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Originally Posted by siber
If I may ask one more question: When firing two or four torp salvos, how do you decide the spread angle? Three in a salvo means one straight down the middle, but two/four means that there's not a 'centre' shot...
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Here's my take on it. Don't worry about firing an official 'spread' a la TDC. Use your Periscope/UZO to do the angle for you. If your range is right or close, then by aiming at the very bow of the ship, and the very stern, counts as a spread. If you're really unsure about the target's speed, aim even ahead of it (or behind it). I almost never do this. For ships travelling slow and medium speeds, the length of the ship makes it cover a good spread angle. Thus, sending a shot to the bow and a shot to the stern counts as an effective spread - as I said earlier, you may get both, you may get one (if you pegged it as too slow or too fast). Don't worry about having one 'straight down the middle'. Technically, the one straight down the middle is your best estimate of the target speed. For a small merchant, who's length is relatively short, it's wise just to fire a single torp straight down the middle - this is your best chance of hitting it.
There is an advanced method that i've started using. I'll get a minimum estimate - like - I _know_ for sure, that the ship is going faster than 6kts, but I don't have time to get a better estimate. So I'll set her for 6 kts, then aim a center shot, and a bow shot. That way, if he's doing 7 or 8, the center will hit stern and the bow will hit center. If i'm really unsure, i'll put a third shot in front of the ship, just for the weird chance he's actually doing 10. This kind of uncertaintly rarely happens for slow and medium ships because the speeds are so tightly bounded (like, your sonar man will tell you if it's slow or medium, giving you a 2-3 kt margin on the actual speed). If it's a fast ship, then it gets tricky because fast is everything > 12 (i think). So, you set it to your guess, then fire shots ahead of the ship to cover the different possibilities. Another way to do this is to keep the aim centerred, then change the speed in your TDC for each shot, to account for each possibility. I do this sometimes if one misses completely - jack the speed up by at least two knots and fire another - it usually hits.
The main message is, you don't need to use the TDC spread. It's not faster, and you don't really have to compute the angle because the UZO/peri does it for you. Now if you want to, for realism reasons etc, then, well, someone will have to walk you through the trig problem you can solve on your map.