Aircraft at night ?

[capthelm]

Originally Posted by oscar19681

Its 1941 , i,m in the med . So i go for the 30.000 merchant sink mission. Lots of aircraft so i wait for midnight so to avoid the aircraft. But what do you know? The allies have night vision and fly at night now. WTF? What happended to the dive during the day surface at night tactic?

they did have bombers at night, for night operations.

onboard radar finding units. and searchlights under the aircrafts and nose

later in the war period i think.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Originally Posted by walsh2509

Early air-to-surface radar sets, namely the ASV Mk. II, had a fairly long minimum detection range. Thus as the aircraft approached the target, it would disappear off the radar at a range that was too great to allow it to be seen by eye at night without some form of illumination. At first aircraft solved this problem by dropping flares to light up the area, but since the flare only lit up the area directly under the aircraft, a string would have to be dropped until the submarine was spotted. Once it was spotted the aircraft would have to circle back to attack, the entire process giving the submarine a fair amount of time to dive out of danger.
Eventually time delayed flares were developed that allowed the attacking plane time to circle. The flare was fired into the air from a buoy previously dropped by the plane. The surfaced submarine could then be seen in silhouette as the plane approached.
Wing Commander Humphrey de Verd Leigh, an RAF personnel officer, came up with his own solution after chatting with returning air crew. This was to mount a searchlight under the aircraft, pointed forward and allowing the submarine to be spotted as soon as it was turned on. He then developed the Leigh light entirely off his own bat, in secret and without official sanction - even the Air Ministry were unaware of its development until shown the completed prototype.[2] At first it was difficult to fit on aircraft due to its size. Leigh persisted in his efforts to test the idea, and garnered the support of the Commander-in-Chief of Coastal Command, Sir Frederick Bowhill. In March 1941 a Vickers Wellington DWI that conveniently already had the necessary generator on board, (it had been used for anti-magnetic mining operations using a large electromagnet) was modified with a retractable "dustbin" holding the lamp, and proved the concept sound.
At this point the Air Ministry decided that the idea was worthwhile, but that they should instead use the Turbinlite, a less effective system which had been originally developed as an aid for nighttime bomber interception. After trials they too eventually decided to use Leigh's system, but it was not until mid-1942 that aircraft started being modified to carry it.

Thanks for good answer!

Did I get it correctly that those radar and light sets started to appear around 1941 onwards?

[sdflyer]

Originally Posted by Heibges

I think it would be impossible for an airplane without radar to find a submarine at night unless the sureface of the ocean was like glass, and then it would be 99.999% impossible.

I was talking about full moon and clear weather. Moon actually highlights landmarks pretty good. From my personal experience I'd day that probability of finding submarine (given extra crew member for searching and relatively low altitude) would be much higher than above

[gmccabe01]

From experience you can see the wake of a ship sparkle(flourescent)
for a mile or more on a fine moonlit night(no clouds ect)

[thruster]

imho night attacks should have Leigh lights under/from the aircraft. it would be good if this could be modded in, even simplistically as a searchlight beam from the aircraft perhaps tagged to time of day??? im not even sure thats possible?

......further to that, obviously it would need to be a 2 engine aircraft.

[Sailor Steve]

Leigh Lights were modded into SH3, so SH5 should not be a problem.

Originally Posted by gmccabe01

From experience you can see the wake of a ship sparkle(flourescent)
for a mile or more on a fine moonlit night(no clouds ect)

yep but thats only with certain conditions are right, i think its jelly in the water doing it but the full wake trail will be lit up like a heat signature in night vision.

when i used to trawl for shrimp i would see it light up and scare off the shrimp because it was like dragging an big green underwater light behind the boat

[The General]

Can Leigh Lights be modelled in SH5?

[DelphiUniverse]

Originally Posted by Heibges

I think it would be impossible for an airplane without radar to find a submarine at night unless the sureface of the ocean was like glass, and then it would be 99.999% impossible.

It is possible when you fly low, the tower of the u-boat is visible on the horizon. But the main goal of flying night missions is to have a continous blockade. You can't stop patrolling just because it's night. There is the need to fly to watch out for other types of bigger warships.