[Rockin Robbins]

You have to separate hindsight from the view in the jungle. O'Kane certainly used his radar during attacks and for making setups as the resulting accuracy was deemed a slam dunk. Hence his statement that amounted to "my radar is broke and now I won't sink diddly squat."

The only difference was that O'Kane valued visual searches because they were apparently much more effective than in the game with high periscope extending the horizon (not in the game) and much better visual acuity than we have in the game. Even Fluckey talks about visually observing airplanes in complete safety for several minutes before a decision to continue as is or to dive. We don't have a true balance in the game and have to be careful about our judgments.

So O'Kane, before he made contact, wanted complete anonymity and ignorance on the part of the enemy, even at the cost of information on his side. Enright and Fluckey seem to be more in favor of giving a little to get a lot. But you can understand that superstition, hunch and general paranoia where your life is at stake if you're wrong would tend to trump any dispassionate calculation of advantage and odds. And you also have to factor in that the difference between the captains we discuss and the losers finding no targets was due to the aggressiveness and tolerance for danger that these skippers were willing to tolerate, in contrast to those who lurked below the surface all day and then ran around at night with half charged batteries and not fully prepared to fight. These guys weren't afraid to intimidate the enemy. And they weren't afraid to be seen by an aircraft--that's why they spent so much time on the surface. They were very willing to trade a little danger for finding more targets. I'll bet O'Kane figured out how much of the time he could leave the radar off and still not miss any targets in his search area. These guys weren't the kind to hide to survive.

The important thing is that once the great skippers were in action they used the radar to its full advantage. And the action starts with first detection by the enemy, whether it be seeing a periscope, detecting a radar signal, or hearing a very loud BOOM.

But with hindsight it should be very clear to everyone that just leaving the radar on will sink more targets than any other strategy. They can't fix your position and train any weapons from your radar signal. But your radar makes your weapons more than twice as deadly. In real life, the use of radar and its detection by the Japanese did strike fear and cause mistakes on their part because of its potent intimidation factor. In war, you should be something of a bully. Fair play is for dead people.