Long distance torping

[ddiplock]

Hi guys, can anyone offer any tips on long distance torping? I know the manual says you should fire under 1000m for best results, but i'm kinda sick of always trying to jocky for the best firing position. and i've heard of some guys firing from 4000m out....but i'm guessing you gotta be GOOD to fire from that far out :P

I've done some long distance shots with the torp speed set on slow in the training mission because these seem to be the torp speeds i sometimes struggle with. I'm doing manual targeting by the way too

My last ship on the training mission, I fired from 1900mtrs out, and both torpedos despite me firing slightly "ahead" of the target in the periscope view sailed just aft of the targets props....JUST missing the ship. Either I went wrong in my solutution somewhere but i dont think i did. Here's what I do when manual shooting.

1. ID the target.
2. Mark point 1 on the map, wait 3 minutes & 15 secs and mark point 2, calculate target speed via distance between the two points and use nomograph to calculate target speed.

3. Calculate distance & AOB (in that order), input data....fire (with torp doors open too)

Any tips on long range torping fellow Kaleuns??

[onelifecrisis]

Check out

U-Jagd Tools

and

OLC GUI

[NealT]

The longer the distance you fire from, the more accurate you will need to be. You will also want to watch it for a longer time frame to establish the zig-zag pattern because that will throw things off as well.

Good Luck!

[Abd_von_Mumit]

ddiplock – Wazoo's manual targeting manual is your must-read (in fact I think anyone who wishes to target manually should start with Wazoo's text and learn 'his' methods first, before trying to use attack discs and other useful tools).

http://www.paulwasserman.net/SHIII/

[Pisces]

Originally Posted by ddiplock

Hi guys, can anyone offer any tips on long distance torping? I know the manual says you should fire under 1000m for best results, but i'm kinda sick of always trying to jocky for the best firing position. and i've heard of some guys firing from 4000m out....but i'm guessing you gotta be GOOD to fire from that far out :P

I've done some long distance shots with the torp speed set on slow in the training mission because these seem to be the torp speeds i sometimes struggle with. I'm doing manual targeting by the way too

My last ship on the training mission, I fired from 1900mtrs out, and both torpedos despite me firing slightly "ahead" of the target in the periscope view sailed just aft of the targets props....JUST missing the ship. Either I went wrong in my solutution somewhere but i dont think i did. Here's what I do when manual shooting.

1. ID the target.
2. Mark point 1 on the map, wait 3 minutes & 15 secs and mark point 2, calculate target speed via distance between the two points and use nomograph to calculate target speed.

3. Calculate distance & AOB (in that order), input data....fire (with torp doors open too)

Any tips on long range torping fellow Kaleuns??

I think 3 minutes 15 seconds isn't long enough to get a precise enough speed and course for a really long range shot. In 3min 15sec the speed is only shown per knot, no decimals. While you can easily set the speed in the TDC for every quarter knot or so.

The same goes for getting course. Because a range measurement has a certain range uncertainty (+-50m by Watch Officer), and also bearing has a certain uncertainty (1 degree is 280 meters wide at 16km distance ) you cannot rely on those short lines between plots to provide an accurate course/AOB. Patience pays in accuracy. I often track for atleast half an hour (don't multiply 3:15 by 10 as 3:15 is an approximation, 32min 24 sec is a more propper interval to get speed in knots/km as length of line).

To get an idea on how good your aim needs to be is to calculate the appearant length (in terms of degrees) of the target:

arctan (true_length/shoot_distance) (or a simple estimate : shoot_distance/ (60*true_length) )

The periscope lead angle is calculated by:

arcsine ( sin(AOB)* Vtarget/Vtorpedo )

Since you try to have AOB near 90 degrees you can replace sin(AOB) by 1. But a bad target course measurement (more than 10 deg difference) might just be enough to make AOB not equal to 90deg, and a shot to go bad when in combination with a somewhat crude speed. Anyway, you can see that for a good distant hit the error of periscope_lead is primarily based on target speed in a 90 degree situation. This error in lead angle (because uncertain target speed) must be smaller than the target's angular size or you will likely miss. I.e. if he's moving at 6 knots, +- 0.5 knots means +- 8-9 % difference from the true lead angle. Using a torpedo moving 30 knots (worst case) the propper target lead would be: arcsin(5/30)=arcsin(0.2)= 11.5 degrees. So if a target is 1 degree or smaller you can almost count on a sure miss if speed is not precise. Get that extra decimal for speed and you fare alot better. I assumed that the target has not detected you yet, because then the Zig-zagging will make matters even more worse.