No Map Contacts = Unrealistic?

[tedhealy]

Originally Posted by Beery

I don't know about WaW - I never used it.

I used to do it without any contact lines or anything. You don't need them. Here's what I do. I get a hydrophone contact and I approach it until I get a visual contact. I then dive and mark the position on my world map. If the target is heading away I do an 'end around', marking his position every few minutes until I get a good cours for him. If he's coming towards me I get an approximate course and dive and position myself to get a 90 degree shot. In both cases, once I'm in position I stop and listen with hydrophones. I make small corrections to my angle of attack and get to about 1000 yards off his projected course. Then I wait and listen until he's a few degrees short of being dead ahead. Then I pop up the periscope, take a Range reading, put in the angle (which should be approaching 90), and calculate the speed. This takes 30 seconds max. Then I update the angle to his present position and fire at least two torpedoes with a 5 degree spread.

You don't even have to put in the angle that last time if you know you will set up for a 90 degree aob shot. Put your scope at 0 degrees straight ahead, go to the tdc and put it in manual mode. Move the AOB dial to 90 left or right and put the tdc back in auto. That's it, you don't have to mess with AOB anymore for the shot or if attacking other ships in a convoy as long as you maintain your 90 degree approach. Set it and forget it.

The only "work" you have to do is get the speed and range. If going after a convoy, speed is given to you in the report, otherwise use the nomograph (provided with RUB on the map) with a few points plotted on the target over a set period of time with the stopwatch. Very simple.

Range should be just as easy if you can ID targets.

My standard attack run on a convoy is to set the speed given from the convoy report right away into the tdc. Get into position and figure out from which side I will approach, then set the 90 AOB on the TDC screen. All you have to do from there is quickly grab the range on the scope notepad before you fire...will hit 99% of the time unless a dud, wrong depth, or a target zig zag.