Simultaneous hits

[sublynx]

In some situations it's advantageous to try to hit multiple targets at the same time. For example you might be attacking a small convoy and want to hit the front escort and a merchant. If you hit the merchant first the destroyer is likely to turn hard towards you with initial maximum speed. That makes it a difficult target, if one uses manual targeting. If you hit the destroyer first, the merchant will start weaving making it a little bit harder to hit as well.

So it would be good to launch the first torpedoes to the target that is farther away. But when to launch the second batch of torpedoes?

Method a). You can calculate the running times on the navigation map - takes a lot of time
Method b). You can feed the ranges of the targets to TDC in Attack Map (F6) and see how long the torpedo run takes and calculate the difference - takes some time
Option c). Alternatively you can use the chart underneath:



The lower line represents the range to the targets, the middle line tells you approximately how long a torpedo running at 30 knots takes to run the range given underneath. The upper line tells you approximately how long a torpedo running at 40 knots takes to reach the target at the given range.

Example: Target A is at a range of 700 meters, B at 1600 meters. You decide to attack with a torpedo running at a speed of 30 knots. You see from the chart that the torpedo takes about 40 seconds to run 700 meters and about 100 seconds to run 1600 meters.



100 seconds - 40 seconds = 60 seconds. That means you should launch the first set of torpedoes at the more distant target, wait 60 seconds and then launch the torpedoes against the closer target.

Here's a link to the tga I've made:

http://www.2shared.com/file/qJKfwYpL/laufzeit.html

If you find it useful you can print it out or mod it into the game.



Take note however that the picture only works if the courses of the targets are the same, that is they are moving in a convoy or a task force. Different courses means that you would need to use method a) or b).