[TorpX]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

One thing I'm missing, and a google search don't mention it one way or the other - what about speed calculations? ....


Anyone know the actual dope on the WWII TDC? Did the developers get this wrong and leave out some actual capabilities?

Speed had to be manually input, just like the others.

There are probably a number of reasons why:

• 1. At the start of an approach, you would want to put in an initial guess. If you see a merchant chugging along, and see in the RM that it has a top speed of 12 kn., you might dial in 10 kn. and start with that.
  2. You might need to make a 'snap shot', and estimate speed based on bow wave or such.
  3. If the TDC rigidly calculated speed based on the last 2 positions entered, they could still be in error, if the target has zigged in the meantime.
  4. I think there had to be the option of the tracking party overriding simple calculations based on their experience.

Basically, the same goes for the Target Course/AoB. In theory these could be calculated if two consecutive positions were accurately known, but in practice, you need to estimate AoB and make manual inputs.

There were different models of TDC used in the war. I don't know all the details, but at least some were made so that as new data was dialed in, the error (or difference) between the observed data, and the TDC calculated value, could be seen. In this way successive observations could be used to refine the firing solution, and the crew could see the difference between the observed data, and calculated data get smaller and smaller.

I should also add, in the real-life TDC the PK was always 'on'. There was also a mechanism which showed the 'distance to track', but maybe not all models had that feature.