Tell that to real commanders like Kretschmer. :roll: Those night surface attacks were done in the WW2. Until DDs had radars. But before that, it was quite hard to see a submarine unless it was very close to the escorts. The boat would fire while unseen, and then move away at full speed. Also, being underwater consumes oxygen and batteries. Having a nice cover in the surface because of the night, why to consume the most useful resources in the sub?

the speed..
in surface a u -boat can do a 17 knots while in periscope depth only 7 knots .. in the early years withouth radar or limited ranges ...it makes the difference.

while the scorts are looking for a sumerged u boat, you are at top speed in surface recharging the tubes.

in the later years of the war this changes.. :dead:

have u ever read a halfway serious book dealing with the subject uboatwar in the atlantic ww2?

seing that nighttime submerged attacks are much easier than surface attacks, shows how much is left to be done in sh3.
in a moonless night, uboats could close up to point blank range, without being spotted. speed is not only an asset in evading escorts, it is also extremely important to keep up with convoy evasive maneuvers, which is not modeled in sh3.

Yup, managed three runs through a convoy while being chased by a corvette and managed to pick off a ship each time. Plus a couple of juicy T3's in the first attack before i was spotted.

The corvette couldn't shoot for toffee, i think the 15m/s winds may have helped, but he stuck at ~300m off my stern as i dodged between transports to lose him.

It's quite nerve wracking trying to judge how far in front of a C3 you have to steer to use it to block the corvette without it hitting you.

when another two corvettes turned up i decided discretion was the better side of valour.

This was at 100% realism with Rub 1.43.

I did only have ~35% hull integrity left when i got home.

For real life, i completly agree.

For this game however where the oxygen usage is negligable, i dont think its worth the risk of being seen.

I read a book once about WWII submarines that said that most of the submarine attacks were done on the surface with torpedoes because it would give them better visibility than submerged through the periscope. Later in the war, however, things changed.

It wouldn't be hard to figure out what was going on when you are escorting a convoy across and suddenly one of the merchants you are watching over sprouts a massive geyer on it's port side. Honestly, how many possibilities are there?

Well yeah, but thats all you have to go on.

"Hes hit on the left."

"Ok well that narros it down to half of THE OCEAN!"

Hell, with magnetic torpedoes the attack can be from the middle, noone knows where the hell you are.


Stay down at all times. Gunning in at flank on the surface is unnessicary trouble.

Just because they get hit on 1 side, doesnt mean your enemy (the sub) is going to be at 90 degrees.

If the submarine runs submerged, they are almost certainly within 6 km, which is far, far less than half of the Atlantic. I wish I could draw a picture to demonstrate what I'm saying... actually I think I'll do that.

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/7...surface2nn.jpg

There are two ways of solving this problem and neither is right or wrong. The first, and seemingly preferred by urseus, is to remain silent and hopefully undetected. My preferred method is to get as clear of the datum as my sub will allow. Both techniques have their merits.

For the purposes of demonstration, I used the following numbers:
At T1, torpedoes launched at 40kts, targetting a ship 4km away, giving us a T2 of just about 3 minutes.

Escorts average speed from T2A to T5 is 26kts, with sonar surely locating submarine at range of 800 meters, giving us a T5 of approximately seven minutes from T1, four minutes from T2A.

The GTFO surface manuever of T3A and T4A is conducted at average speed of 18 knots. This gives the escorts a theoretical search area of over 3800 meters for T3A and a area of 2200 meters for T4A. The Slip away submerged manuever of T3B and T4B is conducted at average speed of 6 knots. This gives a theoretical search area of 1300 meters for T3B and 740 meters for T4B. Obviously, T4B is the worst choice, as it's search area doesn't even place you outside the hypothetical sonar's area of sure detection.

Of course, I fudged a good many numbers and would love nothing more than to see someone punch holes in all my neat figures. Although hopefully this gets my point more or less across.

hahah sub forums. So fanatical. Good work mate.



So at what distance can you get too before being spotted at night?

On the surface.

With 3 kts wind, at midnight, approximately 1800-2200 meters. I usually don't get that close though, as it often times means that I wind up inside the convoy when they zig...