Magnetic Torpedoes
 

I'm doing OK with the impact torpedoes, 3 patrols and 130,000 tonnes.

So I decide, for a change, to have a go with the magnetic gizmos: no luck. I think I am correct in thinking the idea is the same as for impacts i.e. ideally 90 deg AoB, 1,000 m-ish, hold the boat steady etc. but set the depth for around 1m deeper than the target's keel: everytime I try this, the eel sails happy directly under the target and off into the blue yonder.

So I am wondering what I am doing wrong? When setting the depth, should I factor in how deep my boat already is e.g. if I am at 12m and the target keel is 12m, should I set depth for 13 or 25? Or something else altogether?

Any thoughts

No about your depth factoring in. 13m is good.



1m under is fine. They shouldn't sail under the boats without blowing up. If rough seas the boats and bob up and down and that can happen, but it won't happen every time, so not sure what to tell you.
You did have them set to Magnetic, right? That's the only thing I can think of.



Also, 90 deg AOB is fine. But it says that the ideal AOB is 45 degrees. And I guess with magnetic that does present a bigger target when sailing under.

Magnetic torpedoes are trigered by the magnetic field of the ship. That being said if you set the running depth 0.5-1m below the draft value of the target-ship the magnetic pistol will detonate the torpedo. In terms of AOB using magnetic pistols makes life easier as you don't really need to have a "perfect shot". As long as the torpedo finds itself under the ship it will detonate and will do damage.

I hope this clears it for you. If you still have problems give us a shout :up:

I thought 90deg AOB was ok, but not optimal, as the torpedo passes under the ship without having chance to detect the change in magnetic field caused by the hulk of metal. :hmm:

I find I have better magnetic results if I try to organise an AOB of 30-60 deg. However, this makes the aspect width of the target shorter, and accurate targetting (and torpedo solutions) essential!

I'd stick with impact torps if I were you. Two impacts are just as good as a magnetic detonation, and doubles your chances of hitting in the first place.

I only rely on magnetic torps, if the impact torps went astray for some reason /i dont use externals- so is hard to tell why./ After the ship passed 0 or 180 and nothing happened, ill take measurements again- without rush, and fire the mag. Usualy they work better if the angle is roughly 45 deg. or less.
As to depth- 1-2 meters is good. Im bit wary of big waves though.:up:

In very calm weather, I'll set a magnetic torpedo to as shallow as 0.5 meters below the keel. In rough weather, or if the target has already taken a hit, the torpedo must be set deeper, but I think its safer to use impact detonators in those situations.

My apologies if this does not apply to you, no offense is intended.

If you have been firing impact pistoled torpedoes in the past and now you are trying magnetic, are you switching the pistol selection switch from "I" to "M"?

You mentioned "everytime I try this, the eel sails happy directly under the target and off into the blue yonder." But you did not tell us how many times you tried this.

If you tried this once it might be a dud. If you tried this 10 times in a row and still no detonations, there might be another problem

Depending on your realism settings there will be duds, and magnetic pistols were notorious for not detonating or pre-detonating. But not every time. Your set up, as described in your original post sounds spot on.

So if your set up is OK but you are experiencing "everytime I try this, the eel sails happy directly under the target and off into the blue yonder", meaning 100% failure, this does not sound like duds. There has to be another reason.

Hence my reminder to manually change the pistol selector. Sometimes the simple stuff is what is overlooked.

If I'm not mistaken the Pistol switch is M by default.

Magnetic pistol is never 100% dependable, but my preference as well.

Thanks for the replies: The pistol selector is definitely OK (it's A or M, since it's on German language settings, but M is selected).

When I thought more about it, it could well be a combination of 2 things: firing at 90 deg I suppose means the torpedo only passes under a relatively small section of the target's keel: I'll try something more like 30-45 deg.

The other thing could well have been the weather causing the target to bob up and down quite a bit: I did write the first couple off as potentially just duds, but when it came to no.5 and 6, I started thinking something might be amiss. I suppose I'll have to wait until the weather clears a bit before trying again: I've been sailing in a 15 m/s storm for 5 days solid now.

Cheers for the replies though.

You may want to take a look at the article on magnetic torpedoes on my kielman website