Simultaneous detonations

[TorpX]

Torpedoes bumping into each other would be a minor issue. You'd probably be to busy to even notice.

It depends on what you consider a minor issue. Contact between torpedos would most likely result in an explosion or all the torps running erratic. You would not notice the bumping, but would notice that you missed your target.

Imagine the weight of a single torpedo. Multiply by six. Now, suddenly remove that weight from one end of a carefully balanced lever. What happens?

As each torpedo is fired, the crew must work to keep the boat level, replacing the weight of the torpedo with an equivalent weight of water, redistributing the ballast water, etc. Even if the crew was fast enough and knew exactly how much when and where, I doubt the machinery would be able to handle it. You would end up with the boat's bow suddenly popping out of the water, which is not exactly the best thing when you're trying to be sneaky.

When the torpedo is fired, as it leaves the tube, a poppet valve vents the air in the tube back into the boat. This is helpful in that there will be no big impulse bubble coming up to the surface to mark the position, and water will flood back into the tube to balance the weight lost (more or less). I suspect they could have fired torpedos rapidly, if there was some need to do so. (Evidently, there wasn't.) Most of the prep time would be getting the torpedo ready beforehand; i.e. flooding the tube, charging the compressed air impulse system, etc.

Yeah, indeed in SH3 you can set a simultaneous salvo, which pretty much makes them run very close to each other.I know that in-game it makes no difference, but it seem to me that a torpedo exploding agains the hull of a ship would probably detonate or damage a torpedo close enough - say 20 or 30 feet, maybe even more, specially them being so delicate and flawed. So it seems strange that a skipper would choose to fire a simultaneous salvo such as SH3 permits.

I have gone ingame to stop guessing and see how that works (SH4, that is). Indeed, in all-stop and at periscope depth, even if you fire all 6 tubes as fast as you can (hitting 'fire' a fraction of a second from each other), the tubes will fire in order with several seconds (3-4) apart from each other.

Yes, it's curious the differences here, but there are so many things in SH4 that were left in an unfinished state that I'm not surprised. Too bad they dumbed down the firing proceedure in this game. Firing a torpedo should be more complicated than firing a revolver.