Not tinkering with Torpedo depths anymore!!

[commandosolo2009]

Originally Posted by TorpX

The torps don't dud because of hitting the bottom of the hull, but because the Mk 6 exploder elements were damaged by the violent impact. If you can get them to hit at a sharper angle and/ or lower speed you should have a better chance. You could also go back to magnetic influence detonation (which has problems of it's own). As far as the proper angle is concerned, you would most likely need to go from 90 deg. to 45 deg or so to greatly change to impact forces.

All of this assumes that the torpedos are more or less properly modeled.

In a sense you are right, but then not "cheating" might well mean whole patrols without sinking a single ship. Who wants to carefully set up attacks, firing one after another without being able to sink a single target? Also, I would say that there were strong suspicions about the torpedos beforehand; otherwise there would not have been any tests (by Lockwood).

I thought the ideal angle was 110°

[magic452]

Originally Posted by commandosolo2009

I thought the ideal angle was 110°

That 110° is to give the target the least options to evade your torpedoes.

That won't help much with the impact angle damaging the exploder.
They don't need to evade if the torpedoes don't go off.

I find that a 60 to 65° angle works pretty good.

Magic

[Daniel Prates]

I myself never tamper with running depth and never miss it too.

[TorpX]

Originally Posted by commandosolo2009

I thought the ideal angle was 110°

The optimum track angle relates to having the greatest error tolerance in the targets course. It really has nothing to do with potential duds, target evasion possibilities, tactical factors, etc. It is not a comprehensive optimum angle, but gives the least deflection error for a given error in target course. The 110 deg. angle is not fixed, but only a "typical" optimum as it is a function of both torpedo speed and target speed.

It can be calculated thus:

Optimum track angle = 90 + Arcsin (target speed / torpedo speed)

This was part of USN doctrine, and is shown here (plate XVII, XVIII):

http://hnsa.org/doc/attack/index.htm#platexvii



BTW, O'Kane talks of setting up attacks and using this. Clearly, he understood the geometry behind this.