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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Sailor Steve said 16km is more realistic. I would have to go with Steve's assessment as I believe Sailor Steve is or was a sailor.
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Originally Posted by Lanzfeld
Sailor Steve may be a sailor but so was Cremer.
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Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
It would probably be best for an answer from Sailor Steve and his take on this question
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Time to get one thing out in the open: Yes, I was a sailor...but only for two years, and that was 36 years ago now. People like Bill Nichols are far more qualified experience-wise to answer questions like these.
What I do have for credentials is the fact that I started working on my own tabletop naval game more than a decade ago, which in itself means exactly nothing, but I do spend a lot of time doing research. Which leads me to...
Being at the library it was easy to look at their copy of The American Practical Navigator, which has all of the needed charts and tables.
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Remember that you are only 5 meters above the water in a type 7.
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That's about 16 feet. At 15 feet above sea level the horizon is 4.4 nautical miles, or 5.1 statute miles, or 8.23 kilometers. That sounds about right, for the horizon. However, if the combined height of your position and the target ships mast equals 60 feet, then you should see it at 16.45 kilometers.
Bismarck and Hood opened fire on each other at a range of 26,000 yards, or about 13 nautical miles, or about 25 kilometers, so they obviously saw each other even before that; and that was on a grey, overcast day. But they were also both very large ships, with lookouts standing about 60 feet above the water, and fire control rangefinders about 100 feet high (I think).
I use the 16km mod because I like the way it looks and feels in the game, but I agree with Bill: it's a major flaw in the game that lets the watch crew sight at those distances at night. What to do, what to do?
Oh, a note about radar: I could easily be wrong here, but it's my understanding that most World War Two search and fire-control radar systems were also limited by line of sight. They couldn't see any further than the eyeball, they just had the advantage that they could see that far at night or in a fog.