Quote:
Originally Posted by Capt Jack Harkness
To make it more realistic, there should be at least a couple seconds between the AI spotting something and their engines responding (deck watch reports a torpedo, officer on deck telegraphs for full ahead, engine room responds) and their engines should gradually pick up speed instead of instantly (maybe 10 seconds from stop to flank
|
Oh, it's much worse than that. Lookout spots torpedo, OOD
orders full speed, lee helmsman double-rings the telegraph and puts it to Ahead Full. In the boiler room the senior boilerman on duty orders full steam and when the senior engineman sees the indicators increase he then opens the throttles. The whole process doesn't take long, and destroyers can accelerate fairly rapidly, something on the order of 15 knots the first minute, which averages to one knot every three seconds, which isn't all that fast when a torpedo is coming in. Also that's what happens under test conditions.
So you're right. A sitting destroyer might get lucky enough to avoid a torpedo that way, but no other ship ever will. They're just too slow.