Evading torpedoes in this game makes me wonder about RL
 

I quite like the torpedo evasion mechanics in this game. Yes the sub agility and knuckles are total BS, as are the way the torpedoes helpfully turn away when they lose lock but as a game, it feels pretty good. I still get hit by torpedoes and usually it's because I screwed up somehow which makes for good gameplay.

But man does it freak the crap out of me for how it would work in real life.

Any ex (or current!) submariners on here? Did you ever feel that if things went hot you were basically screwed? I know that stealth would be a FAR greater factor than it's modelled here but it feels like if it ever got to the stage where someone is able to launch a weapon at you... your chances weren't great. :o

Angles and dangles. I think a lot of the submarine budget goes to stealthiness.

I had read on the internet, and EVERYTHING on the internet is true of course, that there is an ability to shut down among large schools of fish to mask sound. In CW, if I sink a ship/sub and it is creaking away on the bottom I go to it in hopes of masking my presence in its noise. I sit 30ft above it hoping that it masks me. I wonder if that is modelled in CW. I still do it, though.

If anyone knows about the modelling in this case, an intel report would be appreciated.

Go watch Jive Turkey's Youtube channel. He was a sonar tech on 688 and used to train new crew on new boats.

Doing some reading on the Skipjack, apparently most said the closest analog to how it handled was flying an aircraft. Just something to think about.

-Jenrick

I spoke to former serving Sub officer back at a wedding a while back, he turned up in proper uniform including the sword etc.

Anyways, I spent the entire afternoon talking to him. They spent a lot of their time in Soviet waters, basically spying. Certainly through his duration in the navy he said they were not particularly concerned about their torpedoes because they knew about their performance from observing soviet exercise.

The one thing they were gravely concerned about was the Soviet use of these RBU rockets. The Soviets would regularly fire these at anything they caught a sniff off, even in peacetime and it was never pleasant. Soviet surface vessels knew NATO subs would often spy on them and so it was common for them to park a surface ship up drifting on the edge of any exercise, knowing it would be virtually invisible and then use it to fire rockets at anything that came close enough. If you got hit, of course the Soviets would have said a foreign vessel in their waters was there on a hostile spying mission and had 'strayed into a live fire exercise by accident' etc etc etc.

One of the other very risky things they used to do was trail other NATO boats very closely and then report to high command that they had managed it. The message would then be passed to the other country. The main risk from this was basically running into the opposing friendly sub. I don't doubt for a second this still goes on. I think a British Sub scraped a Frenchie not long ago playing games. Of course, around the North Sea and English channel the water isn't all that deep so detecting each other a bit more straight-forward than in the open ocean.

Sinking ships and wrecks definitely attract torpedoes. I've dodged a few by passing near them.

That's nuts.

My dad's sub hit a Russian sub in the 80's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sceptre_(S104)

Haha this guy's gotta be a fellow hockey player. Sometimes after a nice evasion on a torp I'll catch myself saying "dirty ****ing dangles, boys."

"Its a hard life picking stones and pulling teats, but sure as God's got sandals it beats fighting dudes with treasure trails."

Clappies from the hashies buddy!

Sounds like a brown trouser moment right there. So many submarine incidents seem to be narrowly avoiding catastrophe by the hairiest margins.

Torpedo evasion is... kind of an unknown. The sub crews train for it, of course, but that training is based on assessments of what the opposing weapons can do, and not from any real experience. By which I mean that the only way to know for certain if the tactics work is to get shot at... which I, speaking for myself and what I assume to be most of the sub fleet, would just as soon NOT do.

Couldn't drills be done with warhead-less torpedoes? For all intents and purposes they'd be like live ones for evasion purposes. Only they wouldn't explode if they hit.

Seems too much of an obvious avenue to not have been considered. What's wrong with it?

There was a GUPPY boat which was used for just that. It had to be specially plated for them to bounce Mk 37s off it. Still, I would guess that wouldn't be looked on so kindly today for all the things that could go wrong. Even without a warhead, you have something like that clang off of your screw, probably enough to bend some blades or even the propeller shaft, boat out of service and millions in unexpected yard-work.

My guess is that they probably have computer simulations of all that that would knock you socks off, but yeah the applied aspect of it just isn't there.

Also having a torpedo running around isn't the same as having an enemy torpedo running around. We can development the best torpedo evasion protocol in the world for our own torpedoes, but it'd be a guess on how they'd work against the other sides.

-Jenrick