On a submarine in pre-radar days, the most accurate piece of information you had on the target was your Mark I Eyeball estimate of its Angle on the Bow. Therefore, using anything else to figure it just didn't make sense, because it was all MUCH less accurate than the AoB estimate! Therefore, eyeball estimated AoB became the standard for WWII.
Actually, if you had radar you could use the two position method of deriving target course and speed, and be more accurate than we are able to be in the game. But, submariners being a traditional lot, most captains had their crew still using the eyeballed AoB for their plotting.
Now if you study it, you can directly set target course into the TDC in the place of AoB, and this is exactly what they began transitioning to when radar became the targeting method, replacing all the black magic that came before.
Just that word, radar, spells the absolute superiority of the American submarine over the U-Boats in WWII. With radar their productivity doubled because they were no longer shooting on a guess.
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