Rig for depth charge!

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by HertogJan

That and soooooooooooooow much els

Ha, ha, ........................ yeah.

[james_nix]

Boy, I tried these changes last nigh on my Sclass and it was so cool!

As I slowly crept past max depth, there wasn't the usual instant death.

One foot under I heard broken glass. A foot or so more broken glass, pops, the lights flicker. No damage yet, but boy, you could tell it was coming! It was like the whole boat was saying that going that deep was a bad idea!

I can image how cool this would be when you have destroyer over you so you try to risk a couple of feet below max depth, having to decide which is worse. Damage from depth or damage from a depth charge!

[Sniper297]

Resurrection of an old post, but might be worth the exhumation. One correction to the original post - engineers design safety factors of at least 150% into most things, so if they certify a fighter plane to a limit of 6 Gs, they actually designed it to take 9 or more before something breaks.

Fleet boats, like any other military machine, are designed according to government specifications, and have to meet or exceed those specs before being accepted by the military. So the test depth for a sub is the depth the boat builder will guarantee, and the civilian workers take it out for the first test dive, dive to the test depth and no deeper, at which point the Navy accepts delivery. The actual design depth is at least 200% of the test depth, so for a 250 foot test depth you can be sure it's actually safe down to 500 feet or more. 300 feet test depth is really 600 feet, 400 feet means you would expect implosion (or other catastrophic failure) somewhere below 800 feet.

Assuming a brand new sub with no damage, that is, got one that's been through several deep dives below test depth and several depth charge attacks there will be more metal fatigue and cracked welds in the ribs, etc. Which is part of the reason the engineers include the "fudge factor" to begin with, design it to withstand more stress than actually required and you can be sure it will withstand at least the original requirements after several years of use and abuse.

S class is a different animal - the PORPOISE was the first with an all welded hull, the S class used rivets like all previous subs, and after 20 years of operation/stored in mothballs/recommission and more operation/back into mothballs/recommission and overhaul etc. they had some serious problems and probably quite a few loose rivets. Test depth of 200 feet, actual critical depth around 250 - not because of hull failure, but because below 250 feet there were so many leaks that the pumps couldn't keep up with the water coming in. Any fleet boat would know it was in trouble before the actual implosion due to leaks around the periscope shaft seals, propeller shaft seals, exhaust valves, and assorted other through-hull mechanisms, but the S boat was actually more likely to flood completely instead of imploding.

For PORPOISE and later you can pretty much double the "max depth" (test depth) and be close to accurate.

[james_nix]

I actually had and idea for a mod, that every time you played, you would run a little randomiser program that would load up a different depth for a particular boat.

Every boat would have different depth it could go past test depth, I remember reading that when O'Kane first got the Tang, he took it down until things started to break to see what the actual depth was, since every sub was unique on how far it could go past test depth.

It would add some uncertainty when the destroyers are going at you if you didn't do a thorough test dive earlier.

I was using Websters S-Class mod, so 200 feet was test depth.