Attack disk & RAOFB

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by LCQ_SH

I agree with that maybe for night surface attacks and attacks on lonely ships in calm seas. But I can't figure it put how would you use radar attacking an escorted convoy or a taskforce in heavy seas where radar depth would be unlikely to work and you you could get easily spotted by escorts.

Are you saying then that while being at periscope depth, we are supposed to always calculate the AOB by eyeballing it?

Yes, radar works against escorted convoys and in heavy seas. You can even extend the radar antenna from periscope or just go to radar depth to use it while submerged.

But yes, American sub commanders were very good at judging AoB by eyeball and trained extensively to get better at it. Since exact AoB was always available by the protractor method on the nav map, they were continually announcing observed AoB from the periscope and comparing it with actual.

All the other hocus pocus in those German periscopes presupposes perfect knowledge of what the target is and what its length is. Such fantasies of perfect knowledge are part and parcel of the German defeat. They were not superior. They were not infallible. They were utterly defeated by their betters.

Lets approach the use of radar against a convoy. With radar you know the course and speed of every ship in that convoy. You instantly know of any course changes and can react very quickly. They know somebody out there somewhere is using some kind of radio on that frequency, and that only if they are monitoring the radar frequency. Huge advantage to the submarine.