Few random question about u-boats, both in game and in real life

[Thoth_already_in_use]

Hi everyone,

I've got time/patience to play seriously the SH3 with GWX super-mod (and some additional mods). And I've got a set of questions, which I put here not in particular order.

1. If I trust SH3, an U-boat has 4 officers. In real life how are their shifts are organized? I guess the WO is not essential all the time, so he could do something else, but NO and helmsman (not sure if I write it correctly) must be 100% of times on their place. How it worked?
2. How the sink tonnage are reported? If submarine attack a convoy, it is dangerous to wait and observe if target is really sink. Sure, submarine could hear explosion at impact, but how it knows (and reports to HQ) that the correct target is hit and it damaged/destroyed? In general how the kills has been confirmed?
3. The H.sie patch add a wolfpack mechanics, where player could report a found convoy. But shouldn't a sent coded message near convoy reveal submarine? If this message got intercepted by 3 ships, it could exactly determine the place.
4. How the problems with torpedo has been detected? I mean if there no explosion, how captain knows that it was an problem with detonator, or torpedo goes too deep or just misses completely?
5. In GWX there some convoys that have a battleships within, not acting as escort, and not screened. It is invention of game, or it happened in real life? Once I sink a HMS Rodney like this -- and that looks really unrealistic.
6. What is purpose of attack map screen in game? The TDC can be acceded from periscope, and without contact update the map do not provide any new information.
7. What mod make the explosions and sinking more spectacular and interesting? I remember in LSH 2015 it was a true fireworks -- and I want have same in GWX
8. The game randomly crashes at loading a save-game, starting a new one. It can crash 4 times in row, but loaded on the 5th and run remarkably stable afterwards without any modification. Is it known issue, and is there a log file somewhere which could show what causes the crash(for example some missing resources)?
9. I use MaGui interface, that has a calculator around periscope ocular (I don't remember its official name). It has two marks: s -- for speed measurement, but what is the 'x' mark?
10. In the same interface, there a calculator of time (zeit), how it works?

Hope these questions are not too random)

[Rhodes]

Hallo, to give you some help in a few of the questions.



1, u-boats had the CO and 3 WO, two were officers - the first and second watch officer and the third one was a NCO or a warrant officer (i think), that was also the navigator.

The watches were 4 hours each, starting at mid-night with the 1WO, possible one or two NCOs and crew man or just one NCO/petty-officer and 3 crew-man. I think the WO was always on duty, since he was the deck-officer.

When the boat was submerge, that could change, possible he could more free since the importance was on the navigator, the LI (chief-engineer) and the manage of the helm and depth control.

SH3 unfortunately does not have the helmsman figure, I think he had to be in station always also.



2, In the early years with night surface attack and even during the day, with unescorted and unarmed ships, sinks could be watch and recorded. If the target ship exploded completely because of the cargo that could be count has a serious sink. Latter, with the shift of submerge attacks, possible only if the CO had shoot 2 or 3 torpedo to a value target, all hits and if distance permitted, could watch the outcome before getting way. Or do the noise of the hit, explosions and sinking, could also, in their mind, count.

In reality, many reported sinks, were not. The torpedo exploded prematurely, the ship didn't sink so it was towed or manage to continue and was repaired.

And this happened with the English submarine service during the war also.



3, can not answer 100%, but in realife possible the wave lengths used by allies convoys and the u-boats were different. I think that a radio-operator of a ship if scanned all the bands could had pick up a code transition, but could it be done in time?



4, There is several reports of that, indicated the detonator failed when the torpedo hit, becuase of the sound made by hit. Same if the torpedo had hit ground, ended its course and sink exploding or not (here in shallow waters situations). Again, similar in both navies, since many times the English subs shoot salvoes and reported 2 explosions 2 duds, etc. And the explosions many times were not target hits.
With no explosion and certainty of a correct torpedo solution, a CO would probably think that was a indication of a torpedo malfunction and so, possible depth problem.


8, Failed save game loads are a bit of a russian roulette. To my experience, normally when I save a game and then have a ctd when loading, it is possibly do to some random factor. When saving i was near some unity that had not appeared in game or even cause the time-compression to stall a bit.

Or do to some mod that cause to much ram used and since my PC is old, still 32bit system, I point to that. Also, I have more problems hen playing with the VIIc, since more graphic and add-on mods are for it. When playing with VIIb or IX, I have always a stable game, saves and loads. And no CTD during the game.



9, I think it is for the angle of the bow.

[Sailor Steve]

[QUOTE=Thoth_already_in_use;2565850]
1. Answered quite well by Rhodes, so no need to elaborate.

2. The companies that owned the ships kept their own records, and the insurance company Lloyds Of London published records of ship losses. German spies in Allied countries could read the newspapers. And ships sent distress signals. All this information could be collated by BdU and OKM and then be compared with claimed sinkings. Of course they still got it wrong a lot, but that's what happens in wartime.

3. Usually the boat would pull out of sight of the convoy before sending in the contact report. The escorts might have an idea that an attack was coming, but not when or where.

Just so you know, it only takes two ships to determine the exact source point of a transmission.

4. Answered by Rhodes.

5. Surface raiders were a very real problem in the early part of the war. German merchant ships would be given guns and sent out to sink or capture Allied ships. The only protection a convoy would have was a bigger, more powerful ship. These were usually older pre-WW1 battleships, which because of their age were not much good for anything else. No, they would probably not send Nelson or Rodney on that kind of duty.

6. In real life the Attack Map was used to plot the positions and movements of all the ships the u-boat could see at the time of the attack. The captain would look at each ship and give its angle and range, and the plotting crew would mark it all down. Unfortunately the Attack Map in the game doesn't work that way, and it's better to use the Navigation Map for those functions. It would be nice if it worked correctly, but it doesn't.

7. There are a couple of mods that do that. Unfortunately I can't think of their names right now. Sorry.

8. Game crashes can be caused by mod conflicts, by not having enough RAM, and by several other problems. First, how much RAM do you have? It should be at least 4 GB. Second, do you have one of the variants of the 4 GB Patch installed? This lets you access more of the available RAM, and sudden changes in the amount of memory being used are less likely to cause problems. I don't know much beyond that. Hopefully someone will come along who does.

Sorry, I can't help with the last two.

[Thoth_already_in_use]

Thanks for the replays)


2. If the shipment loss was rendered public, was it the a source of disinformation/propaganda? Could the public reports of insurance companies be manipulated by army -- it was a war after all.


3. I guess, the wavelengths used by German army communications should be known with some precision. I've heard that England get trouble to decode it, but not intercept it. And escort ships could easily monitor it -- signal should be strong enough to reach BdU. So such transmissions could put the escorts at least on high alert. And can you only with 2 ships determine the side of transmission? I think you need a third ship to completely resolve positions.


6. So Navmap is useless in game. I wish there a way to plot automatically the ships using the TDC info. Like update contacts option, but based on player estimation.



8. RAM is not problem, and I have H.sie patch with 4GB. That helped me yesterday, is un-setting the folder as read-only. Even if I never set it, and it is not a system folder. A mystery of windows)

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Thoth_already_in_use

2. If the shipment loss was rendered public, was it the a source of disinformation/propaganda? Could the public reports of insurance companies be manipulated by army -- it was a war after all.

Possibly, but there were spies everywhere, on both sides, and the reports could be compared with distress calls. Also a spy in one port could relay a pretty good idea of what ships departed in a convoy, and the spy at the destination could report what ships put into port, and their reports could be repaired.

And can you only with 2 ships determine the side of transmission? I think you need a third ship to completely resolve positions.

No, it only takes two. The radioman on my ship draws a line on the chart showing the direction of the signal. The radioman on the other ship does the same. The third leg of the triangle is the distance between our two ships. If we have them accurately drawn on the chart, then the point at which our two lines cross is where the signal came from. Before the days of radar and GPS airplanes used to navigate this same way. They built radio transmitter beacons all over the land, and the pilot could use his direction finder (the loop under the nose or on top of the plane, just like the u-boat one) to get the direction of one station and then a different one. He had a chart with all the beacons marked on it. Once he had the two directions he could draw lines on the chart. Then he could compare the distance between the beacons and that would give him the distance to both of them, which in turn would give him his exact position. It only takes two.

As far as plotting goes, remember that all officers and men went through weeks or even months of training to learn their jobs. I was just a radioman, and I spent four months at the US Navy's 'A' school for radio. Even then I learned more on board ship doing it every day. And it also took me almost no time at all to forget everything once I got out.

[Pisces]

9. x would be a scratch mark to help with the 2 magnification settings. The sine of the angle it is near should be the same as the lower magnification divided by the higher magnification. I don't remember at the top of my head what the placement is, or what magnification levels MaGui uses. But initially it was at 14.5 degrees, equal to 0.25. Or the reduction from 6x to 1.5x. In low magnification (1.5x) you would place the observed target height against that mark. And the propper value would be above the 90 degree mark as if you were looking in high magnification mode (6x). For the calculation of the AOB while looking in low power magnification another turn from 90 to 14.5 (or the other way around, I forgot) was needed to get the proper result. (I'm at work so I can't fully describe the procedure. Also I need to dig up the finer details from a memory.)

10. Can you show a screenshot? It's been a while since I looked at the Magui interface. I can imagine 2 wheel indicators with a time scale used for calculation (of speed).

[LGN1]

Hi,


concerning 3: Look for 'High-frequency direction finding' or 'Huff-Duff'.


Short summary: It was not so easy to determine accurate positions in the beginning of the war due to technical limitations and short signals (<20s).


Best, LGN1

[Thoth_already_in_use]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

No, it only takes two. The radioman on my ship draws a line on the chart showing the direction of the signal.

Originally Posted by LGN1

concerning 3: Look for 'High-frequency direction finding' or 'Huff-Duff'.
Short summary: It was not so easy to determine accurate positions in the beginning of the war due to technical limitations and short signals (<20s).

I wasn't aware that you can determine the direction only with one measurement point, but using the loops make sense. But still, the presence of uboat nearby (source of radio signal in coded german) should put the escort in some kind of alert state. At least to call an air support (if available) to investigate. Or I still missing something.

I remember that the important air operation are conducted in radio-silence just to avoid an early warning.

The question in the same vibe. Submarine can't send a message while submerged, but can it receive one? Probably not, so how the BdU orders are communicated to them -- are they repeated until the submarine acknowledge it?

Originally Posted by Pisces

9. x would be a scratch mark to help with the 2 magnification settings.
10. Can you show a screenshot? It's been a while since I looked at the Magui interface. I can imagine 2 wheel indicators with a time scale used for calculation (of speed).

Thanks. I will try when I get home.
Concerning the Zeit calculator, it is on backside of attack disk screenshot in this tread.
Speed and time estimations are a headache for me, so I'm really interested in everything with zeit written on it.

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by Thoth_already_in_use

...
Concerning the Zeit calculator, it is on backside of attack disk screenshot in this tread.
Speed and time estimations are a headache for me, so I'm really interested in everything with zeit written on it.

Yeah, that is used to calculate Time,speed, distance and angle problems. The scales works for multiplying and dividing numbers. A full loop around the scale multiplies by 10 (clockwise) or divides by 10 (counterclockwise). You have to keep a mental note of how the decimal mark moves as you multiply or divide with larger and smaller orders of magnitude.

From the inside out you have the following scales:

Inner moving disk, Time: scale in seconds (small font on peach background) going over in minutes-seconds (large font, white background). Personally I customized mine physical Attackdisk with marks for an hour scale. The placement of 1 hour is equivalent to 6(0) minutes and 36(00) seconds). The pointer (thin red line) is located at 1 second and is equivalent to 10 seconds, 100 seconds (1m40s) and 1000 seconds (16m40s)

Middle moving disk: distance and speed
inner scale: distance in meters (or speed in meters per second)
middle scale: distance in nautical mile (or speed in knots)
outer scale: same as inner scale

Outer/base disk: angle
This is the angle according to a sine curve. It shows angle values from 90 to about 6 degrees. But they also represent the same sine values for the complement of the angle (180 degrees -angle). The 90 degrees mark is unity (1), as sin(90)=1.0. However the same mark is equivalent to 5.74 degrees (when approached counterclockwise from the right), as sin(5.74) = 0.1 And would also be equivalent to 0.573 degrees (as sin(0.573)= 0.01) Unfortunately due to space limitations the scale from 5.74 to 0.573 and smaller isn't drawn. It could be very useful for certain calculations like torpedo lead angle which can result in such small angles.

As you can see on the screenshot of the Magui mod-thread the time arrow is pointing to 1.95 nautical mile or 1.95 knots. You can immediately see on the adjacent linked scale that this is equivalent to just over 1(.000) meter per second). 1.95nm*1852m /3600s= 1.003m

Similarly when you look at the 10 and 1-00 mark on the time disk you can see that such a speed makes 60-ish meters in 1 minute, and 600 meters in 10 minutes. Here is where keeping mind of the decimal point shifting becomes important. It takes 1 full turn clockwise to indicate distance in 10 seconds. Another 3/4 turn to multiplies by 6 to indicate the distance in 60 seconds (1-00). Another subsequent full turn adds another zero if you wanted to know the distance in 10 minutes. Or just look across whichever time interval you want to know the distance for.

There are a whole bunch of calculation techniques using these scales, by aligning certain values to one another and looking across to other scales. There should be several threads about this device. In the download section there should also be a sort of manual describing these calculations. I personally made a physical wheel out of cardboard pizza boxes. And added a free pointer across all scales. Once you get the hang of the order of motions required you'll do them quicker than with a digital calculator. Just be aware of those decimal point mess-ups.

[Pisces]

As for time-speed-distance calculator. There is another movable tool on the map screen above the officer commands. It's has the wider tab. It's called a 'nomograph'. Place it somewhere on the map.

You'll notice 3 scales in units of time, distance and speed. Make sure you know 2 out of 3 of those. The one you don't know is the one this tool wil calculate.

Use the line tool and draw a line completely across it. Do not make the line end on the tool initially. As you won't be able to grab it with the tool in the way.

Grab 1 endpoint of the line. Re-position it on either the outermost left or right scale at the value that you know.

Grab the other endpoint and drag it so that the other known scale is intersected at the 2nd known value.

The line should now cross the unknown scale of the time,distance,speed problem. Read that value.

The line is likely to end up diagonaly. This is correct for the calculation. It does not have to be perfectly horizontal.

BTW, this is not the second (circular) dial that I mentioned in my other post. That one is the stopwatch background with U-jagd on it. It is used to determine target speed: Put periscope vertical line in front of target and reduce speed to 0. Or if you want to keep moving forward turn the periscope to bow (or stern) and turn the boat to get the view in front of the target bow and stop the turn completely. Start the stopwatch when the target bow begins to cross the vertical periscope line. The time is stopped when the target finishes moving through the vertical periscope line with it's stern. (the precise point may be out of sight) One of the curves (green, blue, red, yellow) is chosen to match the target length (75m, 200m, 150m, 100m) as close as possible. The second hand points to the target speed for that curve. If the target length is between those of the curve then take the average of the speeds of the nearest ones. (in terms of length; be mindfull that the colors are in a strange order)

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Thoth_already_in_use

I wasn't aware that you can determine the direction only with one measurement point, but using the loops make sense. But still, the presence of uboat nearby (source of radio signal in coded german) should put the escort in some kind of alert state. At least to call an air support (if available) to investigate. Or I still missing something.

Yes, the escorts should be at battle stations when they think a u-boat is in the area, and ready for action. That's one of the deficiencies of the game. There are quite a few places where it could be better.

[Thoth_already_in_use]

Originally Posted by Pisces

As for time-speed-distance calculator. There is another movable tool on the map screen above the officer commands. It's has the wider tab. It's called a 'nomograph'. Place it somewhere on the map.

I know it, but I don't like it too much. Because of log scale and lack of fine graduation it is difficult to make fine measurement. And for approximative ones, the speed tables are much faster. Actually I use the discs around periscope ocular -- but still need to test how accurate it can be.
And I found my old notes about 4-bearing method -- so I don't really need these calculators (but they are fun to use).
And thanks for the manual)


Another 2 questions, now about the TDC. Does TDC takes into account the time that torpedo is expulsed from tube and the time needed to turn, or should I estimate this time manually?

The distance dial is there to correct the parallax. Does it updates when I move periscope like other dials? Imagine that I take measurement at 150* and estimated distance of 3 km. Then I want to shoot at 45* and 1.5km. Should I update distance or it would be done automatically? (I've just realized I dont't have degrees mark on keyboard, I will use *, sorry about this).

[Rhodes]

Distance is not updated in the sh3 and real life TDC used in u-boats. Contrasty of the TDC used in the fleet boats and in SH4.

But, I think, if the other variables are right, the distance will not matter per see, since if the target is 2km, torpedo time to get hit would be 2m (roughly speaking and for example), but if the distance is less or more, it would just take less or more for you see the hit.