Dude it'a a dud

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

What are the odds that all four of your torps are duds? My last four Mk. 10 torps fired at a slow moving Modern Composite Freighter and....... Deck gun is useless. Threw cans of Campbell Cream of Leftover soup at it. Got cans of Wanton Soup thrown back at me.:rotfl:

[AVGWarhawk]

Pretty good chance they will all be duds. One patrol of mine, 8 out of 24 torps worked. I really understood the frustration of the RL skippers at that point

[pythos]

If done corrctly by the devs, you need to NOT have a nice 90 degree intercept torpedo run. In real life this caused the trigering mechanism to be crushed by the impact before it could do it's job and set off the torpex (or whichever "active" ingredient was in the nose of the torp.) It was found the "imperfect" torpedo runs resulted in the torpedo working. Early torpedoes also had faulty depth keeping so they were set to run higher than the draft of the boat. Then to top it all off, the magnetic influence trigger was a failure, so after a while torpedoes were set to run on the surface until about 1943.

[AVGWarhawk]

Most of the 24 duds on that patrol were under runners. I just installed RFB and was interested in the torpedo failure rate so I turned on the outside view so I could watch. In fact, a majority of the failures were under runners, maybe two duds from poor impact. It was the start of the war and personally, I think this part of the game is represented very well. I remember one chapter of a book on the USS Rasher were the sub was nothing but dud after dud.

[CaptJodan]

I recently installed RFB on my system and allowed for duds myself. And I sure am getting the feeling of annoyance that real skippers had. Last night's patrol I came across two unescorted tankers and a large freighter. Sunk one tanker and the freighter, but the other tanker took 3 duds. Set up for another run and fired 6 torpedoes, because I didn't want to do this end round again. I watched in external camera in disbelief as each and every one bounced off. Did an end around, fired 4 aft tubes which were also duds. Cursed vigoriously, did yet another end around because this tanker wasn't getting away, and with my last three fish, I fired and had 3 solid impacts.

What really annoys is that when you get back to base, there's no one there to scream at regarding faulty torpedoes. I want someone's head fired out my torpedo tube! (It would probably be more effective)

[AVGWarhawk]

Hehe CaptJordan....one of the parts of RFB that I love. I'm just wondering if they get better in 43' :hmm: I will have to ask SWDW if they are set up like that in the mod. I'm betting they are.

[John Channing]

Not sure if it is a part of RFB.

I have noticed that, since 1.04, I am getting Duds and Deep Runners in '44-45 and I never got them before. I mean never...

JCC

[CaptJodan]

I started a campaign in mid 43, and found the torps more reliable there, though not 100% reliable (as one would expect). How many instances of duds do you get in 44/45 compared to successes? It "seems" more right than it was before (from all accounts of early war I've read, they really were this horrible, but I'm less sure about how many failures there were in the later years) but that's just a gut feeling based on no evidence whatsoever.

In early 43 now based in Brisbane (which means an easy resupply point near Guadalcanal). I hope to see mid-late 43 with more reliable torpedoes.

[DavyJonesFootlocker]

The Japanese had the best torps in the war. Wish I could get my hands on some. On a side note. I find it unrealistic the turning radii of some ships in the game. It took 3 seconds for a destroyer going 35 knts to change direction. Is there a mod out there to fix this?

[seaniam81]

wait until you start getting some mk. 18's then you'll have some circle runners. I was playing last night and a mk. 18 started to turn back on me. I wasn't fast enough to get out of it's way and it hit me right in the engine room. I was so glad that torpedo was a dud. Its the first time i haven't cursed the torpedo shop when my torpedo failed to explode.

[CaptJodan]

Originally Posted by seaniam81

wait until you start getting some mk. 18's then you'll have some circle runners. I was playing last night and a mk. 18 started to turn back on me. I wasn't fast enough to get out of it's way and it hit me right in the engine room. I was so glad that torpedo was a dud. Its the first time i haven't cursed the torpedo shop when my torpedo failed to explode.

I've had some Mk 14s circle on me. Ironically, either they seem to do it when I actually am looking in the external camera at my torp (something I don't always do) or otherwise I must never get hit by them, because I've never been hit by my own torp as far as I know.

Of course, when I see it happen (someone should really call out "torpedo running hot, NOT STRAIGHT and who knows if it's normal, it's a mk 14 and the year is still 1942..." just so I know the torp is coming my way), I emergency deep my boat. Those things are scary.

During the first year and a half of the America's involvment in the war - a large percent of the skippers of U-boats just sat in their subs under the water fleeing from engagment with the Japanese. They were weeded out slowly. They were mainly officers who had joined the navy in the 20s who had wanted a career in a peace time navy - attending white uniform officer parties and seeking for peace time methods for advancment.

SO screw the torpedoes - if you want a real realistic dud, just cower in your chair and take your sub down deep and find excuses why it would be a bad idea to engage the enemy.

[Zero Niner]

Originally Posted by Wave Skipper

During the first year and a half of the America's involvment in the war - a large percent of the skippers of U-boats just sat in their subs under the water fleeing from engagment with the Japanese. They were weeded out slowly. They were mainly officers who had joined the navy in the 20s who had wanted a career in a peace time navy - attending white uniform officer parties and seeking for peace time methods for advancment.

SO screw the torpedoes - if you want a real realistic dud, just cower in your chair and take your sub down deep and find excuses why it would be a bad idea to engage the enemy.

I don't think that's a fair comment for pre-war skippers. Submarine doctrine and training before the war emphasised drills and attack methods that were designed so as to minimise exposure to danger. For instance, in this book I'm reading a book about Mush Morton who skippered the Wahoo, and O'Kane who was the Wahoo's XO before he commanded the Tang, I read somewhere that pre-war attacking from periscope depth was a big no-no in the USN's books, or something like that. Pre-war doctrine even taught subs to fire based on sonar bearings only (iirc).

It's not that the men were incompetent (although some undoubtedly were), it's just that the training they received and the doctrine imparted to them were completely unsuited for the war when it happened.

Don't forget too that US subs were supposed to be scouts for the fleet, not raiders going specifically after enemy merchant shipping. With the crippling of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour, I guess they had a rethink on what subs should do.

Many of the successful war time skippers we read about were products of a younger generation, who were not exposed, or at best minimally exposed, to pre-war training and doctrine.

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by Wave Skipper

During the first year and a half of the America's involvment in the war - a large percent of the skippers of U-boats just sat in their subs under the water fleeing from engagment with the Japanese. They were weeded out slowly. They were mainly officers who had joined the navy in the 20s who had wanted a career in a peace time navy - attending white uniform officer parties and seeking for peace time methods for advancment.

America had U-Boats? Never heard that term used for US navy subs. Guess that makes Patton a panzer general too.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by DavyJonesFootlocker

The Japanese had the best torps in the war. Wish I could get my hands on some. On a side note. I find it unrealistic the turning radii of some ships in the game. It took 3 seconds for a destroyer going 35 knts to change direction. Is there a mod out there to fix this?

How big of a direction change was it? Most destroyers could turn anywhere from 180 degrees all the way to 360 degrees per minute at 35 knots.