Wondering what your habits are...

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by vanjast

Here's why I search for my targets with sonar.(sorry about the big picture - Not sure how to shrink it here)
Although not modelled in the game - on a good day a radar aerial @ 20M (60ft) would not be able to see surface object of futher than ~11miles (~10Nm), whereas sonar on a good day can 'see' a lot further.

On a bad day radar would be worse... Remember Radar is Line-Of-Sight or straight line views so it cannot see surface objects over the horizon, whereas sound travel does not have this restriction.

Sounds great, but it's wrong. Otherwise Fluckey would have operated this way. He didn't. By maintaining 10 knot surface speed, you search many times more square miles of ocean surface in a given time than you can at dead slow underwater listening with sonar. The number of targets you find is directly proportional to the number of square miles you search in a given time.

It's just a numbers game, but it's much more involved than how far you can see to the horizon. Fluckey figured he could search 10 times the area of ostriches just with visual high periscope technique on the surface and NOT using the radar at all. Considering his results compared to other sub captains in the mid 1944 to end of war era, I believe him.