Sinking vessels in rought weather.

Originally Posted by Pants

Pistol

The device to detonate the warhead was the pistol. There were two types, magnetic and contact pistol. Most torpedoes had both types and the captain could select a combination of magnetic, contact or both, prior to launching the weapon.

Is that true of the Germans? I've read that in US torpedoes one could not select type, and when they started to realize where the problem might lie torpedo chiefs actually had to physically remove and disable the magnetic pistol. Made for a lot of trouble.

[Pants]

Yup german torpedoes mate

[MENTAT]

Originally Posted by Khayman

Presumably 100m was not enough to ensure the safety of the sub if the torpedo went off prematurely. 300m was probably a safer number given that it's pretty pointless for a sub to blow itself up.

to blow itself up? if it goes up at 100m or 150m, will it waste its host sub? I dont think so! especially if you think Depth charges are barely effective in 50m?

Anyway aint a destroyer at 100m not more deadly?? I believe a pursuing destroyer could be hit easily with a stern torpedo as it never goes farther than a 150m perimeter in a bomb run..

I still wonder why 300m? and not 200m or 100m? That should have a better explanation than damaging the sub

[MENTAT]

Originally Posted by Alyebard

IMHO you are wrong, the torps armet itself with the little propeler in the nose, they need to move a certain amount of turns to arm the torpedo, more or less 300 meters of travel.

After a little search, I found out that newer torpedoes let their arming distances set.

How much newer? Later in the war? Modern?

Just curious.

[Hartmann]

It´s possible change or overide the safety measures for torpedos in Sh3 ??

Perhaps is for the circular pattern torpedoes or acoustics, but both are not modelled in silent hunter.

o´kane in the pacific was sunk by a faulty torpedo that made a turn against the sub

[MENTAT]

Originally Posted by sailor steve

How much newer? Later in the war? Modern?

Just curious.

modern times, the tordpedoes used in NSubs. But it indicates it was possible so why didnt they do that back in the war?

Don't know. Maybe they didn't trust them. Way back in the 1890s the British didn't trust the newfangled armor piercing shells, so battleships still carried a complement of AP solid shot.

With a mechanical device such as a little propellor which winds down to a plunger and arms the thing, maybe that was as fine as they could get.

[mheil]

Sunk a ship in a bad storm where I had no visability 'cept real close (+/- 300m) I was able to sink him by following him submerged for a while and getting a real good plot of his position, speed and course. Then a sped ahead of him got into a good attack postion based on the above and made sure I would be about 600m from him. I waited submerged at 0 knots (sorry about that for you hardcore types out there) and used my hydrophone operator to tell me the bearing to target. Sighted this bearing in the periscope and BOOM! I fired 2 toprs and 1 hit. I thought the hydrophone operator's reported bearing would be a bit too astern as he is hearing noises from the prop, but based on where the torps went it looks like the bearing he game me was mid ships. It was a challenge doing it this way. The hard part was actually finding the ship in the first place!

[Khayman]

In "Operation Drumbeat" by Micheal Gannon he says that the fear of every torpedo mixer was that;

"Theoretically it was possible that when water rushed into the torpedo tubes before launching that the flow against the pistol propeller could activate the device that controlled the torpedo's safety run and cause the eel to arm itself while still in the tube. In which case maybe - boom!. No more drinks at the Cafe les Trois Soeurs"

So even if it was possible to set a shorter arming time, your crew would probably tell you where to go.

[robj250]

Originally Posted by mheil

Sunk a ship in a bad storm where I had no visability 'cept real close (+/- 300m) I was able to sink him by following him submerged for a while and getting a real good plot of his position, speed and course. Then a sped ahead of him got into a good attack postion based on the above and made sure I would be about 600m from him. I waited submerged at 0 knots (sorry about that for you hardcore types out there) and used my hydrophone operator to tell me the bearing to target. Sighted this bearing in the periscope and BOOM! I fired 2 toprs and 1 hit. I thought the hydrophone operator's reported bearing would be a bit too astern as he is hearing noises from the prop, but based on where the torps went it looks like the bearing he game me was mid ships. It was a challenge doing it this way. The hard part was actually finding the ship in the first place!

A really rough sea make it almost impossible to sight in a target, you see it and get ready to fire then water flows over the periscope and it's gone, can't get a shot off. It's almost impossible to sink anything cause you keep loosing the target and as there are several targets that are the same, ie: T3 Tankers, you don't know which one you fired the torpedo at and got an impact and the ships are scattering, so you don't know which T3 it was that you hit so that you can hit it again. AAAAGH!!!

[mheil]

This was a single ship. It would've been a lot harder if it was a convoy for the exact reason you mentioned.

[NeonSamurai]

In game the arming distance is 250m, ive had them go off just short of 300m many times. 300m is idealy the closest you want to shoot from though to help avoid any distance mesurment errors.

Also in a heavy storm both your target's keel depth and your torpedo's depth keeping can be thrown off by several meters due to wave action (causing the torpedos to run too deep and/or the keel to raise up). Also dont forget the underside of a ship curves from vertical on the ship side to horizontal at the keel, hit that area and the torpedo will bounce almost every time.

[robj250]

Originally Posted by mheil

This was a single ship. It would've been a lot harder if it was a convoy for the exact reason you mentioned.

It was a convoy of about 18 merchants and 5 warships. There were several T3 tankers.

[shegeek72]

Sorry if this has already been answered, but in reality could subs of that era fire torps in stormy seas? Seems the sub would be rocking too much at periscope depth.
--