[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Great game isn't it.

I'm not sure how they tracked torps with sonar, I assume manual control of the heads, not letting them spin, but I would suspect even if they got it quick, a sub hardly had time. Plus, our subs are rather turbo like the ships.

Yes, just pointing the hydrophones along the torpedo track. They could track the bearing within the limits of the hydrophones precision, but could only infer the range based on the run time. I would guess, that some would run rough or slow and would make a sound of a different quality, but this would not really correlate with a circle runner. I think it would be easy to miss one CR out of a salvo if you had any distractions. After all, the remaining torps would be emitting noise and give one a false sense of security. It would be a much dicier proposition than just checking the attack map in the game.

I agree also that you wouldn't have much warning. It didn't take that long for a torp to circle around. We know that from the Tang experience.

I assume that the sonar operator can tell by the Doppler effect if the torpedo deviates from a straight run.

No, he would have to be following that torpedo and would notice (maybe?) at some point that it wasn't on the bearing it was expected to be on.




There may have been some incentive to use "straight fire" here. It would be easier to track torpedos on a straight course. "Curved fire" would be changing bearing and so an undesired deviation would be harder to pick up. Also, stern launches would be more difficult to track. I'm not sure what they might have done about this.