I've been thinking too much

[Tupolev]

I've never read the book, but I spend a lotof ttime reading KTBs on uboatarchive.net. They're incredibly interesting and helpful in playing realistically. It also gives you some insight into why some Commanders were hugely successful and some weren't. Hardegen's actions during his 2 East Coast patrols are incredibly gutsy. He'd usually close to 500m surfaced; as a result he only missed twice on his Drumbeat patrol!

http://uboatarchive.net/KTB123-7.htm

BTW that shot at Malay happened at dawn, Malay had spotlights on U-123, another steamerffiring starshells, and there was only 10m depth under keel. He had to fire and get the hell out of Dodge.

T

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by washishu

I can't remember where I picked it up from, various sources I imagine, but I seem, over the years to have 'absorbed' the notion that the torpedo gyros of all participants were unreliable and so the angle was kept to a minimum. But maybe I just interpreted 'minimum' as zero when in fact it might have meant (say) 40º.

I dare say, if you made a survey of posts in this forum, you would come to that conclusion. SH players do seem to have that idea. It may be a matter of people thinking that because a certain set-up is ideal, that it was typical.

Originally Posted by Tupolev

BTW that shot at Malay happened at dawn, Malay had spotlights on U-123, another steamerffiring starshells, and there was only 10m depth under keel. He had to fire and get the hell out of Dodge.

T

Yes, sometimes it is 'now or never'.



There is possibly one other thing to consider in this. That is human psychology. If your subs were having (or had recently) a large number of torpedo failures, it would stand to reason that skippers might be extra conservative in making attacks. Most of the time they would not know why their torpedoes were failing; only that they did. They might try to get 'perfect' set-ups to compensate for the shortfalls in the torps.