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Won't the escorts jump right on top of you as soon as you start sending pings to get the range and position of your target?
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Yup. Long story short I only used about 3 pings less than 120 seeconds before shooting so it's a case of "Yeah they are alerted but it's too late."
Hearing the ping only clues the escorts that you're there and you are kinda-ovah-der. By the time they could come and investigate I was already scraping the bottom in safety. Now I don't know if/what the "safe" maximum range for pinging ships, but I've been tracking convoys by bearing/range using active sonar (a ping ever 30-60 min or more) while 8-20nm away without anything bad ever happening.
My second blind attack I got anxious listening on hydrophones only not knowing how far away they were so I came up from the abyss too soon and had to haul my butt and made some hasty torpedo shots before diving again. This is a lesson to make sure the lead DD passes overhead first, then come up to PD, then really really wait until that first ping.
If you have a good fix on the lead ship (bearing/range) before the attack begins, you can predict with good accuracy when he will arrive. For example you end run around the convoy with a 10nm buffer so you can get right in front without being seen/hear/whatever and you dive and make your last fix... hmm 9nm away at 9 kts, they should be overhead in 60 min. So dive to 300+' and fast forward time for 50 minutes, then listen on the 'phones for the DD fly over and wait for the merchant racket to spread to at least 60 deg of the scope.
Stalking a convoy over the better part of the day and getting really accurate bearing/ranges from around 15nm can give you their speed to the 1/10th of a knot and their course to 2 degrees. I've settled in their path with enough accuracy that I had to move away from their courseline to get outside minimum range.
Another trick is if you know their course you can always put yourself on a heading that's exactly 90 degress from theirs and keep moving around back and forward at 1 kt until they stay exactly on your 90/270 relative bearing. Unfortunately that makes you the biggest sonar target so it's best to do that early then turn directly facing or away from the convoy to make a tiny shilloutte and do a timed 90 deg turn back into firing position just as the lead DD passes. I like to keep my nose pointed right at the lead DD so I always make the minimal outline to him as he passes so close.
Does anyone know if a DD passing rihgt over a 0kt, silent running sub at 300' will suddenly decide to pick you up on sonar? I have a feeling that even with a 0 hydrophone signature (possible?) that the DD magically knows I'm under him and he might wanna ping me.