1. I am not sure how long they stay open, I generally open them just before firing the torpedo. You can check if they are open or not from 3 places.
a. Go to the conning tower from Command Rooms. Turn around you will see switches representing torpedo tubes.
b. Right click Weapon Officers face from left bottom, you will teleport to his station. Turn around, again there are switches representing torpedo tubes.
c. Visually:) By the way, for way 1 and 2 you may interact with the switches.

2. They will start to ping if they suspect your presence. That may be caused by propeller sound or just a crew dropping his wrench etc... Remember the scene from Das Boot where Number 2 makes a joke about silent running. :)

3. First they will depth charge the last place they heard you. Eventually they will try to depth charge blind some other locations around to find you.

4. Yes, you may see them in game however I think you may not destroy it (Remember the scene from Run Silent Run Deep where US submarine destroys the net to escape Japanese harbour). Stay away from them. They are located on harbours. Stay away from port raiding until you really know what you are doing. If you hit one, DO NOT change your heading. Run your propellers backwards (Back Emergency)

5. I have experienced the same thing as well. I presume it’s the consequence of the blast. Do not forget that a depth charge may cause some damage via Shock Wave.

Once opened, your torpedo tubes will stay open indefinitely until one of 2 things happens:

1 - you manually close them, or.....

2 - you dive below 20 meters


On the way back up to periscope depth or to the surface, you will get a verbal message "We're too deep to launch torpedoes" if you try to open them below 20 meters.

Does someone know, what is the max depth a WWII u-boot can launch torpedoes in real life. I remember a scene from The Enemy Below where they fire torpedoes deeper than 20m.

Beginner Questions
 

Later versions could be launched at a depth of 50 metres.
http://www.uboataces.com/weapon-torpedo.shtml

Torpedoes had to be launched on the surface or at periscope depth. But later versions of German torpedoes such as the TV (Zaunkonig II) could be launched from up to a depth of 50 meters.

How do you manually close them? I thought I read somewhere that it is the "w" key, but every time I've done it I have never received any kind of confirmation that they actually have indeed closed

Q to open, Q to close, at least on my install.

Q to open, E to close.

Q to open, W to close (no confirmation - just some noise from closing the hatch).
E is for blowing air into the tanks (emergency surface)

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=193887 #4

Nice little modification there. Though I enjoy the language in German and the text in English. Still fixes the problem though b/c now it says "WE:" whenever I close them and I don't remember it doing that before so now I have at least some kind of indicator :)

as a "new " player of SH3, can I instal GWX gold after I have played the stock game, or do I have to re install the sim again if I play for a bit with the original version.

To be safe I would install over a clean patched SH3.

Beginner Questions
 

If you want you can have 2-3 installs, and use Multi SH3 to have separate saved games for each. I think at one time I had 3-4, and one was a clean install so I could compare modded files.

I understand this cannot be done with Windows 8, perhaps in the future.

Modify de_menu.txt and commands_de.cfg accordingly and you'll be fine.

Muendungsklappe wird geschlossen, Herr Kaleun!

The C gives you the spoken crew response "Jawohl, Herr Kaleun!" or "Aye, Sir! (or whatever they say in English) in English or German - matching your settings.

Thank you all for the replies so far :)

Also I will adjust that menu and command files accordingly.


Got a bit of an issue now though. I just REMOVED FM_NewInterior_V.10 and replaced it with version 2.1D and now my career's won't load. Even a brand new one crashes when the red loading bar is almost full. Curiously, the training missions seem to load fine.

Also, SH3 Commander doesn't seem to wanna update its list of careers with those added/deleted in-game at the profiles screen.

Hmmm, tried this. Nothing happens however, not even a "WE:" in the dialog box. Oh well, can't say we didn't try! :)

Also, I am a bit confused about neutral targets in this sim. Twice now I "thought" I read Norway was an enemy starting 4 of Sept. 1940 (according to the flag chart "flaggen"). In October of 1940 I sink a Norweigen cargo and I see a neutral ship wreck.

Is there a well known torpedo range chart everyone uses?

How far under the keel do magnetic torps have to be? Is 1 meter below too far?


Thanks again in advance for everyones input, it IS appreciated and good hunting o7