Help with manual TDC (WoS Mod)
 

I am really bad. (Yes, it is me AGAIN... Trying my hand at this game once more...)

I just want to know if somebody here would be open to help me out with this. I can record a video of my attempt in the training mission so you can pin point my issue. I'm trying to do it without the attack wheel. I know a lot of people love it but it's kind of confusing to me.

I usually use the watch for speed. Stadimeter for range. Then I eyeball the AOB.

Is there another way than using the estimated range of the stadimeter? Perhaps using the ticks to calculate the range with mast height? If I could nail the range, then calculating the speed by distance over time would be alright.

So yeah, my guess is that the range is throwing off my aim and the stopwatch method for speed might not be as precise as I'd love to. (Thus why I want to nail that range and use a different method.)

Here is a method that is historical and does not require rangefinding, or any information from the recognition manual for that matter. The skippers referred to this as “Ausdampfen”. Make sure you have a calculator that can perform trig. You’ll apply a simple formula.

First, eyeball AOB on sighting the ship, and turn to what you believe to be a parallel course. Now watch the bearing, if it moves aft, reduce your speed. Continue to watch, and continue adjusting your speed in such a fashion that the bearing changes only slightly. Once you can no longer achieve this by speed changes, begin turning away or toward in 10 or 20° increments until you get the bearing constant, ideally over 10 minutes or so. Note own speed, that bearing, and the AOB, and do the following:

Own speed x sin(bearing) / sin(AOB) = target speed

Now, it’s obvious that the AOB you estimated was not necessarily accurate. So it’s very important to note the initial estimated course of the target as well as the bearing used, the speed you used and the AOB you used in the initial exercise.

Important: once you approach the target and get a better appreciation for its course, go back to the formula you did before using those figures and adjust the initial course value and therefore the AOB value to what it should have been and re-perform the formula, and this will refine the speed.

If the target is zigzagging, which I don’t remember if they do in this mod or game, this complicates it a bit, you’ll have to do it for each leg, or in that case simply plot on the surface by keeping the mast tips the same amount over the horizon, adjusting your own course to do that (the “nibbling at the horizon” from the U-boat Commander’s Handbook”), using a visual estimate of range. I re-translated this handbook because the original translation was garbage, and I added annotations in there for where some of these methods are mentioned (see my sig).