Hello,
Sub warfare in World War 2 was a whole different ball game than modern day sub warfare.
Primary sensors to locate targets were generally lookouts (esp. German and Japanese) and Radar (US). They traveled known shipping lanes/hunting zones and received steering guidance from other sources.
For the US, radar was key because Japanese merchant traffic was not generally escorted and even when it was, the Japanese had very few radar warning receivers on its ships or airplanes. You could spend most (all?) of your time on the surface illuminating and noone was going to counterdetect you.
Of course the game distorts our perception of modern warfare a bit by generally starting us off semi-near (close to or in sonar range) our targets/opponents. There is no open campaign mode like in Silent Hunter 3 or 4.
I think even in the modern warfare, there would be a lot of steering guidance given to subs either in mission orders or on the fly through satellite communications on where the targets are. In a conventional WWIII scenario (like Red Storm Rising), a Russian nuke boat is probably going to find convoys through external means (communications), not drive around solely looking on their sonar displays.
Mike
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