Shooting on a steady wire -- possible?
 

I saw it in a thread a couple hours ago, and now can't find it again to post in there, so sorry for another thread.

In previous subsims I've done manual targeting, shooting from a steady wire, that is, the scope does not track the target, but remains steady and the target sails into, and through, the scope picture. The shot is taken when the wire 'touches' the part of the ship that is the intended aiming point. From my reading, this is the way it was done in reality, and the way I prefer to shoot.

The quote I saw had to do with automatic bearing input for the TDC, and the poster said the target must be 'locked' in order for this to work. My question is can shots be taken from a steady wire, with the target not 'locked'?

That was my method of manual firing in SH3... damn the math, shoot from the hip! :arrgh!:

Well, I don't mean that I wasn't entering data in the datapad (in the case of SH3 for example) or with the dials in the F6 screen, but the scope did not have to be locked onto the target. Bearing could be entered just by clicking the checkmark on the datapad, and wherever the scope happened to be pointing would be the bearing that was entered, the target did not have to be locked through the L key.

As an aside, I've always wondered what the math is that people refer to when talking about manual solutions. I used manual targeting for hundreds of SH3 patrols and never did any math at all. Range, speed, AoB. That's it, no math involved. Maybe it's that 3:15 stuff people seemed to want to do.

How do you calculate target speed with this method?

In the case of SH3, the target speed was calculated by the TDC. You simply entered range and AoB, then speed was determined by how much apparent change, in degrees, the optic moved over a given period of time.

The US TDC should do the same. SKippers would raise the scope periodically and call a bearing mark. Given the target's range and AoB, speed was automaticlly calculated by the apparent change in bearing between the marks. More marks, more accuracy.

In the case of SH3, it was important for your sub not to be moving to get an accurate reading. US TDCs had the position keeper, which should factor the sub's own movements into the apparent bearing change.

I did things that way in sh3 also. I calculated speed off of the map by marking the target over a set time interval or with the 3 minute rule though.