my two cents
 

After a lesson from RR, I came accross a merchant in the Mallacca Straight near Singapore. I overran it in pitch darkness, and had to chase it through the night after it spotted my boat, in order to salavage a firing position. I finally was able to set up for an eyeballed broadside at around a thousand yards. The merchant was cloisng from my starboard--its port, at 22 degrees, so things were moving right along. When it hit 10 degrees in the crosshairs, I started unloading torpedoes-six of them- in the rapid sequence, firing as follows: 1. at the bow, 2. at the aft mast, 3. at the command tower, 4. at a point about half way betweein the command tower and the stern mast, 5. at the stern mast, and 6. at the stern. I set the range on the stadimeter before letting them loose, as instructed. Six for six, with torpedoes iimpacting in sequence from aft to sterm. There was such noise caused by the the impacts that my three toy poodles went racing through front doggy door in a state of hysteria, intending to find and sink their chops into the trespasser who foolishly dared invade their space and make such a racket. I closed the door behind them, and watched contentedly as my prey slid under the waves. My crew voted unanamously that I should quit while I am on top. I doesn't get better than this.

Nisgeis, that was a GREAT explanation why the real TDC was better than the game TDC at constant bearing shots. In short, with the ability to crank the bearing input backwards (there are clutches inside the TDC that allow this to happen so everything isn't "hard wired" together with gears. Think about it, you couldn't crank in the bearing to begin with if that weren't true:rotfl:) they had a real-time AoB update with the change in TDC bearing similar to that modeled for the U-Boat TDC in SH3 and 4.

The real submarine had no need to be at 90º or 45º to the track. We only do it in the game because it allows us to use simple rules of thumb to input the AoB. Dick O'Kane the person didn't have to do that.

For SH5 I think they need to ship a new computer peripheral: a little USB crank that you can use to make inputs into the TDC, and which coincidentally, you could use to crank backwards to perform the REAL Dick O'Kane maneuver.

Now, to change the subject, I'm goin' down, by the power vested in me by WernerSobe, Nisgeis, aaronblood, gutted, and the infinite might of man's imagination, I hereby dub you Knight, First Class, of the Dick O'Kane Manual Targeting Technique. May you use it well and wisely, always for the forces of right, good and and niceness. and never for the agents of evil and rottenness.

now that I have been knighted
 

Knight is great. I wll ride a sea horse into battle. But right now, I am listening to sonar only tutorials and then I will return to decipher Nisgeis' masterful explanations.

Is SUBSIM a great place or what?:up:

fun?
 

Trying to install Jammimadrid's mini chron and tools got my machine out of whack and I was up until 5:30 a.m. reloading the game, mods, etc. I have given up on the tools aspect and ancient 46 is reviewing my mods and the mini chron, so I may get them in sync this year. Meanwhile, my WEBSTER'sS deck gun, which I downloaded as part of package of his mods for 1.5, takes between 17 and 18 seconds to reload. rahter than 2 seconds as he indicates. I confirmed it on my FULL SIZE stop watch. And, my source of relief, the CaptainsGirls, GirlsInEveryPort, and Captain'sDeskPhotos mods do not show anyone, yet alone, women. Oh yea, that and a destroyer that has a sonar man who never sleeps, and is on my ass, makes this sim something, but I am not sure what.

I saw your mod Nisgeis, and it looks like it would definitely be useful. I do keep the map contacts off for a more realistic experience. I was wondering if your mod is compatable with the latest RFB:hmm:If is is, I'll be downloading pronto!:yep:

map contents off?
 

With map contents off, I do not have to worry abouit speed because I never find anything. How do you find a target?, besides by pure luck?

no map updates?
 

How do you find a target with map updates off besides by pure luck?:hmm:

Presently my current patrol is in 44', so I have Radar to find my targets. But besides that, if you patrol along known shipping routes you will hit paydirt eventually. Also pay attention to radio messages. There may be info of a convoy or taskforce. And of corse don't forget periodic hydrophone checks, especially if you don't have radar.

Weeeeew~ Thanks for this. I will print this out and giver 'er a read.

Why are you trying to measure speed on the radar scope anyway?

In your first paragraph you mention that you have acquired the target at 10nm and you plot two points to determine true course (presumably on the navmap). Once you have the TC plotted you should be setting yourself up for a submerged attack on a 90° beam to the target TC.

As you make your submerged approach, the hydrophone operator will call out bearings to the target that you can plot on the TC line. If your TC plot is good, the distance between those points should be plenty accurate enough for a good speed calc.

Oh BTW,

My response to the original OP's question would be... In that instance O'Kane was using a lateral spread.

You can do that easily by locking your scope on the target midship and turning that degree offset dial. You'd wait for the middle of the target to reach the desired bearing and then dial: 2° fire, 0° fire, -2° fire

How do I know 2° is right? I just lock on the target midship and then look on the scope to see how many degrees I needed to offset to hit the various parts.

Now in fairness to O'Kane, this method that bears his name is no longer a good reflection of what you and I read in his book. If you want to see how I originally proposed mimicing Okane you can read my post here:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...&postcount=134

RR chose to simplify it. I choose to bash him over the head http://www.xl-logic.com/emoticon/fight.gifonce in awhile for dumbing it down to the point where the TDC isn't even used!

Also, I don't recall that Okane would necessarily line up on a 90° beam to the target. He took a standard 90° approach to the target bearing, but that's something different. There's more evidence in his books that suggests he (and Morton) preferred to fire after the target passed the 90° beam so the torpedos would 1) not impact at a right angle, and 2) the ship would have a harder time evading (never really studied this one, but I trust Morton knew what he was talking about).

Nope, you're right. I can't see any evidence that O'Kane sought a right angle to the track. He might have had a preference for angles that were close, but I don't see any evidence for it.

I think you're right about him using the spread input to hit the bow and stern of the target in that instance. Please note that per the Submarine Torpedo Fire Control Manual, this would have been a computed spread of about 80%. He wouldn't have been just fiddling with the spread dial and hoping the setting was good. That would have earned him a good roasting by his friend, Admiral Lockwood, when he got home.

Hey! That's not fair! I use the TDC. It computes my lead angle and dries my oilskins when I come below in bad weather!:88)

Now I do take a lot of 90° shots... but in those cases I also set the torps for magnetic detonation and try to swim them under the keel. I just got tired listening to the things bouncing off the sides of ships (an all too frequent occurance for right-angle impacts).

At what point did I say that he was, "just fiddling with the spread dial"? :doh:

I think he did exactly what he said he did in his book. He targetted midship, then looked at the rear stack, determined it was offset 2-3° and fired his spread accordingly.

O'Kane says in Wahoo that Morton liked 120 degree approaches best.

I see all these Florida boys posting and just had to pipe in!

Have to thank RR for his tutorial on radar-only DO technique shoots. To say that I was dumbstruck when it actually worked(my skill, not the teachings), is an understatement.

A ship came up on radar, so I hopped up to the bridge to take a look around. Pitch black, no moon, 15m/s winds, heavy fog and rain; just one hell of a storm. So I decided to try out the "no eyes on target" method you spoke of.

Tracked the mark down his path, waited till he was a heartbeat past 20' and loosed my last 3 fish. Blew him out of the water at approximately 4000 yds, I couldn't even see the explosions it was so dark!

Thanks again to all that post here and make the game more enjoyable! And maybe for the next Subsim get together in Texas, we can form a Florida caravan!

hearty har har
 

I was running ahead of a tanker to set up for a Dick O'Kane salvo, but was so far ahead of the SOB I brought my boat around for a Cromwell shot. Then the SOB changed course, so I abandoned Cromwell and set up for manual targeting per Hitman's tutorial. I put my last four torpedoes into her, had a beer, followed her for three hours, but she never sank! (It's not dinner until its in the pan!) I concluded the mission by running aground somewhere near Singapore and sinking.

O'Kane liked the night surface attack. Visually, a 90 AOB is one of the easiest to identify ... especially if the ship has side-by-side masts. A skipper could approach at 120 degrees (as Tater said) and, as long as the TDC was set for 90, send a final bearing when the target looked to have a 90 AOB ... then fire. He could then reposition on another target ... again waiting until seeing 90 degrees before sending a final bearing to the TDC.

Just to clarify, since a couple people now appear to have commented on my statement about the 90° target bearing standard approach; it has nothing to do with a 120° approach to the target true course.

It's just the standard approach an XO would take by putting the target bearing on a 90° beam moving (presumably) in the same relative direction (at this point AoB is an unknown). Then the captain would be informed... and then perhaps after an observation (or several) an AoB determination can be made and then maybe a 120° to TC would be the prefered approach angle for attack.

Okane mentions in Wahoo that as the XO he puts the boat on a standard 90° approach and then informs Morton of the situation. It's a method that's also documented as the standard approach in the torpedo fire control manual. It doesn't mean that you're on any particular approach angle to the target true course.

It looks like this:
http://www.xl-logic.com/mobo/tutoria...0_Approach.png
The standard 90° approach for target M1 or M2 is 330° and we don't really know what the true course is yet for either one.

This is a first contact (and probably at considerable distance) approach. Granted I've exagerated the M2 contact here because in this case we wouldn't actually be closing (approaching) on the target. I should probably redraw it with an acute angle, but I don't feel like doing it again...