Real Submarine Technology & History Q&A

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by DaveyJ576

Great. A hard one to start off with! Thanks!

Anyway, you are correct. Based on electronic input from the gyro compass, there was an automatic input to the TDC from the scope. A dial on the TDC showed the bearing the scope was on.

Pre-war doctrine for torpedo spreads called for a seemingly unusual tactic. One fish would be aimed to slightly miss forward. One would be aimed to miss slightly aft, and one (or two depending on the size of the target) would be aimed to hit amidships. Why? Well, one of the hardest things to estimate, but extremely important to the firing solution is target speed. If your target is going faster than what you estimate, the fish will miss astern. If it is going slower than estimate, they will miss ahead. Aiming one a little forward an one a little aft eliminates uncertainty in target speed, virtually guaranteeing at least two hits out of three. But it also virtually guarantees that at least one, and maybe two of the fish will miss! Kind of a wasteful practice if you ask me. One way of reducing the uncertainty was repeated observations of the target so that your solution could be smoothed. The flip side to this (there is always a flip side!) is that you have to expose your scope more and thus have more chances to be sighted.

As training intensified after the war started, our skippers got better and better at estimating target speed by observing the bow wave generated by the target, and the sonar operators got better at counting propeller revolutions for speed estitmates. Dick O'Kane and his crew were masters at this and he aimed all his fish to hit. His constant bearing method was part of this firing doctrine.

Dave

There was button (not provided in game) on the TBT and scope that could be pressed to up date the bearing correct?