Various questions related to target distance

[Steeemer]

I am brand new to the game and rather than focusing on defeating enemies, I have been focusing on the basic mechanics and skills for each role in the sub.

I feel like I have a pretty solid handle on each at this point.

After going through some scenarios on my own it is clear that the sub has a somewhat limited range under water before it will need to resurface to recharge batteries or refill air tanks. Also, the sub is notably slower under electric motors.

My questions are related to the distance to target:

- What is a reasonable range to successfully fire a torpedo and consistently hit?

- What is your strategy for getting close enough to the target under diesel before submerging with full batteries and air tanks?

I suspect that I have been trying to get too close to the targets before firing.

Thank you in advance for any help.

[Onkel Neal]

Welcome to Subsim.

- What is a reasonable range to successfully fire a torpedo and consistently hit? I prefer to close to within 1200m, anything farther and I use a spread.

- What is your strategy for getting close enough to the target under diesel before submerging with full batteries and air tanks? The most effective is the end-around tactic, you drive your sub on the surface at Full Speed, passing around the convoy, staying far enough away that you can barely see them so they cannot see you. Then once you get out ahead of their track, you cross over in front, slow and submerged and let them come to you.

I suspect that I have been trying to get too close to the targets before firing.

[Steeemer]

Thank you. This is helpful.

[Aktungbby]

Steeemer!

What is your strategy for getting close enough to the target under diesel before submerging with full batteries and air tanks?

MY PREFERRED METHOD IS TO SNEAK UP ON THE CONVOY AT NIGHT FROM THE REAR OTTO KRETSCHMER STYLE AND GET WITH IN 500 YARDS(MINDFUL ALWAYS OF THE EELS' ARMING DISTNCE OF 300 YARDS) DECKS AWASH, WITHIN THE CONVOY WITH THE ESCORTS ON THE OUTSIDE. GET DIRECTLY BEHIND TARGET ONE AND FIRE AT HIS STERN THEN DIVE TO PERISCOPE DEPTH AND BEGIN A SLOW TURN IN THE VESSEL COLUMN TO PORT OR STARBOARD-YOUR OPTION: FIRiNG THE REMAINING 5 EELS AS U BEAR( SCOPE ON ZERO-NO NEED FOR A LOT OF TDC WORK; JUST AIM THE U-BOAT ITSELF) ON A NEARBY TARGET'S BOW. USE STEAM EELS SET ON HIGH SPEED IF POSSIBLE. THE ESCORTS WILL BEGIN TO RESPOND BUT THE CONVOY ITSELF WILL INTERFERE WITH THAT. WHEN ALL TUBES ARE EXPENDED: GO DEEP, EVADE, AND WHEN THE CONVOY AND ESCORTS ARE GONE, RESURFACE, RELOAD, AND FINISH OFF ANY CRIPPLES OR STRAGGLERS WITH THE DECK GUN. RELOAD EXTERIOR EELS AND GO AFTER THE REMAINING CONVOY OR SEEK ANOTHER...... https://time.com/5772665/uboat-wargames/ <REQUIRED READING!

One of WATU’s first tasks was to restage a battle from a few weeks earlier, in December 1941, in which the British ships had successfully hunted three U-boats. Roberts and his team believed that this, the battle for convoy HG.76, held the secrets they were searching for. The team arranged 48 ships in 12 columns. Then they added the tracks of the three U-boats known to have participated in the battle, U-434, 574 and 131.
The stage set, Roberts began to move the convoy, which spread across six white lines on the floor to represent its six-mile width, in two-minute intervals and at a simulated rate of ten knots. Each move was made in precisely the same pattern as the actual escort a few weeks earlier.
Blow by blow, Roberts imitated the action, as per the official reports. Seeing the battle from a crow’s-nest perspective above the board, a question formed in his mind. If the U-boats were firing from outside the perimeter of the convoy, as was widely believed, how had HMS Annavore, which was in the center of the convoy, been sunk? Might it be possible, he wondered, that the U-boat had attacked the ship from inside the columns of the convoy? phoning his superior ADM HORTON, Roberts explained who he was and asked Horton if he might be permitted to ask a question. During the last war, Roberts asked, would you ever have crept among the ships of a convoy to fire a torpedo?
“Of course,” replied Horton. “It is the only way of pressing home an attack.” “Thank you, sir,” said Roberts, then hung up Between them, Roberts and the Wrens began to plot different scenarios that might have enabled the U-boat to sneak into the convoy without being detected. Only one checked out: the U-boat must have entered the columns of the convoy from astern. And it must have done so on the surface of the water, where it was able to travel at a faster speed than the ships it pursued. By approaching from astern, where the lookouts rarely checked, the U-boat would be able to slip inside the convoy undetected, fire at close range, then submerge in order to get away.

THEY DON'T CALL ME 'SILENT AKTUNG' FER NUTHIN'

[Fidd]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Welcome to Subsim.

- What is a reasonable range to successfully fire a torpedo and consistently hit? I prefer to close to within 1200m, anything farther and I use a spread.

(snip)

Blimey that's close Onkel, I should think my average range is 3500-4500! I prefer to attack from one side of the convoy having got ahead and then slipped past the oncoming escorts to just inside one edge of the convoy. On the overtake, I've listed all the angles were good solutions are possible and once past the front escorts I'll turn onto one of these and wait. The benefit of this is that there's plenty of time to nail both AOB and speed accurately, permitting long range fire, which in turn enables you to put more sea-room and depth between the escorts and the U-boat, and if operating in the North sea, find a deeper part of the puddle to hide in! I usually plan an escape vector before I even fire, typically +/- 60 degrees of the convoy heading.

There's no right or wrong way of doing this, find a system that works for you.

[derstosstrupp]

Neal’s spot on with German doctrine - single shots below 1000 if at all possible, otherwise spreads. Eels are expensive!

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by derstosstrupp

Neal’s spot on with German doctrine - single shots below 1000 if at all possible, otherwise spreads. Eels are expensive!

indeed, "one eel, one ship" as 'Silent Otto' put it. Sink or cripple with one eel! then finish with the deck gun when safe to do so. Penetrating inside the convoy, the range to the ship columns is under 1000 meters and that, in conjunction with steam eels set on high-40 knots- practically insures a hit at 5-600 meters and a even a miss will often hit a overlap vessel in the adjoing ship column. NOTE: It is also
exceedingly feasible to get ahead of a convoy as Onkel suggests, and approach it dead on, allowing the convoy to pass overhead. Rise to periscope depth when under the convoy and wreak havok from within, expending all eels: then again finish off the crips and reload when the convoy moves on. EDIT:

https://time.com/5772665/uboat-wargames/ <REQUIRED READING!

THIS JUST IN TODAY'S WSJ LITERARY SECTION: THE INVENTION OF THE RASPBERY(MANEUVER) A GAME OF BIRDS AND WOLVES 309 PGS. IN A NUTSHELLL>

 

On a freezing morning in 1942, a 19-year-old naval recruit named Janet Okell showed up for her first day of work at Derby House, an office complex in war-torn Liverpool. She was led into a vast room that looked like a cross between a gymnasium and a children’s nursery. The floor, covered with brown linoleum, was divided into squares by white grid lines and strewn with pieces of chalk and balls of string. Young women in white shirts, ties and trousers, their sleeves rolled up, were down on their knees moving wooden models of ships and submarines around the floor. It was like a giant chess game.
Actually it was more a game of Battleship. The floor represented the Atlantic Ocean and the players, working in teams, were re-enacting sea battles as a training exercise for convoy officers, showing them how to sight German U-boats. Canvas sheets were hung about the room, and the officers stood behind them, observing the proceedings through peepholes that simulated a distant perspective. The players took turns firing torpedoes and dropping depth charges, the U-boats diving and surfacing to make their attacks as the escort ships wheeled around in great arcs. Decoders at Bletchley Park provided the game with up-to-date information on the location of enemy craft.
The German submarine fleet was operating in “wolf packs,” a strategy devised by Adm. Karl Dönitz that had become a lethal threat to merchant ships bringing vital supplies of oil, raw materials and food across the Atlantic. The U-boat terror, Winston Churchill wrote later, was “the only thing that ever frightened me.” At the end of 1941 he called an emergency meeting and asked a retired navigational strategist, Capt. Gilbert Roberts, to create a new department named the Western Approaches Tactical Unit. Roberts quickly assembled a team of inexperienced, bright and very young Wrens (members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service) to work with him at Derby House. Women were not particularly welcome in the navy and some of the officers coming in for training sessions resented being told what to do by girls barely out of school who had probably never even been to sea. They were to change their minds.
Roberts wondered how, if the U-boats had been firing from outside the convoy, they’d managed to sink ships at the center. His team ran a new game to find out. They concluded that the submarines were entering convoys from behind at night, unobserved. Once they were inside they would torpedo a ship and then dive down to the bottom.
With the help of two Wrens, Roberts plotted a new counterattack: pinpoint the submerged U-boat by triangulated sonar and destroy it with depth charges. Janet Okell, playing a convoy escort, scored a direct hit. Her fellow player, Jean Laidlaw, named this maneuver the Raspberry (a “razz of contempt aimed at Hitler”). It was to prove its worth over and over.
IN SHORT, ADM DÖNITZ'S WOLFPACKS....OUTDONE... & LAID LOW IF U WILL! BY 'RAZZIE WRËNS!'
Roberts wondered how, if the U-boats had been firing from outside the convoy, they’d managed to sink ships at the center. His team ran a new game to find out. They concluded that the submarines were entering convoys from behind at night, unobserved. Once they were inside they would torpedo a ship and then dive down to the bottom.
With the help of two Wrens, Roberts plotted a new counterattack: pinpoint the submerged U-boat by triangulated sonar and destroy it with depth charges. Janet Okell, playing a convoy escort, scored a direct hit. Her fellow player, Jean Laidlaw, named this maneuver the Raspberry (a “razz of contempt aimed at Hitler”). It was to prove its worth over and over. Simon Parkin, a contributing writer to the New Yorker and the author of “Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline” (2015), has written a thoroughly absorbing book, drawing upon archives and oral histories. It reads like a thriller, with its accounts of nerve-wracking battles, extreme weather, icebergs, and ships sunk in a matter of minutes. (DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg’s company, has optioned the film rights.) Mr. Parkin brings into focus the heroic lives of Wrens whose arduous work was not only overlooked but also kept an “official secret” for 50 years. The women who played the game might never have boarded a ship, but their work saved the lives of countless who did.
I was interested to learn that one of the officers training at Derby House was Cmdr. Nicholas Monsarrat, whose bestselling war novel “The Cruel Sea” (1951) gave me childhood nightmares. Mr. Parkin writes that it was seven years after the war before Monsarrat could bring himself to touch the water with his toes when he went to the beach. For him, and thousands of sailors on both sides of the conflict, the sea was a lethal monster.