Angle Of Bow.......Quick Question

[aso544]

What is AOB based on? The bow /heading of my sub to the target or the bearing from my TDT/Periscope to the target?

What is the best way to plot my sub and my target to determine the AOB? Can i use my attack map?

Sorry, slightly struggling on the manual TDT although the video really helped minus this one areas.

[LargeSlowTarget]

AoB is the bearing of your sub as seen from the target, i.e. you must take the position of the target's skipper who is looking at your sub. If the target is heading straight at you, the AoB is 0, if it is showing his entire broadside to you the AoB is 90.

AoB can be estimated by sight or plotted on the map (draw course of the target and measure the bearing to your sub)

[aso544]

If he is heading straight toward me that AOB is "0", but what if he is heading to my starbord side (90 degrees)? Is the AOB still zero or does my bow heading factor into this equation as well?

[mookiemookie]

No, your bow heading doesn't matter. As LST said, all angle on bow means is where you are in relation to his bow. Think of it this way, if the other ship's watch crew spotted your submarine, they would call out "Submarine spotted, bearing ___" That number would be the AOB.

[jesterofsanity]

I think mainly why people get confused about AOB is because most people write it out as "Angle of Bow" or "Angle on Bow." It's actually "Angle Off Bow" which, if you think about it in relation to the target, makes a whole lot more sense (at least to me).

[Snowman999]

Not quite. AOB (Angle on the Bow) has to include Port or Starboard--the target's port or starboard side as seen by the sub. AOB can therefore never be numerically greater than 180 degrees. In your example it would be possible for the submarine to be bearing 270 relative, and thus give an AOB of 270 (without port or starboard, which renders it incorrect too.) An AOB of 270 isn't possible.

AOB is taught in USN Sub School (the real one, not the one in the game <g>) using vectors. The Line-of-Sight (LOS) is an imaginary line extending from the center of the observer's vessel (sub) through the center of the target. The vector is the target's course (AOB results) and speed (length of vector.) If the target's bow is to the right of the LOS it's a starboard AOB; left it's a port. Broadside is a 90 AOB, either port or starboard, etc. The AOB is the angle between the LOS and the TARGET'S bow.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Snowman999

Not quite. AOB (Angle on the Bow) has to include Port or Starboard--the target's port or starboard side as seen by the sub. AOB can therefore never be numerically greater than 180 degrees. In your example it would be possible for the submarine to be bearing 270 relative, and thus give an AOB of 270 (without port or starboard, which renders it incorrect too.) An AOB of 270 isn't possible.

AOB is taught in USN Sub School (the real one, not the one in the game <g>) using vectors. The Line-of-Sight (LOS) is an imaginary line extending from the center of the observer's vessel (sub) through the center of the target. The vector is the target's course (AOB results) and speed (length of vector.) If the target's bow is to the right of the LOS it's a starboard AOB; left it's a port. Broadside is a 90 AOB, either port or starboard, etc. The AOB is the angle between the LOS and the TARGET'S bow.

D'oh! Forgot to mention that part about it being relative to port or starboard. Ah well, I knew someone would come along and explain it better than me.

[Tieg]

Concur with snowman999. As a current instructor at Naval Submarine school I can backup snowman's claim. Also, as for the term angle off the bow...that is incorrect...we here at subscol have an impressive array of references...and believe it or not one of our more important ones I am going to share with you right now...we would appreciate it if you didn't share this with any Navies foreign.

www.google.com

Don't get me wrong...we have bowditch and notice to mariners as well as some other instructions and what not...but before we crack open a book...most of the time I google it due to the fact some nice soul out there has taken the info and put it on the internet. Hope I didn't bust anyone's bubble by letting the reference out.

Anyhow, with a little bit of ingenuity I googled angle on the bow and came out with the following:

Angle on the bow -- Relative bearing of submarine from the target ship measured to starboard or port from the target ship's head from 0° to 180°. (ref: http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/ss-doc-4.htm )

Also looked through this link only because of all the different fleet boat terminology which was cool: http://www.maritime.org/fleetsub/chap2.htm

This one is a good link that some guy converted over into SH3 terminology and images and posted on the subsim forum: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN

This one has a great illustration...treat the arrows as your sub and all you have to determine is whether your seeing the port side or the starboard side of the ship so for the example given those are all starboard angle on the bows except for the 0 and 180 degrees: http://www.sailingusa.info/current_deviation.htm

You could go on and on looking for stuff if you like.

I hope this helps you and good hunting and remember...if you got a 90 degree angle on the bow at 1000yards or less...let them fish fly and send them japs to the bottom.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Tieg

This one is a good link that some guy converted over into SH3 terminology and images and posted on the subsim forum: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN

That "some guy" is "Onkel" Neal Stevens, webmaster of Subsim. :rotfl:

[Snowman999]

Concur with snowman999. As a current instructor at Naval Submarine school I can backup snowman's claim.

Thanks. I graduated SOBC in 1981; it's been a while.

[XLjedi]

Originally Posted by Snowman999

AOB is taught in USN Sub School using vectors.

You mean something like this?

This was a fairly simple example I drew up previously to show folks how to easily calculate AoB with the formula if you put your sub on a 90° beam of the target's expected course.

And from the other side...

[mookiemookie]

Another way to simply think about it is to imagine you're holding two flashlights on the bridge of the target ship. Straight ahead is 0, directly behind you is 180. Aim one directly ahead of you, and the other at the submarine. Whatever the angle between the two flashlight beams, that's your AOB. In other words, if the sub is directly aside you on the starboard side, it'd be a 90 degree starboard AOB. If it's directly aside you on the port side, it's a 90 degree port AOB.

[denny927]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

No, your bow heading doesn't matter. As LST said, all angle on bow means is where you are in relation to his bow. Think of it this way, if the other ship's watch crew spotted your submarine, they would call out "Submarine spotted, bearing ___" That number would be the AOB.

great, very very good example

[denny927]

and when my submarine is in standby in periscopedepth, targeting a destroyer with the stern?is the same thing i suppose?

[commandosolo2009]

Originally Posted by aso544

What is AOB based on? The bow /heading of my sub to the target or the bearing from my TDT/Periscope to the target?

What is the best way to plot my sub and my target to determine the AOB? Can i use my attack map?

Sorry, slightly struggling on the manual TDT although the video really helped minus this one areas.

Angle on Bow: it's the angle formed from the course of the coming ship and your sub position.

As such, it has nothing to do with your sub heading or periscope bearing. But the periscope bearing will give an estimate of the target angle on bow, provided that the sightings and numbers collected over the time of target tracking are valid - initial angle on bow, initial speed, initial range then angle on bow 2 mins, speed 2 mins, range 2 mins. This is the thing about old subs. Only the trained eye, and experience IRL of the skipper that helped scoring ships, but that came in essence from previous experience.

To be straight, at first you'll have a hard time finding target ship speed, because the sea is not constant, and as soon as you pop scope, he'll do minor rudder inputs as in real life. then the angle on bow becomes difficult because the aspect: angle correlation which always changes with time and is never constant. Finally, the distance with a bugged stadimeter, a discrepancy which is reduced by sounding (which gives away your position).

Nowadays, subs have onboard computers and advanced optics to even see the brand of cigarettes the skipper is smoking. Tech has relieved the human factor.