I like that advice!

i have been setting my torpedo depth somewhere between 10-15. only 15 if it was a big ship like a passenger liner or some such. (i'm hoping to find a AC, but no luck yet). so far i have never seen a fish go under without going off, so i would guess that a setting of 3-4 might not be deep enough in most cases.

nor have i had any trouble with the magnetic detonators, although i seldom use it.

i have to admit though, that i just hit 'L' to lock it, and then fire. so far all my fighting has been in very large swells, that make it hard to maintain contact.

anyone have a link to some diagrams with sweet spots, or any such?

Hello, new to this board, but have been playing US submarine sims since Silent Service II, and even that one on the NES.

The computer will usually automatically set depth to 6 ft, unless otherwise changed by the user. However I remember back from the Silent Service days that 6 ft was usually optimal for mediem to small merchant ships . . . 1-5 feet for destroyers and 10-15 feet for large merchant ships and large warships. Does this still hold true in Silent Hunter four? As I sank a Hiryu at 700 yards with four fish at 6ft depth about the USS Salmon, before transfering to a new boat in Pearl.

Hmm... that's exactly what I don't want to do. I've got the range dialed in and only want to send a bearing so I can fire when the ship passes arrives at that exact bearing. No fiddling with the stadi, just a constant bearing. :)

Clicking the red send button sends the bearing you're currently aiming at.

I've wondered about that, what with the bizarre mix of imperial and metric.

But if it's in metric then why does the depth scale go to 50???!!!? Somehow I can't picture a ship with a draft anywhere close to 50 meters (164 feet) :o

And besides I'm regularly popping merchants with a draft of 21' - 24' by setting the depth scale on "11" which if it's meters would be 36'. And usually seeing the torp impact the hull well above the keel in the event cam.

But still something ain't right, I popped a medium old tanker in the bow last night with those settings, a single torp, and within a few minutes her foredeck was totally awash and her ass sticking way up. Within an hour she was back up to 5kts with her bow still under water and her props half out of the water! Was a sight to see :yep:

Gonna try setting shallower depths, and see if that makes a difference...

DH

Nice! You mean the "send to TDC" button in the tracking tool?

Large oil tanker = six fish and a dozen AP shells.

I set all fish to high speed, firing within 2000 yds each time, two fish per round, three rounds, three different times. All set for 12.5 feet depth.
First set of fish hit from around 135 degress to starboard from bow of target. Second set of fish hit from 45 degress to starboard from bow of target. Third set of fish hit from 45 degress to port of targets bow. Ship's convoy left it after the second set, as did the loan destroyer that remained by her . . . after several hours . . . which lead to the third set . . . once it was dusk I surfaced on her starboard side, and let the deck gun, a 4/50, finish her off.

Anyone spend that much ammunition on a single large tanker?
Guess we know where her torpedo belt lies . . . 12.5 ft below the water line. Have had better times sinking a ship her size at fish set at at 6 ft (usually 3-4 fish when set at that depth.)

Now it's back to midway for refit, and then its out again. Not going to bother getting a new mission until trawling the Solomans around SEP 42

Aim for the bridge section and the engine section. You need to "destroy" the ship, not sink it through flooding. Engine section and bridge section can give you nice secondary explosions that greatly reduce number of torpedoes needed to destroy the ship structure.

Not in my case as I came up near my wounded prey he had teeth and started shooting back, when I got out of his range there was a lot of damage needed fixing.

Don't surface to near the wounded beast. ;)

I will admit it only happen once thankfully.

Unfortunately, there is no seperate "Send/Enter bearing" option like there was in RL and in SHI. This has been discussed at length in the past in threads where I was involved in. You will either have to re-measure range and send that, or send the outdated range to transmit a new bearing. Luckily, range is the least important of all datas for a firing solution and makes little difference for the torpedo gyro angle, if any (it would severely screw the target speed solution though once people get the magic chronometer from SHIII back and compute speed with that based on an inaccurate range).

OK, I tried 14ft a a large old tanker, both aimed at under the funnel. Good times, good times, can someone sticky the post concerning proper depths for different sized vessels?

Bump/ Did suggested influence depths ever get ironed out? I found a few threads discussing discrepancies between actual ship draft depths and those listed in the manual/chart. The threads/posts weren't real recent though and it would be nice to know if any of this has been fixed via 1.1 or 1.2 or where the issues currently stands...

In real life, some ships refused to sink despite being hit by multiple torpedoes. Check out this story about the Kittanning:
www.uboat.net/about/members/ships_demo.html?shipID=3280

which is pretty much unrealistic and should be adressed. Ive been reading about destroyers hunting a sub for days after attack on a convoi until it surfaced and surrendered due to low oxigen. In real they would never abbandon a damaged ship and leave it to its fortune. More likely they would call another merchant to tow it (i dont expect a patch on this) or if its damaged to much they would evacuate and sink it.

I always stick to the US submarine doctrine: Fire as many torps at one target to insure you hit the target. I know that's not very efficient, but it feels historically correct.:D