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Old 12-29-10, 04:19 PM   #12
Vanilla
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
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I found the book mentioned as reference in Wiki DC article. It says nothing about max depth of any DCs at all. Just giving a vague statement that:
Quote:
The main developments [during the war?] were to increse ... the maximum depth settings ... from 300ft (91m) to twice that figure and eventually to 900ft (274m) or 1000ft (305m)...
That's all.

There is also a well written article on wiki about Battle of the Atlantic stating:
Quote:
Originally Posted by wiki
There were disadvantages to the early versions of this system. Exercises in anti-submarine warfare had been restricted to one or two destroyers hunting a single submarine whose starting position was known in daylight and calm weather, rather than stormy conditions. German U-boats could dive far deeper than British or American submarines, to well below the deepest setting on the British depth charges (A dive depth of over 700 feet (210 m) against a maximum depth charge setting of 350 feet). More importantly, early ASDIC sets could not look directly down, so the operator lost 'sight' of the U-Boat during the final stages of the attack, a time when the submarine would certainly be manoeuvring rapidly. The explosion of a depth-charge also disturbed the water so that ASDIC contact was very difficult to regain if the first attack had failed.
I think we can confirm with certainty that in the early war the DCs could not go below 91m. Furthermore, consider that in the beginning of the war standart complement of DCs were 15-40 per DD, normal DC attack used just 5 charges and even those 5 were set at different depth since it was impossible to determine the sub's depth (only 1-2 DCs got to max 91m), moreover ASDIC was almost useless if the first DC attack failed... Shoking! I never could imagine that U-boats were that 'invincible' during the early war.
We definitely must mod all this in.

Last edited by Vanilla; 12-29-10 at 05:43 PM.
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