Never thought this would work

[misha1967]

So there I was, in the middle of the Baltic, when finally I picked up a contact on the hydrophone. Full of zest and zeal, sturm und drang etc., I surface to give chase, only to find that the weather is blowing up a storm, the fog is so thick you can't see your finger if you stretch out your arm and it's raining on top of it.

Never one to give up, I put in a rough intercept course based on the info from the hydrophone and plow my way through the waves. Now, obviously I know that I won't be able to see the target unless I'm parked on her deck, so what to do?

That's when it struck me: Why not try a "fast 90", only instead of waiting for the target to appear in my crosshair, wait for the hydrophone guy to call out the same bearing that I have on the UZO with the gyro at "0?" If his bearing matches mine then, logically, the target would be in my crosshairs if I could see it, no?

So I set up a course perpendicular to the target's, guessed its speed to be the 10-11 kts they usually travel at when alone, programmed the TDC as usual with an AOB of 90 degrees, locked it in and turned the UZO until the gyro read "0". Then, when the hydrophone guy called out the 14 degrees my UZO was bearing at, I let loose with an eel and waited.

And I'll be buggered if it didn't hit!

Not something I'm going to try again if I can avoid it, but this time it worked.