Radar questions

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

In real life, the use of radar and its detection by the Japanese did strike fear and cause mistakes on their part because of its potent intimidation factor. In war, you should be something of a bully. Fair play is for dead people.

I have reread both O'Kane and Fluckey and I can not find a single example of an attack where either of these very aggressive skippers intentionally used radar emissions to "spook" the enemy in the way that you describe. And you have to admit that Fluckey, had he done so, could be counted on to have mentioned the fact. Shinano-Archerfish was a serendipitous occurrence, not a deliberate tactic. It happened once, and the details weren't available until after the war. (BTW, if you have a first-person account of such intentional use in WW2 - by anyone - I'd really like to read it. Thanks.)

O'Kane, on the other hand, repeatedly stresses the importance, to him, of maintaining the advantage of stealth. His comments on the need for EMSEC (as it would now be called) are far more extensive than the few I quoted in my previous post. Concealment, stealth, invisibility (call it whatever you wish) is critical to the submarine's mission. If it were not, you could build a far more efficient surface torpedo platform. Stealth is both an offensive and a defensive advantage. As anyone who has ever played a sibsim knows, you can't hunt effectively while being hunted. Once you make the enemy aware of your presence, he has a whole arsenal of tools to prevent you from using your offensive weapons effectively. So, instead of making your presence known, so as to maybe cause the enemy to make a mistake, it is better (in O'Kane's judgment and FWIW, I agree) to keep him completely unaware of your presence until the moment of attack. An alert, combat-ready enemy may spook and make a mistake, or he may not, and, if he doesn't, he knows you are around and is actively trying to find and neutralize you. An enemy who doesn't think there is a hostile force anywhere nearby is less alert and not actively trying to locate and deal with you. This is the essence of stealth tactics, which are most definitely not purely defensive.

As for striking fear in the enemy, what is more fearsome than the sudden enormous explosion of a torpedo which strikes without warning when everyone on board is feeling safe and unaware of an enemy anywhere nearby? Or as O'Kane put it:

"Again, we had one objective: To make our presence known only by our torpedo detonations."

But with hindsight it should be very clear to everyone that just leaving the radar on will sink more targets than any other strategy.

Hindsight is something none of us can avoid. Trying to minimize the element of hindsight was Ducimus' rationale for creating the "alternative history" which is TMO. But that doesn't mean that we have to embrace the knowledge that hindsight gives us and play the game with an aggressiveness beyond that of the boldest RL skippers, just because we "know" the historical truth. There is a quote which I am fond of offering on this forum:

"Realism isn't about the settings. It's about how you play the game." - Rockin' Robbins