[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Tupolev

@ TorpX - I'd have thought commanders tried zero gryo angle shots IRL, especially early war, but perusing some of the Torpedo Firing Reports in uboatarchive.net has definitely shown me otherwise. There are lots of shots, and hits, at 15-20 gyro angles.

One of the more interesting reports: U-48 shooting at a convoy on Oct. 17, 1940. One shot at 3000m and two at 4000m with a 15.5 gyro angle on each. All hits.

I would certainly consider 4,000 m to be a good shot at any angle.

My impression of things in the Pacific theatre is that they usually preferred to have zero, or small gyro angles, but that circumstances would sometimes force them to do otherwise. Roscoe mentions one captain (I forget which), who didn't trust the new TDC, and preferred to calculate the angles with the older Mark VIII angle solver. In his approach, the set-up changed and forced him to use the TDC, so he became a believer in it.

I suspect that torpedo problems played a role in all this. By that I mean, torpedo malfunctions (detonation failures) leading to a loss of confidence, and causing captains/crews to believe that set-ups had to be virtually "perfect", to have a good chance to hit. That would be the natural tendency, anyway.