Radar questions

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

WWII submarine skippers agreed and operated accordingly, as I've already shown.

Certainly Enright did, and very successfully. But others,, IIRC, were more circumspect. I don't recall the specific references, but I remembrr a couple of first-person accounts where the possibility of alerting the enemy to the sub's presence was discussed. This would be of more concern when penetrating a harbor than in open waters. Sometimes just the fact that there is something there is more information than you want the other guy to have. And I suspect that the pros and cons of continuous search were a hot topic for discussion at the Gooneyville Lodge.

We have to bear in mind also that the enemy's capabilities in this regard were a matter of open speculation at the time. Nobody knew. And many invented boogiemen. I recall that one of the early radar-equipped boats got a pasting from escorts and the skipper was absolutely certain sure that the radar had tipped them off - long before, as we now know, the IJN even had operational radar detectors.

So you go in lit up like the Fourth of July. I'll run silent much of the time, with random aperiodic sweeps. And we will probably both be playing the game the way RL skippers historically operated.