[keltos01]

Ben Bryant retired from active submarine duty in 43, so his book though very good, only goes so far.

p120 he uses the ninety bender to get a ship that is on a parallel course

"the column were 3 cables or 600 yards apart...the sights came on and we fired at the leading ship of the port column, angled 90° left."


he actually got this ship though at the time he thought hed' missed, but was already busy being depth charged.

nothing about the gyro going all the way like the american one. they were too close to one column to fire at 0° angle so they chose another target and set the torps at 90°.


they also used a slide rule to calculate the range, thus more prone to mistakes :

p 140 : " we steadied on the firing course and I passed the number of divisions on the periscope gradicule from which the attack team could calculate the range on a slide rule. The slide rule did not compete direct with such a small target as a U-Boat and you had to multiply or divide according to the technique employed. The slide-rule operator made a mistake, which was easy to do, and multiplied by two instead of dividing, and announced the range as about 3200 yards. I spotted the mistake but did not remark upon it as the sights were just coming on, I just mentally noted that hte range was 800 yards."

the trim officer then let the boat go under periscope depth as he thought he had time to trim the boat better, and they missed the firing opportunity on the U-Boat...

keltos