Flying Dutchmen??
 

Hey all!

I started my Asiatic fleet career with S-18 class submarine, it's pretty tough as it lacks the aft torpedo tubes and is pretty slow, anyway everything went well at my first patrol but I faced one weird thing, perhaps a bug.

I had a Akizuki destroyer doing a circle around me as I had escaped from it's route, I was pretty sure that it's deader than elvis as soon as I get it in my aim. Usually at the moment they are circling around me they are doomed, it's not a big deal to hit them when they're close and unable to do anything. Well, I shot my first torpedo, depth at 3,5 meters. It usually sinks them with first hit. This time it went under the ship. Well, I shoot another at the default depth (2,5 meters or something), STILL under the destroyer. Well, I have 4 tubes and as I'm playing with quite arcade feeling I didn't worry about it and shot another at 1,5 meter depth and it went under it again :hmmm: Finally I managed to hit it when I shot the torpedo at the smallest possible depth but then, when it hit it was like I would have shot it normally at that depth, it created a hole into the ship but it was so high that it didn't cause almost any damage.

I met 2 of these kind of ships at my patrol. Otherwise the patrol went (at least in my opinion) better than I expected, I sank 9 ships, 5 Akizukis and 4 merchants (2 or 3 of the merchants were sank with deck gun after I ran out of torpedos). Total tonnage was something like 28900 tons. :rock:
BTW, is that good or bad amount and has anyone else met these hovering ships?

DDs tend to have very shallow drafts. Combine this with US torpedos having a tendancy of running too deep at times and you'll end up missing.... a lot.

Magnetic might work out a bit better here, however if you're firing too close, the torpedo won't arm in time and you'll see it go right under the target without detonating.

I don't think the US torpedos had their arming distance reduced. The Germans did though.

What range are you trying to hit these DDs at?

Thanks for info. I was usually at less than kilometer from them, about 600 - 500 meters and I usually don't touch the exploding trigger so it's on magnetic contact or whatever it is, which should mean that they should be able to explode without real contact but I've never noticed that it would happen.. Also I've noticed that when you take those suicide risks, let the enemy ship almost run over you and wait to get good aim you always fail because torps seem to not explode if they haven't been running for a while.

Yea.. I've tried to shoot a torpedo at 190 meters, ended up in heavy cruiser riding over me (I was in periscope depth), 2 depth charge hits and limping towards home with a submarine that looked like a steel sausage which someone had biten a part off.. Engines were almost totally destroyed, ahead flank was maximum of 4 knots, reverse didn't work at all and aft torpedo room was filled with water.. About half an hour after that critical flooding was uncontrollable and I lost my ship :nope: But hey, the torp gave some merchant ship captain a little head ache :D:D

Happeh Hunting everyone! :salute: