Tactical tip
 

I do not know if anyone has posted this, but it is worth mentioning.

On my current patrol, I had the perfect angle and I stopped the engines and waited to the small tanker to approach. While that was happening, I opened the outer doors to tubes 1 and 2. When the tanker was at the perfect angle I fired both eels w/o worrying about having to wait for the outer doors to open.

What do you fellow captains do?

That saves maybe three to five seconds. If you only have a slow running cargo ship I don't mind, but these seconds can be valuable while attacking convois. But generally, I don't open doors myself. I have four experienced torpedo shooters to do that.

I think I've been opening the doors before firing since the beginning, even before I heard about it from the experts. I mean in any sub movie they say "open outer doors" before they fire. That just seemed to rub off on me.

As for tips I can say always set the speed of the torpedo manually because theres a bug that sometimes makes the speed wrong. That can mess up a shot much worse than closed doors.

If you dont open the outer doors your trajectory of torpedoes will be off from your original computations, there is a discussion and tests about it in one of the threads about a year ago in here.

This is w/ both doors open at the same time.

I will post a pic which will say alot.

Mind you this was not a salvo shot. this was single shots.

As promised I will post a pic. (need to make one).:D

I always open the tubes before I fire to have the instant and rightly calculated shot. You just have to be careful because opening an aft tube closes all forw. tubes and vice versa methinks. :hmm:

If u open the tubes manually from the 3D screen (that is, taking the weapons officer post) then you can open all of the tubes simultaneously, if you dont touch anything else they'll stay open for the whole attack. Then you can switch tubes in the periscope screen for shooting.

I always open the tube doors as well. Realistically speaking it depends on the target. If it is too close or moving at high speed opening the doors prior to firing makes a difference. Otherwise you can score a hit without opening them. It is more realistic though to open them

I ussualy don't open the tubes. It takes more time this way, but you really don't care. If you have a high value target, that can accelerate to high speeds, it's kindda smart to open the tubes forehand.

I open the outer doors first..just to add to the element of realism :yep:

I always open doors first. The slight delay required to open them before the fish are launched CAN be enough to cause a miss.

As far as ordering full stop and "hovering" I realize the game will let you do this but its not realistic so I dont (shrug).

I'm a door opener. Always have been always will be (except when Bernard forgets to remind me).

I do agree w/ that.:)
Bernard does have a bad habit of opening the doors and I miss the exact moment and the eels miss.:D

Opening the outer doors before firing is a nobrainer. The seconds it take for the doors to open automticaly makes the difference between hit or miss.

In addition to anything i may have written here:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=94111


- mark all contacts on your map, even if their out of range to give chase. You'll be able to better see/deduce where ship traffic routes are, and alter your patrol route accordingily.

-Mid to late war. Shoot your fish, go to 1/3rd and start clawing for the depths IMMEDIATLY. Any faster then 1/3rd your liable to tip them off. If you dont start diving right away, you might not get enough depth between you and that ashcan spewing DE.

- Always sweep the area and sky with the observation scope before surfacing. Partiucarlly if 1943 onward, or somewere along the US east coast, carribean, or freetown. Nothing quite like surfacing infront of a PBY or sunderland, - and yes, your "timing" can be THAT ROTTEN. Its happend to me at least twice. Hydrophone check coulnd't hurt either if the area is well patroled.

- Shallow water and rough weather is a bad combination if you value your hull integrity.

- That unarmed, or damaged merchant your using for deck gun target practice alerts everyone in the neighborhood for you.


- Avoid using electric torpedo's beyond 2000 meters if you can help it. Particuarlly against any target moving faster then 9 kts.


Thats all i have for now. Im sure theres more but i cant think of em right now.

[quote=Ducimus]
- Always sweep the area and sky with the observation scope before surfacing. Partiucarlly if 1943 onward, or somewere along the US east coast, carribean, or freetown. Nothing quite like surfacing infront of a PBY or sunderland, - and yes, your "timing" can be THAT ROTTEN. Its happend to me at least twice. Hydrophone check coulnd't hurt either if the area is well patroled.

quote]

One small addition to this excellent advice: When surfacing set speed to flank or full; wait a few minutes afterwards before reducing speed. Saved my boat two patrols ago.

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I'm not sure if it's modelled in SHIII but another good reason to open outer doors in advance is to avoid detection (assuming there are escorts nearby).

In real life, the opening of the tubes can be a noisy evolution. Not only do the tube doors make a metallic transient noise, but the tubes have to be equalized prior to the doors being opened and that makes a fairly significant noise while the water rushes in to fill the tube around the fish.

It makes sense to do this out of ear shot of the enemy, that way the first sound he hears is the cavitation from your fish closing in for the kill!:rock:

Openning the doors ahead of time will sometimes save you the headache of pre-detonation when using the magnetic detonators.. Not always, but the eels seem more stable in the warhead if you give them a couple minutes to equalize with the sea.

Grayling, the torps fit the tubes pretty tightly, as grease was used to get them to fit the tubes easier, and they were lauched with compressed air. Any gaps, and you won't launch anything, and wind up with a live eel stuck in the tube.

I assumed that the tubes worked basically the same as the tubes on the sub I was on. On a modern sub, there is an equalizing valve that is used to fill the space around the torpedo with sea water and to equalize the pressure between the inside of the tube and sea pressure.

Compressed air is used to launch the fish, but indirectly. It forces water out of a holding tank and into the tube and flushes the fish out. Then the outer doors are closed and the tubes drains into another tank.

Although I am sure that modern tubes are somewhat more sophisticated than those used in WWII, I imagine the basic concept is pretty similar.

Regarding acutal operations, the only thing i know for sure is that the compressed air used to eject the torpedo's was vented into the boat so as to not leave telltail bubbles coming up at the point of firing.

edit:
im pretty sure Grayling is correct. Im not familiar with the technical operations ,but from what ive read the outer doors are the primary doors. The inner doors cannot handle much sea pressure. The tubes are flooded first. Then the outer doors are opened. Compressed air is used to force a water jet that ejects the fish, and at that point the compressed O2 i beleive is vented into the boat.

I agree except that the inner (breach) door is still subject to sea pressure once the outer(muzzle) door is opened. Not only is the air vented inboard, but the water from the tube is drained to a holding tank to help compensate for the missing weight of the launched weapon in order to maintain trim.

Again, I don't have any experience on a U-boat (other than SHIII), but I have a considerable amount of experience on a 637 class US sub. The operation of the tubes may be different, but I'm pretty sure the overall function is pretty much the same.