Trav_R
11-04-05, 05:34 PM
After discussing some of my initial problems that I had with DiD with some of the people on the board, I decided it was the best way to go. I still don't have any DD evasion experience, nor any real experience dealing with airplanes, or any other experience outside of manually aiming my torpedoes, but screw it I'm ready to play for keeps. I was already getting bored by my 7th patrol because I would just reload whenever I made a dumb mistake. When I sank ships, even though I did it with manual targeting, I didn't feel all that triumphant.
Now, though, even sinking a coastal merchant brings me quite a bit of enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. On my first patrol in a IIA, I got a BdU report of a single merchant a few dozen km away. I calculated a rough intercept point and went there and submerged, and picked him up on my hydrophone coming in my general direction. Once he was in visual range, I began doing my usual turning the boat/moving forward or back as needed/setting up torpedoes and TDC. The ship was a British coastal merchant, and I had gotten myself into a perfect position for a 90 AOB shot at about 700 m. I set my first torp for a 3m impact detonation. I calculated AOB by using the recognition manual for a 20 degree offset, because at exactly 20 degrees the ship's forward mast is nearly in line with the port bridge wing, and if you leave the scope on that bearing when you input that into your TDC, you'll have an almost perfect AOB calculated for the rest of the run as long as he doesn't change course (and you don't either).
Then I calculated speed. I've learned several methods for this, and haven't completely settled on my favorite. Plotting two points and calculating distance and time from it is certainly accurate, but it's a lot of work. I counted his RPM and looked it up, and it said 8 knots, but I thought I'd try another method that should work fine. I know the length of a coastal merchant is 75m (or something like that) and if I start the stopwatch when the ship's bow crosses my vertical crosshair, and then stop it again when the stern crosses my crosshair, I should be able to get m/s out of that, and then multiply by 2 to get knots. Quick and simple, and it should be pretty damn accurate. The only inaccuracy introduced is since you are probably doing this when AOB is around 30 and not 90, it's a little difficult to determine the exact forward-most and aft-most points on the ship, but I figure the error can't be more than 10m at worst.
That's where I made my mistake. I've used this method before, and while I haven't thoroughly tested it it works well most of the time. For some reason, this time it was about 2 knots faster than what the target was actually moving. I aimed my torpedo just forward of the bridge, where the fuel bunker should be, and fired when the calculated gyro angle was 000. The torpedo impacted very far forward, and I knew that wasn't going to cut it. Naturally the ship flooded forward a bit, and its bow dug into the waves, but it just kept motoring on. I knew it was about to start changing course, so I fired another one, this one set for magnetic impact under the keel, and I adjusted the speed down a few knots to hopefully compensate for his wounded nature, but he zagged out of the way.
Now I was getting pissed. Two eels already and still hadn't killed a coastal merchant! :damn: I've got one eel left in the tubes while I'm waiting on the others to reload, and it's an electric one too so it ain't gonna be in any kind of a hurry, which is what I needed. I was getting impatient and flustered, so I set the TDC speed to zero and just tried to John Wayne it but naturally, by this time it had begun to gain some distance and since it was zigging and zagging I missed. For the fourth shot, since I had to wait a while anyway for the tube to reload and I knew my impatience wasn't getting me anywhere, I hit flank speed (I was submerged, so couldn't move too fast) and ordered a roughly parallel course while waiting for the tubes to reload.
By the time they were both reloaded, I had pulled ahead of the target about 200 m, and we were still running fairly parallel at a distance of about 1000m. Almost perfect for a broadside, so I turned sharply into him and began setting up my TDC. By the time I was finished with my turn and had ordered all stop, the range was about 500m, I'm thinking I can't miss at this point. Yep, I can. Merchants are apparently really really hard to hit once they know you're around and start zigzagging. I'd noticed this before, but when I got tired of chasing them around and wasting torps on them I would just reload my game and make sure I tore him up good on my first eel, but now I didn't have that option and I was down to my last eel :x
I decided that the most accurately calculated TDC solution in the world and the perfect setup just didn't make a crap when trying to hit a zigzagging merchant, so with my last fish I decided to minimize his little zigzagging advantage by pulling in close to him and right on his stern, and have my torpedo set for a magnetic detonation. I got set up and ready, and I waited till he had just finished a zig and the AOB was 180. I then waited to see which way he was going to take his next zag, and once I saw him begin to turn starboard I put my crosshair a few meters to the right of his bow, figuring he'd either sail right into it or not have enough time to reverse course and hit it anyway. Well, he spotted it (hell he probably knew where I was at that point with my scope sticking out of the water 300 m off his stern and moving at 7 knots) and began to try to reverse his course and turn back to port.
All the while I have kept my crosshair on the same bearing that my torpedo went down, and while his bow had crossed this bearing, his reversal of course was bringing his bow back to the left: out of danger. Then BOOM, my torp must have just barely crossed under his keel before he was able to completely pull back out of its way, and I hit him right beneath the bow. While it was certainly a crappy shot, when combined with the earlier crappy shot it was enough to bring him down. Besides, I really don't know if there's a better tactic for dealing with a zigzagging merchant other than the deck gun, and I didn't have one.
Anyway, even though it took 5 fish and two crappy bow shots to bring down a measley coastal merchant, and not to mention about an hour's worth of my time, I felt like a champ, because I knew that I did it all without reloading, while dealing with my mistakes. I definetly screwed the pooch on that first "real" encounter, though. My miscalculation of the speed when I should have known better, and my following impatience and subsequent waste of torpedoes has helped tame me down a bit and made me a more careful captain. On my next patrol, I managed to intercept another coastal merchant in thick fog with 300 m visibility and take him out with 1 torpedo under the keel. The fog made that no picnic. That was a lot of hydrophone work, and a lot of scribbles on my map, but it made it all worth it to see him going down in one nice clean kill instead of 5 hurried shots!
So, thanks for all the DiD advice guys, so far I'm enjoying the hell out of it and I haven't even done anything "exciting" yet like a convoy or DD evasion. :up:
Now, though, even sinking a coastal merchant brings me quite a bit of enjoyment and sense of accomplishment. On my first patrol in a IIA, I got a BdU report of a single merchant a few dozen km away. I calculated a rough intercept point and went there and submerged, and picked him up on my hydrophone coming in my general direction. Once he was in visual range, I began doing my usual turning the boat/moving forward or back as needed/setting up torpedoes and TDC. The ship was a British coastal merchant, and I had gotten myself into a perfect position for a 90 AOB shot at about 700 m. I set my first torp for a 3m impact detonation. I calculated AOB by using the recognition manual for a 20 degree offset, because at exactly 20 degrees the ship's forward mast is nearly in line with the port bridge wing, and if you leave the scope on that bearing when you input that into your TDC, you'll have an almost perfect AOB calculated for the rest of the run as long as he doesn't change course (and you don't either).
Then I calculated speed. I've learned several methods for this, and haven't completely settled on my favorite. Plotting two points and calculating distance and time from it is certainly accurate, but it's a lot of work. I counted his RPM and looked it up, and it said 8 knots, but I thought I'd try another method that should work fine. I know the length of a coastal merchant is 75m (or something like that) and if I start the stopwatch when the ship's bow crosses my vertical crosshair, and then stop it again when the stern crosses my crosshair, I should be able to get m/s out of that, and then multiply by 2 to get knots. Quick and simple, and it should be pretty damn accurate. The only inaccuracy introduced is since you are probably doing this when AOB is around 30 and not 90, it's a little difficult to determine the exact forward-most and aft-most points on the ship, but I figure the error can't be more than 10m at worst.
That's where I made my mistake. I've used this method before, and while I haven't thoroughly tested it it works well most of the time. For some reason, this time it was about 2 knots faster than what the target was actually moving. I aimed my torpedo just forward of the bridge, where the fuel bunker should be, and fired when the calculated gyro angle was 000. The torpedo impacted very far forward, and I knew that wasn't going to cut it. Naturally the ship flooded forward a bit, and its bow dug into the waves, but it just kept motoring on. I knew it was about to start changing course, so I fired another one, this one set for magnetic impact under the keel, and I adjusted the speed down a few knots to hopefully compensate for his wounded nature, but he zagged out of the way.
Now I was getting pissed. Two eels already and still hadn't killed a coastal merchant! :damn: I've got one eel left in the tubes while I'm waiting on the others to reload, and it's an electric one too so it ain't gonna be in any kind of a hurry, which is what I needed. I was getting impatient and flustered, so I set the TDC speed to zero and just tried to John Wayne it but naturally, by this time it had begun to gain some distance and since it was zigging and zagging I missed. For the fourth shot, since I had to wait a while anyway for the tube to reload and I knew my impatience wasn't getting me anywhere, I hit flank speed (I was submerged, so couldn't move too fast) and ordered a roughly parallel course while waiting for the tubes to reload.
By the time they were both reloaded, I had pulled ahead of the target about 200 m, and we were still running fairly parallel at a distance of about 1000m. Almost perfect for a broadside, so I turned sharply into him and began setting up my TDC. By the time I was finished with my turn and had ordered all stop, the range was about 500m, I'm thinking I can't miss at this point. Yep, I can. Merchants are apparently really really hard to hit once they know you're around and start zigzagging. I'd noticed this before, but when I got tired of chasing them around and wasting torps on them I would just reload my game and make sure I tore him up good on my first eel, but now I didn't have that option and I was down to my last eel :x
I decided that the most accurately calculated TDC solution in the world and the perfect setup just didn't make a crap when trying to hit a zigzagging merchant, so with my last fish I decided to minimize his little zigzagging advantage by pulling in close to him and right on his stern, and have my torpedo set for a magnetic detonation. I got set up and ready, and I waited till he had just finished a zig and the AOB was 180. I then waited to see which way he was going to take his next zag, and once I saw him begin to turn starboard I put my crosshair a few meters to the right of his bow, figuring he'd either sail right into it or not have enough time to reverse course and hit it anyway. Well, he spotted it (hell he probably knew where I was at that point with my scope sticking out of the water 300 m off his stern and moving at 7 knots) and began to try to reverse his course and turn back to port.
All the while I have kept my crosshair on the same bearing that my torpedo went down, and while his bow had crossed this bearing, his reversal of course was bringing his bow back to the left: out of danger. Then BOOM, my torp must have just barely crossed under his keel before he was able to completely pull back out of its way, and I hit him right beneath the bow. While it was certainly a crappy shot, when combined with the earlier crappy shot it was enough to bring him down. Besides, I really don't know if there's a better tactic for dealing with a zigzagging merchant other than the deck gun, and I didn't have one.
Anyway, even though it took 5 fish and two crappy bow shots to bring down a measley coastal merchant, and not to mention about an hour's worth of my time, I felt like a champ, because I knew that I did it all without reloading, while dealing with my mistakes. I definetly screwed the pooch on that first "real" encounter, though. My miscalculation of the speed when I should have known better, and my following impatience and subsequent waste of torpedoes has helped tame me down a bit and made me a more careful captain. On my next patrol, I managed to intercept another coastal merchant in thick fog with 300 m visibility and take him out with 1 torpedo under the keel. The fog made that no picnic. That was a lot of hydrophone work, and a lot of scribbles on my map, but it made it all worth it to see him going down in one nice clean kill instead of 5 hurried shots!
So, thanks for all the DiD advice guys, so far I'm enjoying the hell out of it and I haven't even done anything "exciting" yet like a convoy or DD evasion. :up: