sitting on the bottom

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Phil

is sitting on the bottom an effective technique of evasion or is it to loud when you hit the bottom? saw it the other day in the movie enemy below

Originally Posted by johnno74

Active sonar "pings" are actually reflected by density changes - they don't bounce back towards the sender from your hull, they bounce back from the air space inside the pressure hull

So, in reality, sitting on the bottom shouldn't help you evade active sonar.

Originally Posted by GT182

It's better to move off and away at 1kt to try to evade. Sitting on the bottom just makes you an easy target.

In reality sitting on the bottom had one great effect: depth charges would either go off too shallow, or they would hit the bottom and sit there. Even if they went off on the bottom the blast would be directed upward, rendering the submarine reasonably safe. Several captains reported surviving 12-18 hours of depth-charging by sitting on the bottom. It was an accepted doctrine that a rough seafloor could indeed deflect sonar beams in odd directions, also decreasing the likelihood of detection.

Unfortunately, none of this is modelled in the game.