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Originally Posted by Keelbuster
I'm sure this topic has been beaten to death over the years, but it still bugs me. I'm not sure what the advantage was of an electric torp over a steam torp in real life, because I imagine that a torpedo launch (and it's entire subsequent run) would be such a noisy event that escorts would most certainly hear it, and hence get a good bearing to the attacker from it. Like - in real life, at torpedo launch, I imagine that ships would start evasion right away following a 'Torpedo in the water' report. I wonder if there's some way to mod this into SH3??
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During the Second World War, escort sonar could only hear down a narrow cone, normally about ten degrees across. The operator could rotate the sonar apparatus to listen in different directions, but he couldn't listen to the entire ocean at once. This isn't the case now, since modern sonars use hundreds of fixed hydrophones in large arrays, and display screens can depict incoming data in realtime, but in WWII, this limitation was a huge issue.
The main advantage of an electric torpedo is that they didn't leave a foamy wake which basically said "go down the bearing this wake and you'll find me soon enough!"