depth under keel almost zero - shallow waters quite off the coast
 

www.marcogabbrielli.com/DIY/TEMP/snap605.jpg

Hi,
is that correct that in that sea area of Northern Scotland water is so shallow? (I mean, so off the coast)

thanks
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/www....MP/snap605.jpg

In some places yes, the colouring on the map is only a vague idea of depth and the game itself isn't accurate to real life depths. The continental shelf is relatively shallow compared to mid-ocean.

You just have to be very, very careful not to get caught there!

Shallow water is a plague until you can hit the open sea, with only a few relatively deep spots around England/Scottland. Save for some of the larger bodies of water like the Irish Sea most areas around AM/AN aren't more than 25-35 m deep (drop twain).

Feel free to use your depth sounder....the enemy can't hear it.

I'm not usually much of a 'reality cop,' but in a case like this, pinging right in front of the enemy is a real buzz kill for me. :-?

I just count it as a replacment for the maps showing depth we should have in game.

Charts weren't all that accurate seventy years ago. Harbors, sure, but no in the open sea.

The channel north of the Isle of Skye, where you are, is not what I would call open sea yet. So 15 meters of depth isn't so strange. Then again, the fjords of Norway are pretty deep in real. Not what you would expect inland.

Google Earth does give depths between 50-150 meters in that region. So the SH3 maps are definately not hi-fi(delity).

that was just another question you saved me, because I thought that pinging into enemy's grounds would perhaps give my sub away ...

Google 'bathymetry charts' in any region of the planet and you may find 'free' bathymetry views. Today, for our commercial and military purposes, the entire world's oceans are accurately mapped and surprisingly close to the sim for gaming purposes.

S'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathymetry


Also, I read my fathometer de riguer. The only pinging that might alert warships is foward looking sonar. That signal strength out and return is to be avoided when warships are in the range to listen!

S'

I've always stated people should play the game the way they get the most enjoyment from.

Personally I don't recall having used it other than for testing purposes but that's just me.

A couple of Admiralty examples...showing different levels of detail:

http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/8626/a1chart.jpg

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/218...rgechannel.jpg

Like I said - harbors. Jane's has accurate harbor maps going all the way back to 1906, but it required sounding every few yards with a plumbline. Doing that for every coastline was a near-impossible job. I have a lot of WW2 Pacific maps. Places like Midway are accurate down to the foot. Others have no soundings at all.

Rgr that matey :salute:

Don't forget however, that Hitler's U-Boats had access to the sailing instructions, patrol reports and chart corrections from four years of intense inshore warfare from 1914-18. I could not find a single incident in WW2 where a u-boat that had a solid position fix ran aground in British waters, which indicates that the boats operating in UK coastal waters probably did have reliable depth information.

Since the in-game charts do not provide this info, using the pinger to get an accurate depth under keel is not really so gamey as it might appear.

Just $0.02.