Sub's Depth
 

Greetings,

I was wondering if theres any RL bubblehead / sailor who can tell if and how subs figure out the enemy subs's depth in real life.
In the game its not possible (besides estiamting above/below layer), okay, but is it impossible in the real world as well?

cheers

I'm not a RL Submariner but older subs like the Sturgeon had a set of four hydrophones on their sail that would indicate what depth a close contact was at, much like the old depth charge direction indicators on WWII fleet boats. More recent subs like the 688(i) have this feature built in to their Spherical Array SONAR.

Not possible in game??!! Have you forgotten about HFAS?

Remember to make your argument a bit more specific.

Based on pictures on an imcomplete sphere array in construction, I'm sure they would be able to tell approximately what angle the sound is coming from, and would be able to get an approximate depth according to range.

But I'm not a submariner, so how should I know?

Not modelled in DW for gameplay and national security reasons.

Or something like that...

Personally, I'd like to add it, but we are limited by the interface, and SCS made a careful decision NOT to model that. So it's not modelled.

On the other hand, by the time the sphere array would have a strong enough SNR to have a reasonable depth estimate, you'd probably have a good enough idea where they were anyway, since you would have been tracking them for sometime.

Now with the strong layer effect, I have a pretty good idea where the contact is depthwise just by looking at my sonar and my own positioning, so I don't really mind not having it, other than those times I'm totally confused, and in those circumstances, it might confuse the array as well.

So basically, its like that extra scoop of gravy on your turkey and stuffing, you've already got gravy so its fine if you don't get it.