[RFB 1.52] Torpedo was a dud, sir !
 

I'm at my wits' end here.
Here's the situation : I've got a nice, working, uncorrupted, January 11 1942 save with a perfect attack set up on a pair of Maya/Takao cruisers.

- I know magnetic triggers are going to premature 200 yards out the boat, so my torps are set to impact only.
- I know that, for some reason, my torp depth TDC setting is stuck in meters while the rest of the game is in imperial units - so torps are set to 5 meters, the only setting that'll reliably hit a 18 feet draft ship, what with deep runners and all.
- I know my targets' speed and course to a T by now : 12 knots, 210 degrees, 4500 yards range at the time of saving. I can ping 'em till my fingers bleed, and still they won't notice me. Same about the periscope : I could shine a lighthouse bulb out of it, and they wouldn't notice. They've got no escort, no depth charges, no nothing. Should be a turkey shoot, right ? WRONG.

Out of every salvo of 4 fishes I shoot at the leader, only one explodes, tops (I'm in a Salmon, can't shoot more than 4 in one sitting). I've tried many setups. 45° constant bearing. 20°. 60°. 5°. With PK and using constant bearings. Periscope ranging and sonar ranging. I could hit those cruisers with my eyes closed. Yet every damn time, "torpedo was a dud, sir !".

Now, on to the question : is it supposed to be that way in 01/42 RFB 1.52 ? I know early war Mk. 14s were crummy and failed 95% of the time at a 90° angle, but surely some angles worked, right ? I tried many, many solutions in this pre-set configuration, and nothing gives me more than one lousy detonation out of 4 torps. What gives ? What's the magic angle ? Or is it supposed to be that way ? And if it is, at what date can I expect a modicum of gosh darned certainty that my torps are going to go BOOM instead of *clunk* ?

I'd say that sounds about right to me. But the Bureau of Ordnance says it's you, not their pristine infallible torpedoes.

Your right its him but its because he is french

No kidding. Why aren't you using the magnetic detonators, in direct contravention of orders??!

BuOrd just sent you a message telling you , that you must have let sea water into the mark 6 exploder!

It sounds very realistic for the date actually.

:DPsssssst! Listen carefully. You didn't hear this and you didn't hear it from me. Your Mark 14 torpedoes are calibrated in feet. However they run approximately 10 feet deeper than they are set. The magnetic exploder is fubar. You should find a way for them to have an unfortunate accident rendering them inoperative. Torpedoes hitting targets at a torpedo track angle of 90º will mostly be duds.

The unofficial scuttlebutt is to set the suckers on the surface, magnetic exploders somehow inoperative and plan for duds.

You didn't hear it from me. But I'm bustin' rocks for sinking the USS Essex. What can they do to me? Put me in jail? You still didn't hear it from me...

Ah yes, that piece of Nip propaganda of a mod manual did say torps ran up to 12 feet too deep. Obvious nonsense. I don't believe the glorious Navy would deliver faulty ordinance to its captains, do you ?

But is that all of them, always 12 feet ? I assumed it was a random 1-12 value. So I tried to compensate for that, however, setting them on 7 (so, in my mind, between 8 and 19 feet, good for an 18 feet draft) had them consistently zip right past the keel.

In any case, all right then. Thank you all for the answers.I guess a saboteur must have tampered with my pristine torps, pride of the Silent Service and jewels of American engineering, back in Surabaya. I'll file a report. And hope my full ammo load will at least cripple one of those tin cans...

4 duds and 2 prematures tonight, I think these torps are made by ACME :gulp:

Are the magnetic detonators 100% fail rate or just very high? Is it possible to get a magnetic detonation out of the worst version of the MK14?

dont feel bad... all but 4 of the last 15 torpedos i fired in TMO 1.8 were duds.

was pretty agitated after that long intercept.

attacked a convoy, and out of the first 6 i let loose, only 2 detonated. swung her around and let the 4 out of the back go... and all 4 were duds.

escorts were being lazy, so i got inside the convoy and kept at it, and fired off 5 more as they got loaded, and only 2 exploded. it was the middle of '42, and i was using mk.18's. do they ever get better in TMO? or is the mk.18 just hard coded in TMO to suck the entire war?

anyway, i should have had like 11ty million kills out of that convoy and only got 2.

Dont say anything but.......

I Feel you pain... on a running attack on a single DD 7 shots fired, 5 duds and 2 misses :doh:

The original poster covered pretty much everything except the angle of attack. Evidently the triggers on Mk14's will crumple without detonating if the torpedo strikes at or near 90 degrees to its target :o

------>| Doink !


------>/ Kaboom !

So dont strive for that 'perfect' 90 degree impact.

The problem with trying a magnetic 'beneath the keel' shot with a magnetic trigger is you never really know how deep the damn torpedo is going to run. Put that on top of the common premature detonations in shallow / rough water. But no the failure rate is not 100% and magnetic detonations are possible.

I'm currently doing a war patrol just off the Atlantic coast of the USA using the Operation Monsun mod and RFB 1.52, hit a merchant with one torpedo that stopped it dead in its tracks, then fired 4 more before I got one that was not a dud, pretty amusing but such a waste :D

OK that's good to hear. So if you manage to get a torpedo to run right under a keel... it can magnetic detonate. Does the switch work pre '43 for M+I vs. I? There have been some SH games and/or mods where the switch didn't change the pistols... it was M+I till it got disabled via the date and then was just I.

Yup. I finally had a look around the RFB files, and the actual numbers until '43 are :

70-90° : 100% duds
50-70° : 75%
30-50° : 50%
10-30° : 25%
05-10° : 15%

Seems a bit on the high side - I might end up shaving 10% off them eventually. But for now, sticking to 20° shots seems to do the trick, although they're not easy to set up and get messed up easily if the target sees the torpedo wake and dodges... which they often do. Ah, dammit, MAN THE DECK GUN !