John P. Cromwell attack technique on order

[Rockin Robbins]

The vector analysis, even if it were completely useless is an indispensable tool because it teaches you why the attack works. It gives you confidence in your method. Confident people make fewer mistakes because they remember the steps and their purpose while they go through the procedure. It helps to be able to visualize what is really going on.

Fortunately vector analysis is also so useful that you could do the whole attack if the TDC were thrown overboard. Overboard, if you haven't guessed, would be a nice place for the TDC in Nisgeis' sub. He has a unique and very productive outlook on how to shoot a torpedo. He has no need but idle curiosity to know anything about the TDC.

@Fincuan, the problem with the PK is that it needs a range. Our attack methods work so well at extreme ranges simply because range cancels out of the equation and becomes irrelevant as long as the torpedo can run long enough to get there. We, for the most part, are unwilling to cheat by manually inputting a range to the TDC based on a visual sighting to match the pip on the nav map. I personally have no problem at all doing precisely that with radar.

A future iteration of the John P Cromwell technique will use the PK to do a divergent spread: stern, MOT, bow. This should result in near simultaneous strikes at all three points. If the target does the predictable during clear weather and turns into the attack, he will merely be struck by two instead of three. A longitudinal spread, with torpedoes advancing in a single column is relatively easy to avoid. A divergent spread is not! This spread, by the way, was advocated by Nisgeis in one of our earliest talks for formulating this technique.

Anyone who wants to try this out in the safety of the balmy waters off the coast of California near Catalina Island with nobody around but your target tanker, here you go. Just unzip it into your Wolves of the Pacific\data\single missions directory.