Attacking a Convoy in Silent Hunter 3

[GJO]

Originally Posted by Zosimus

That's great. So you can fire the torpedoes out the front tubes, have them curve a bit, and hit the ships.

But this doesn't let you use the aft tubes.

Yes that is how it was done in real life - the torpedoes are steered by a giro device and once set it will keep the torpedo on a straight course - AFAIK the giros were adjusted by the crew in the torpedo compartment as soon as the officer read out the calculated settings. If the torpedoes course is set to 90 degrees from the subs course, then the torpedo will follow a tight curve until the giro senses that it is going in the right direction. It works with all torpedoes including those in the stern tube(s) - in the game, I haven'y tried setting them up to run at an angle greater than 90 degrees but I can confirm that, at that angle they run nicely.

[GJO]

Don't set the torpedo speed too fast when the targets are within 500 metres!

I have had a few that have failed to detonate and my guess is that the game emulates real life in that each torp needs time to arm itself.

[Pisces]

There is also a bug with the torpedo speed settings when switching between a type 1 and type 2 torpedo. The TDC doesn't update the firing solution for the torpedo that has a different speed setting, so it goes the wrong way. Be mindfull of that and force the speed setting if you switch between types.

[Zosimus]

Originally Posted by GJO

Yes that is how it was done in real life - the torpedoes are steered by a giro device and once set it will keep the torpedo on a straight course - AFAIK the giros were adjusted by the crew in the torpedo compartment as soon as the officer read out the calculated settings. If the torpedoes course is set to 90 degrees from the subs course, then the torpedo will follow a tight curve until the giro senses that it is going in the right direction. It works with all torpedoes including those in the stern tube(s) - in the game, I haven'y tried setting them up to run at an angle greater than 90 degrees but I can confirm that, at that angle they run nicely.

Well, maybe you haven't explained yourself well, but I just don't see it.

Okay, you're inside the convoy between two rows and running parallel. You claim this lets you figure the speed of the convoy nicely. I say nonsense. If the convoy is going at 7 knots and you're going at 1 knot, then you have no way of "pacing" the convoy. You would need to go at 7 knots to pace a convoy going 7 knots. Whatever method you use to figure out its speed would work equally well at a 90º angle.

Second, I don't doubt that your self-admitted "shooting from the hip" works fine with the fore tubes. You have a ship roughly abreast of you, and you fire a torpedo (or two) out the fore tubes. The torpedoes race ahead of you while turning and smack the ship broadside. Perfect.

However, your aft tubes will be racing backward while the target is plodding foreward. That's going to be a problem. How exactly do you handle that? I suppose you must fire at ships that are substantially behind you. Sure, that's easy to figure out by just hitting F6 and looking at the torpedo trajectory and thinking, "That looks perfect." I wonder, however, whether the real u-boat commanders had F6 screens.

Finally, 90º shots have an advantage that parallel shots don't – it makes it far easier to hide under the cargo ships. Let's assume that you've worked your way into a big convoy and you see juicy targets fore and aft. You can easily fire a salvo at the fore, a salvo at the aft (or vice versa) and time them to hit at the same time. As you are waiting for them to hit, you can find another target and order your helm to turn to that angle.

Once the torpedoes hit, the convoy will react. Half of the time the third target will zig in a way that puts it broadside to you. If that happens, you can salvo that one too, and dive. If not, just dive anyway and kick up the speed. At this point you can easily position yourself under the row of ships as you go deep. The destroyers will need to wait till the ships get out of the way before depth charging. That will give you precious minutes you need to hit 200+ meters deep.

If the weather is decently bad, the destroyers will find it impossible to pick you up with sonar. You easily escape and go out and around to do it again.

[GJO]

Originally Posted by Zosimus

Well, maybe you haven't explained yourself well, but I just don't see it.

Okay, you're inside the convoy between two rows and running parallel. You claim this lets you figure the speed of the convoy nicely. I say nonsense. If the convoy is going at 7 knots and you're going at 1 knot, then you have no way of "pacing" the convoy. You would need to go at 7 knots to pace a convoy going 7 knots. Whatever method you use to figure out its speed would work equally well at a 90º angle.

Second, I don't doubt that your self-admitted "shooting from the hip" works fine with the fore tubes. You have a ship roughly abreast of you, and you fire a torpedo (or two) out the fore tubes. The torpedoes race ahead of you while turning and smack the ship broadside. Perfect.

However, your aft tubes will be racing backward while the target is plodding foreward. That's going to be a problem. How exactly do you handle that? I suppose you must fire at ships that are substantially behind you. Sure, that's easy to figure out by just hitting F6 and looking at the torpedo trajectory and thinking, "That looks perfect." I wonder, however, whether the real u-boat commanders had F6 screens.

Finally, 90º shots have an advantage that parallel shots don't – it makes it far easier to hide under the cargo ships. Let's assume that you've worked your way into a big convoy and you see juicy targets fore and aft. You can easily fire a salvo at the fore, a salvo at the aft (or vice versa) and time them to hit at the same time. As you are waiting for them to hit, you can find another target and order your helm to turn to that angle.

Once the torpedoes hit, the convoy will react. Half of the time the third target will zig in a way that puts it broadside to you. If that happens, you can salvo that one too, and dive. If not, just dive anyway and kick up the speed. At this point you can easily position yourself under the row of ships as you go deep. The destroyers will need to wait till the ships get out of the way before depth charging. That will give you precious minutes you need to hit 200+ meters deep.

If the weather is decently bad, the destroyers will find it impossible to pick you up with sonar. You easily escape and go out and around to do it again.

That is all correct - when running approximately parallel, I find it very easy to judge the speed of adjacent targets - it is a bit like walking in a crowd - they are either slightly faster or slightly slower and with slow convoys you can often adjust your own speed to match theirs - the other advantage is that whilst on a parallel course there is more time available to make sure that all is correct. Obviously the stern tubes could only be used for a target that is astern of the 90 degree line - a succesful method here is to discharge the bow tubes first then reduce speed and fire the stern tubes as the target comes into the intended path of the torpedo. I am not sure that it is always easy to escape - I play GWX and the escorts with this mod are very good at locating submarines. I have found that the most effective means of escape is to change direction and then run silently away going as deep as possible . . .

[Zosimus]

As I said, if the weather is sufficiently bad then escape is not a problem. If the wind speed is 0 m/s then you're not escaping no matter what you do.