right. I manually calculate shots if I have the luxury of time and an otherwise favorable situation, but I'll also still let my WO take over in a pinch.

[Marcus]

Yeah, but how do you work out the solution to the gyroangle of the shot using specific speed for torps to interceptcourse once you get course and AoB? That's the easy part.

[Bill Nichols]

And, how do you target a particular point on the target vessel?

[Marcus]

It is really not that difficult. The thing is, how do u get fast results and not letting the ship go out of reach. Dring WWII, captains had tables (no pocket calculators) to set up a solution.
The math behind the whole thing is not that difficult but to get a touch of realism, the tables should be there.

By the way, a few manuals here on the net refer to AoB as port or starboard regarding ownship. This is wrong. The port or starboard refers to the target in combination with the angle. Port or starboard in ownship is encompassed in Bearing.

[don1reed]

Yeah, but how do you work out the solution to the gyroangle of the shot using specific speed for torps to interceptcourse once you get course and AoB? That's the easy part.

The TDC does the solution with the gyroangle. You only need to input two things correctly:

1) AOB and 2) the target's speed.

The AOB can only 0° to 180° (Green) Starboard side showing or (Red) Port side showing.

The best way to judge AOB is by observing the squareness of the superstructure. It's just a square box on top of the main deck. When the AOB is 45°, the forward bulkhead and the adjoining side will appear to have the same length. Pretty simple.

It's not important to have the range at all. Many times I've left it where it sets naturally.

Once the AOB and Speed are input, the torpedo will pretty much strike where it's aimed at the moment of shot.

Richard "Killer" O'Kane practiced viewing target AOB by looking at a ship model thru a binocular turned backward for distance effect, from across the mess deck of the Wahoo. He was never off by more than 2 degrees.

[Kobal2]

Range is important if you fire from further away than 400m :) Even at point blank ranges, having a precise range lets you send precise shots.

The reason being, at longer ranges, the gyro angle of the torpedo must be greater, since the torpedo has to lead the target. So if (for example) you estimate too short a range, the torp will end up hitting the aft of the ship instead of the sweet spot you were aiming for, or may even miss the ship entirely if you're firing from 2500+ meters away, and your error was of a great magnitude.

If you estimate a range that is too long, the torp will lead too much, and will either hit the prow, or again, miss. Those effects are even more pronounced when your fish is slow, and/or your target fast/small.

Granted, precise range accounts for way less in the "perfect" solution than precise speed and AOB, but it does have an effect on the spot you will hit.

[Marcus]

Thing is... I want to do it ALL manual;ly, even setting the gyroangle manually. Letting the TDV do this derives me of some pleasure scoring the kill myself. Call me headstrong but that's how I wanna do this....
Any ideas (beside the program I have written on a spreadsheet to do this....)?

[Kobal2]

Well, German U-Boats *had* a torp computer :)

But if you want to do the firing all by yourself, I guess you could set a target speed of 0 in your TDC (so that your torp goes straight along the bearing you're pointing your scope at), get the speed and course of target, draw it on your map, designate the point of that course where you want your torp to hit target, calculate the range from your ship to that point, convert that distance into a time using the torp speed, then calculate the distance the target will move through that precise time, plot a point on his course a that distance ahead of your target plot, and wait for him to cross that new point to fire on the bearing of your first point.

Which is, basically, what the TDC does :)

[Marcus]

Agreed, it is what my spreadsheet prog does too. But was this the way it worked during WWII or was the the firing angle plotted out manually?

[Kobal2]

In WWI they did all that stuff with nomographs, rulers and discs - since the equation is always the same, you can make tools to do it faster, but it's still a pain.

In WWII, they had... the TDC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_Data_Computer) ! :) There really was a computer on board (well, not a modern computer mind you, it was a clever yet clunky hunk of metal the size of a cupboard, full of electric-powered dented wheels and cogs) to automatize those equations. Kind of like a room-sized pocket calculator :).

You enterred the speed and course of your own boat, the speed, course and range of the target and the clunker clunked a real time solution that updated itself over time. What you see in the game is really how it was done AFAIK (except I think it was the US subs who used AOB in their calculations, I believe the German ones used the target's true bearing).

If you visit naval museums you're bound to stumble upon one of those things. I know for sure there is one in the Venice Arsenal in Italy, though I can't remember if it's a German or Italian one. Impressive piece of machinery.

As to how the gyro angle was set into the torpedo itself, I'm not sure, I think the officer in charge of the computer just yelled the relevant data into his intercom for the matrösen in the torp room to deal with, but maybe the TDC was somehow linked to the tubes - someone's bound to know around here :)

[joea]

Think the gyroangle (as well as torpedo depth) was automatically fed into the tubs, only thing the game gets wrong is you can switch from magnetic to impact with a flick of the switch but in reality the torps had to pulled from the tubes and changed.