Range To Torpedo

[Captain Sub]

Originally Posted by cj95

One of the hallmarks of all Submarine fiction...books and movies...has at some point when someone calls torpedo in the water...Torpedo at XXXX yards and closing!

We then are treated to a runnign dilogue of how close the torpedos are getting....1000 yards 500..400....3000....etc etc!


My question is...how the hell can they tell? I nver know where the torpedos are as I cant hear anything over the sound of me running for the hills.

Is there a trick to this? Is it really possible in the real world?

Is it just a fault of the game system?

Just wondering

Dear cj95,

I'm pretty sure you can determine by the ping, because if the torpedo is active, atleast with experience you can tell the distance by the ping intervals.
You can probably even have them marked accurately on sonar aswell, i don't remember.

peace

[Dr.Sid]

The speed and quality of distance estimate in movies is purely dramatic effect.
But there is a mean how to do it. You will hear pings, probably even at flank. I mean your active intercept sensor will (as torpedoes especially would use non-audible frequencies because of the small size of their transducers).
Torpedoes would ping back as soon as they receive previous ping return, to have high refresh rate of target's position, which is especially important during final phase of attack.
From that you can estimate torpedo maximum range. If you hear pings spaced by 1 second, it meas the pinger is interested in something not more then 1500 meters away from him. And if you are sure it's you, you have some distance.
And if you check active ping detection screen in DW, you will see it displays interval between pings, so it might be intended this way.

In DW you can also launch UAV or sonobuoys to detect torpedo position rather well.