That would be my favored approach, were I the OPFORCOM...

Agreed!

TG

Submarine Command by Ben Bryant was originally published as One Man Band in 1958.Being a real fan of the RN submarine service i have both books!It is largely a book of his wartime memoirs but it does contain a chapter he calls technical interlude in which he describes penetrating a screen and getting into a firing position.This book is based on WW2 submarines and straight running torpedoes.It has some diagrams but no complex formulae.Bryant was sinking ships by eye not by a tactical computer.Some of his methods can be gleaned from the rest of the text.For basic skimmer sinking it is a good read.

http://www.mors.org/awards/mor/2002.pdf
This is an article called the Diesel submarine flaming datum problem.
If you can find it there is another article in the NPS library written by a Hellenic Navy officer about attacking in a diesel.It is quite old though but you can find a copy on the net.

SeaQueen I really enjoy your scenarios. I wish you would make more or publish the ones you have. Bill would always be happy to host them or you could do your own site with theory. That could be fun.

Thank you. Honestly, I have to be careful with what I publish, though. I don't want to break any agreements or laws. This is the problem when wargames become your profession and you hobby...

The scenario we're talking about is just the NATO EXWAR Exercise scenario I made, or variations on it. The slides that go with it should have sufficient information for you to build your own, so you're not just constrained to doing the same thing in the Norwegian Sea. You could exeriment with lots of other places. Really, it's a pretty generic scenario. I have to say, it's become my favorite scenario. It plays in an afternoon, it's as realistic as I can make a DW scenario, it plays a little bit different every time, and it's extremely challenging without being impossible.

i have a kilo (lin san liu) vs US cv group combat mission that ive been running now and then for a coupla months now.

i concur with your initial assesment.

i quickly decided that 2nd attack was almost always pointless.

i prefer to fire the 1 salvo of 6 and run like hell during the precious few moments the enemy is occupied trying to evade my torps. Sinking the cv AND surviving is a rarity.

if i attack a second time in this scenario, it leads directly to my demise.:dead:

Oh interesting! I was going to put one out soon. People seemed to enjoy the Expeditionary Strike Group one, so I figured that a Carrier Strike Group (CSG) scenario would be a logical extension. :D

Btw, I finally found a situation where it was advantageous to shoot my way in. I made a mistake on my maneuvering board and ended up choosing a course such that my CPA to a DDG was less than ~2Nmi. At 3Nmi, I realized I was going to be detected shortly by one of the screens so I shot 6 SET-53 torpedoes. 4 of them hit. While the DDG wasn't sunk, it was out of action, which is good enough for me.

Having left a flaming datum, I ran for the center of the formation and shot my wakehomers at the CVN. Ta dah! :rock:

It depends. The other day I shot a salvo and some of the torpedoes hit the shotgun ship and not the aircraft carrier, so I shot the second salvo. I figure if I have 'em I'm shooting them. It's not like I get bonus points for using fewer torpedoes. If I'm lucky I might get a combat logistics ship (ideally) or a surface combattant.

I have yet to get killed in the improved KILO. In the export one that's a different story, but the improved one I do a lot better in. What happens with me frequently is that I shoot and whiff. If you figure on a CSG clipping along at ~20kts then the space between the limiting lines of approach is quite narrow. Since there's not really any way to make up time and try to catch up with a short burst of speed, it's pretty easy to put one's self in a bad position to take a shot, and the torpedoes miss, or you end up out of range.

Attack once and once only coming back for a second attempt is litteraly suicide because the enamy will be waiting for you to come back, however if you have ID'd all surface and sub units and there are no targets that are sugnificant threat and if they are put yourself in in a position where your less likely to be attacked.

The second attack is one heck of a lot harder than the first.

I'm not saying I'm leaving and then coming back. I generally shoot at such a close range that there really isn't time to go anywhere. I'd phrase it more as a second salvo.

please do so !

SWEET

i recall one occasion where i crippled the carrier with my 1st salvo.
this enabled a second salvo to put it on the bottom.

in an ssn i would do that - keep firing and trying to run ahead for another attack until empty. but in lin san liu i feel quite overmatched/outclassed.

i dont like the way the game never detects a scope/masts. so i am doing a sonar only attack. Often times I am firing in to the formation simply hoping that i have focused on the cv (im using some random elements so the formation differs every time) im not using fast reload.

yes it sure is !

My general concept of " success " in this mission (more or less)
after the basic "intercept and get into range"

1) SURVIVAL !
2) fire my salvo prior to detection (see point 1 :) )
3) hit anything
4) hit the carrier
5) sink anything
6) major damage to carrier
7) sink the carrier

pts 5 and 6 easily flip flop depending on size of sinking ship.

You don't necessarily need to run ahead. I just figured that if they're still in range, I might as well shoot. Since surface ships tend to move fast, I usually only have one opportunity to shoot in the KILO so I might as well make the most of it.

I don't worry about it that much. Periscope detections are definitely possible in real life, but if you do everything smartly then it shouldn't happen that often. As I see it, it's really a pretty minor thing. Besides, if you just figure on what the radar horizon is for a 50' radar antenna against a 6' mast, radar doesn't give you a whole lot of range that sonar wouldn't give you under the right conditions. Also, it's effectiveness is conditioned on the mast being exposed in the first place, so when you figure that radar could only see about as far as the sonar could under the right conditions, and then figure on what the chance of the mast being exposed is, and then figure on where he's going to expose his periscope, the value of periscope detection is really sort of nebulous. If you can get one, it's great, but you won't always get it. Harpoon does mast detections. Every once in a while you get one. It's nice that it's there, but if it wasn't I wouldn't lose sleep.

I worry sometimes that gamers, in a quest to account for everything in minute detail fall into the trap of being "precisely wrong," and overcredit or undercredit things based on arbitrary assumptions of how they think things ought to be. The thing is, since few if any of the gamers have experience, "that looks about right," ends up saying more about what ordinary people THINK is going on in a sea battle than what really happens. That's not what makes it interesting to me, though.

Go ahead. Use your periscope. It has my royal endorsement.

<< You don't necessarily need to run ahead. I just figured that if they're still in range, I might as well shoot. Since surface ships tend to move fast, I usually only have one opportunity to shoot in the KILO so I might as well make the most of it. >>

well thats it in a nutshell.

in my mission getting in range is not a given.
it is in and of itself a small victory.
i have not been able to get anywhere as close as you have managed to.
i sometimes fail to get off an attack.
i often am firing from long range, and wouldnt be able to id tgts with peri anyway.
i often have to seriously deplete the battery to even get to the "long range" position.

if i was in a close position with a relatively full battery
im sure i would at least pessimistically consider a second salvo.
and i say pessimistically only because
whenever i am anything but extremely cautious in Lin San Liu, i get sunk.

And it shouldn't be.

Your ability to get within range is partly a gauge of your piloting ability (can you calculate things like CPA, and what not) but mostly it's just where your initial position falls within the limiting lines of approach of the formation, because the formation is so much faster than a KILO, it has the ability to effectively narrow down the set of points of origin from which a submarine could originate and get within torpedo range of at least one warship in the formation. That's important too, because it also dictates where a formation should concentrate the ships in it's ASW screen. That's how speed turns out to be a big advantage that surface vessels have over submarines. Speed effectively allows a surface ship to choose where a submarine might come from, and plan accordingly.

The theory behind it is presented in Koopman's "Search and Screening" I also outlined the essentials in the scenario notes to my NATO EXWAR Exercise scenario. This is actually a good example of how a geometry is important in scenario design. A real KILO captain would be able to tell in advance whether he could get within range of a strike group, just by doing some basic navigational calculations, and from that he would make the decision whether to pursue or not. He wouldn't go after a strike group if the possibility of getting in range didn't exist. He'd just call it in to his headquarters and they'd target the strike group for attack by something else. In this sense, a good KILO scenario starts from the assumption that there exists the possiblity of getting within range. Whether you do everything necessary to actually accomplish that is another question, but there ought to at least exist the possiblity.

I'm sorry to hear that. I don't always get that close, but sometimes I do. It really depends a lot on luck. It also depends somewhat on my willingness to make a dash for it. Creeping around at 3-5 knots may make you very difficult to find, but it also makes it very unlikely you'll be able to get in range. I've also found that sometimes going slow actually makes you less stealthy. Being "stealthy" really means that the searcher's sensor coverage is small in comparison to the area he has to search. Going faster is one way to increase your stealth by increasing the area a searcher has to search in order to find you.

As do I.

If that's the case then you're probably coming in from a position that is highly offset from the formation's centerline. That's fine, so long as it's not so highly offset that the potential to get in range no longer exists. You still might not get in range, but if the scenario is designed so that your starting point is one from which the at least the possibility exists, then it was because of some combination of enemy action and poor decision making.

That's interesting because I think the Improved KILO might be a little overpowered in the game. Last night I surfaced in the middle of a CSG just to see if something was wrong because I was so worried that something would detect me and nothing had.

i have a lot of respect for your knowlegde/opinions .
i agreed with your initial assesment. maybe i should have left it at that.
This is somehow feeling adversarial instead of constructive at this point,
so im just gonna go read a book.

regards

dave

I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way.

Palindromeria, have you looked at the Powerpoint file that comes with the EXwar scenario? It tells you how to calculate those limiting lines of approach. (Although I would love it for SeaQueen to elaborate on it. Not everyone has that Koopman book) And it would have added to the constructive element in the critisism that you seek. Thinking about Mr. Spock (Vulcan) might help understanding what SeaQueen means. Logic. He says that al the time.

SeaQueen what I would like to do is alter your NATOEXWAR to have a playable FFG. Thing is you locked the mission :)

Could you update it to include that as it would make a good Multiplayer game. Infact I challenge you to just that. You in your Kilo versus me in an FFG.

I MUST RETAIN TOTAL CONTROL BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! :D

You think? I've tossed around the idea of doing something similar, but with some CLF ships and FFGs.

Awww... can I do the FFG? I have the hat and everything! :D

What else do you want to know? I tried to keep the scenario notes confined to the minimum necessary to explain why I did what I did. I figured if someone was that much of an ASW geek they either already knew what were looking at or else, would hunt the stuff down. The NATO EXWAR Exercise is pretty much the archetypical surface ship v. sub scenario, though, with different variations. That general geometry is how things work, just because of the kinematics of things.

Wow... I'm the ASW Vulcan...

Ok you can have whatever you want :)

I think it would be fun. You on yahoo so it can be coordinated.