Sub Skipper's Bag of Tricks

[Kapitan Soniboy]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Your english is great!

With the Cromwell attack, the main hazard is that the target sees the approaching torpedoes. Then he only has to turn 45º into the torpdoes to avoid them. During the daytime, this is a good time to use Mark 18s. At night use the fastest torpedo you have.

At the beginning of the war, doctrine was that all shots were to be taken with sonar only, as it was thought to be too dangerous to raise the scope in close combat with the enemy. In practice before the war they did have success hitting single ships that way.

However in the real war, a single target was pretty rare. Even in the game, it's difficult to use sonar only in a crowded situation. What happens if you ping one target on your first observation and another for your second? You've just created a fictitious target and will hit nothing! There are many ways to miss using sonar only and our submarines found most of them.

Then successes started to come when aggressive younger commanders who were willing to buck the system and use their periscopes to obtain more accurate targeting information. They obtained several times the hit ratio.

As a matter of fact, after the advantages were discovered, Admiral Lockwood made periscope attacks official policy. Even then the real life ostriches (we don't just have them in the game, they were a real life problem) had to be rooted out and relieved of their commands when they were unwilling to take necessary risks to obtain success. Later, Lockwood had to go through round 2 of removing ostriches for those captains who insisted on remaining submerged all day, ruining their combat readiness during their nighttime recharging ritual.

Wow you sure know alot! One more thing. I tried diving to 140 -150 feet the first time I wanted to perform a sonar only attack. The maximum depth for torpedo launching is something like 150 feet (I think). I experienced some problems when trying to figure the enemy ship's course and speed. I recieved false information about the target's range. Do you think it has something to do with the depth I was in (thermal layer?) ?

[Rockin Robbins]

I doubt it. Sonar ranges are not exact. You have to take several readings and kind of average them by gut feeling. Of course, while you are taking the ranges, the range is changing, adding to the challenge.

Sonar only can never be as accurate as periscope guided and radar guided attacks. And we've got it easy! Our sonar bearings are exact, where on the real boats there was a 2º slop factor where it was impossible to perfectly center the sonar bearing. I'm unclear whether that was plus or minus two degrees or two degrees total error. It doesn't matter. It means sonar only was more difficult for a real submarine than it is for us.

In the game, make sure your sonar man is following and announcing the target bearing. Put your sonar on that bearing when you ping and don't forget to send bearing and range separately. In the stock game you can use the switches on the panel. For some reason in TMO and RFB you need to use the button bar to send range but can still send bearing from the panel. Be sure you send both to the TDC! I just use the button bar to send both and remove all doubt.

You're right. The sonar only method should never be your default method. It is mostly a demonstration exercise that gives tremendous satisfaction when it works properly. However, in real combat it is VERY useful in heavy fog or rain, where you can get darned close and blast 'em from nowhere.

[Kapitan Soniboy]

Thank you once again. I play TMO since it add so much more fun to the game. I followed every inch of your tutorial and it worked great but I forgot that you were playing the stock game when making the tutorial. However, it worked in the end and it was very fun.

Right now I'm having a Gato in mid 1943 but I find destroyer escorts too easy to evade. Does Japanese ASW techniques improve later in the war? (last question)

[Rockin Robbins]

OOOOOOOOOOOO YEAH!!! Japanese escorts are nasty, nasty from the last half of 1944 on. I just attacked a nine ship convoy guarded by four assorted escorts in the South China Sea just north of Formosa. It was stormy conditions, so sonar wasn't the greatest, but I only had 150' of water and no thermal barrier to deal with.

Three night attacks over two nights and I never got a shot at the merchies. I did sink my first escort in a surface gun battle (is there any other kind?). I consider that an impressive achievement in TMO. He couldn't hit the broad side of a barn in the rough conditions and I played Jack-in-the box with him. I'd pop up, take four shots or so, submerge and pop up again somewhere else. Between the deck gun and 40mm I finally sank him. Didn't do any good. The remaining three drove me off again. What a battle! 48 hours of pure mayhem.

[Kapitan Soniboy]

That's awesome! I would never challenge a Jap escort to a gun battle! But I did have to blow ballast once since my boat kept sinking after a severe depth charge attack (S-boat of course) and a big gun battle happened on the surface and my little S-boat got pounded in the end... (Now I think it's easier to evade with my Gato)

I raised my SD antenna while at periscope depth and it was able to detect ships (?). I thought the SD radar could only detect aircraft and there is no information about the SD radar on Wikipedia. Do you know anything about it?

[Rockin Robbins]

SD didn't detect anything below a certain number of degrees elevation, so would have had a tough time reporting surface ships. It's a game glitch that we have our radars combined and kind of mashed together.