Evasion of Sonar and Depth Charges Tutorial?

[Gargamel]

Originally Posted by bstanko6

I just want to add to the evasion. My tip is don't be the guy that just goes deep and waits to be depth charged. There are a few things to be done when hunted:

1)if surfaced attempt to run away. The uboat has really fast engines. You can run away from most escorts.

I think this is wrong. Most of the escorts I remember playing against could easily run me down. And they have better deck guns. Once they start firing on you, it's time to dive and change course. By the time they get to your last known position, you'll have moved far enough away they can't find you. And later on, you aren't even given a chance to surface, as their radar will pick you up way before you get within firing range.

2) don't just dive deep! Evade! If you know you are hunted, and there is time, hit flank, dive around 100m and get out of the area you attacked from. I generally place a 5k ring around the boat, pick a direction and get out of the circle. Don't just dive deep and wait. Crash dive and get out of town. Only when they are on top of you will you want to go deeper and slow down!

Running at flank can easily attract escorts from quite a distance, especially later in the war. This will work, as you mentioned, if you are far enough away, but if you're that far, your chances of a good hit are quite limited. Shooting and scooting is a sound plan, but if you are far enough away, they won't know where to look to start with. If you are giving them extra data to work with, they'll figure it out quicker. So fire, dive, and cruise quietly away. You can get use medium speeds, but I'd hesitate to go flank unless I know they won't pick me up.

Also to add, if you are really deep and and a D.C. Hits you... you have fewer chances of surviving.

If you go really deep, they have a reduced chance of hitting you. While you are right, there is an increased risk of repairing damage while at deep depth. But that is easily offset by the reduced risk of being hit. And if they do hit you at depth, that means they have your depth figured out. By coming up 50-100m to help the repair crews, you'll get out of the crosshairs. If you're already shallow (<150m), diving deeper only compounds the damage.

[Kaptlt.Endrass]

Sadly, the thermal layer is not modeled in vanilla SHIII or any mods that I know of. If it was, then the only thing any of us would have to do is get deep (very, very deep) and slowly creep away at one or two knots.

However, everyone here is giving you ways to become undetected and prevent being depth-charged. I'll give you some tips that I've learned for how to avoid being critically damaged when a destroyer does make an attack run. (This will be from an internal view; no external or free camera)

Go to the command room view and listen...you should be at depth already, and moving anywhere from 1-4 knots. (For these purposes, let's say you're at 75 metres.) The sonar pings will be very intermittent, I'm sure you know this is the destroyer, trying to get a lock on you.

Once the sonar becomes more consistent, be ready to go to flank speed. There will be a point where the sonar cuts out, and you will hear the destroyer's screws as he starts to go above you. At the point where the sonar pings stop, go to ahead flank, and go either hard to starboard or port while diving...the depth charges are already set for a certain depth, which will be the one where the destroyer last had you contacted.

With practice and a certain amount of luck, you should be able to get off scot-free, or at least with minimal damage.

Late-war, however, the odds get heavily stacked against you, with the introduction of Hedgehogs and Squids. With these, a destroyer will keep you contacted, set up for a perfect attack run, and fire these ahead of themselves on your position. Good news: they only explode on contact. Bad news: They only need to hit the hull once, maybe twice on some of the larger submarines, to sink you.

Just be glad they didn't add the Allied anti-submarine torpedoes.

As for avoiding being detected...

Run silent, run deep. Rig for silent running unless you have absolutely critical damage (i.e, your submarine is sinking) This will stop all repairs, reloading, anything that is non-critical. Manually set your speed to 1 or 2 knots, and stay on a course to break contact with the convoy/task force you were engaging; in most instances, the escorts will only drive you off, not hound you until the end.

Remember, if you survive, you can surface to repair, rearm, and recharge in order to go back into the fray. If sunk, well...you can't.

Also keep in mind that any hostile ship that you contact/engage will report your last known position and heading, and depending on your location, that means you'll get some friends in the form of aircraft and hunter-killer groups.

[bstanko6]

You can outrun 'most' escorts. If you are attacking at night, flank speed away, keep your stern to the escort and in some weather they will lose you
Even though you can still see them. Try it it works!

Also if you want to try this. Do a night surface attack on a convoy. Once the torps hit, get out of your area, but stay close to see what happens. The escorts make a straight path to
Your last area you fired from. This works with steam, have not tried it with battery torps.

At the end of the day my tactic is to get out of the area as soon as possible. If you dive too deep and go slow, but are In the area you fired from, they will eventually find you. Especially if they get lucky and hit your boat causing repairs and noise. Hope this helps.

[Leoz]

I have observed the following post to be true.

SH3 Commander gives you temperature layers. While it may be executed in the game as a kludge, I find it tactically useful when combined with other things you may use to make your escape. I use SH3 Commander first and foremost, because of this.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...66&postcount=6

[Kaptlt.Endrass]

I did not know that. Now that I do though...

Dive, dive, dive!

[Dave Kay]

Learned a few tricks here, thanks guys~! Regarding temp layers, while at periscope depth, silent running, as soon as we fire last torp of the attack we go hard RT/LT rudder and dive to minimum 160m and level off with min engine speed.

Waiting for escorts to arrive, we set course at 90 deg away from convoy and listen... with the sound-man being me, I listen for the tell-tale pings that indicate we're on the DD's scope. Keeping our stern-to-enemy and evading his run-ins, we dive a few more meters at a time until the pinging stops--- we're in the temp layer~!

Conversely, we have dived the boat to near 200 in a panic but later realized that we were still being pinged 'cause we were out of the temp layer and 'visible' on the enemy's scope. In this case we slowly rise to a level where the ping eventually stops and we slowly creep away.

In desperation, we have gone as deep as 230 while still being pinged in which case, we sweated the hours away maneuvering each time DD made his run-in and eventually, were able to give him the slip... and lived to fight another day~!!!