Thank you for the response! :)

I tried what you suggested, well it partially worked, I guess I need more practice.

Anyway, now I encountered another weird problem - torpedo reloading. Is it normal for a torpedo to load for a full 24-hour period? I am sitting next to a crippled cargo ship and can't kill it cuz my last torpedo won't load. This happens in a Type IIA boat. :damn:

Do you have enough crew in the torpedo room? Adding crew to the torpedo room makes the torpedos load faster.

Maybe your crew is tired also make sure you are not running silent mode or you shoot them all, type IIA has only 5 torpedoes

If you are too close, the torps will not arm.

I don't know if I can post this here but here it goes. There is a guy on youtube, doing a let's play of silent hunter 3 with gwx, and other stuff and full realism. You can look what he is doing. I Learned alot from this good man. Search him on youtube by the name of Frontier359

Or you are waiting for the external torpedoes to load. Which will not happen. You have got to drag them to the internal torpedo slot first. (I hardly ever played the type II so I don't know if they have external torpedoes?)

Otherwise, as someone else said, be sure to have enough (and not too tired) crew in your torpedo room. The better and less tired your crew, the faster your torpedoes load.

Canoes only have 5. No externals. You've shot your load after 5. :p2:

Torpedo failures
 

Once again, the subsim community charges to the rescue! All the appropriate answers are in this thread. Resist the TLDR disease here for sure.

I just woke up so my head isn't screwed on correctly yet, ... TLDR???

Bloody acronyms
 

Too Long Didn't Read

First of all thank you everyone for the responses.

I finally figured out (with the help of other forum members :) ) why my torpedoes did not explode and now I will share my experience and knowledge with everyone here and most importantly with new players who have the same problem. I use the automatic aim of the game without dud torpedoes.

1. Range - the target ship must be between 400-500 meters away from the U-boat. After shooting torpedoes need at least 300 m distance to arm themselves, if you are 300 m away or closer they will not arm, hence not explode.

2. Angle - your position should be (ideally) perpendicular to the ship but some angle say 120-140 degrees is not fatal. Do not shoot the ship from behind or from impossible angles - I had an occassion when I shot a ship directly from behind - the torpedo hit the propeller of the ship and nothing happened. Same thing if the ship is coming straight to you. The angle is bad and you will most likely miss.

3. Torpedo preparation - in the TDC (you can see its icon in the left upper corner of the screen) you will need the (four I think - two big, two small) right upper adjustment knobs (??? can't find a better word):
- select a tube - it can be first, second, third, etc.
- select torpedo depth - I choose 3 meters, choosing 4 m, 5 m or more is not good since the torpedo can go under the ship.
- select torpedo speed - I choose medium (or fast) - that way the ship can't escape my torpedo.
- select type of explosion - impact or magnetic. I choose impact (the torpedo explodes on impact) since magnetic is less reliable (at least at the beginning of the game in 1939) and may result in explosions before the torpedo hits the ship.
- open torpedo tube - press Q on the keyboard - it speeds up the shooting of the torpedo, if you don't press it first then there is a 3-4 second delay, which sometimes may matter.
- shoot!

This method has given me nearly 90% success rate in shooting ships.

I hope this helps. Good luck hunting! :)

Once magnetic's become more reliable they're you're ticket to 1 hit kills on nearly every kind of ship, even BB's. Magnetic settings are the most forgiving in that they can still sink a ship with 1 eel at a 30 degree AOB or hitting the ships "sweet spot". Even the mighty Hood can go down with 1 well placed magnetic hit to the boilers, CV's are even easier; aim at the aircraft elevators and a solid hit will usually bag you a flat top :arrgh!:

You can even use mags early on in the war. The bang for the buck outweighs the reliability issues.