[Puster Bill]

Originally Posted by rjalbert32

Ok, so I tell the hydrophone guy to follow the closest contact, and he keeps telling me the coordinates of a ship, bearing so and so, speed so and so, now how do I tell how far away the ship is so I know when I should launch the torpedo???

Also, I am in auto shoot mode, so how do I set the solution to the ship since I don't have it lined up in the uzo or periscope view???

You may have to be in manual mode to do this.

You can raise the periscope up just slightly and make sure it is aligned with the front (or rear) of the boat.

If you are on a perpendicular course to the target, it's a pretty easy calculation to figure out the lead angle for a given target speed and given torpedo speed. You can use the Kriegsmarine Whiz-wheel to figure it out using the instructions available in this thread:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=126824

You could also pre-calculate the values and put them in a table for use. This works because the lead angle will always be the same, regardless of distance. Just make sure that you put the appropriate AOB (90 port or 90 starboard) into the vorhaltrechner, otherwise you will miss.

Of course, using this method you could fire on a sonar bearing, but that's ahistorical: Unlike US sub commanders, who actually trained to shoot on hydrophone bearings before the war, Germans u-boat commanders didn't do that, at least up until the TYPE XXI/XXIII. Even the Americans stopped doing it fairly quickly once the war started: They couldn't hit anything that way.