Small Tankers: strangely unsinkable

[Danelov]

Yes, this small tankers are really hard to sink.Today I have hit one of this "Battleship" small tankers near Dover with the last TI torpedo of my IID.
That was one good hit in the aft section between the bridge and the stern, usually there is the machine room and boilers in the tankers. Well, the tanker was complete ablaze; stop the machine and go to the bottom to wait his sink(there were some PT boats and trawlers near).Accelerated time, coffee,and checking several times with exterior view, the guy was always there, unsinkable,burning and floating very happy, two hours, three hours...ufff.Nothing to do, and finally decided to sail back to Kiel.

[Grayson02sept1980]

Originally Posted by Danelov

Yes, this small tankers are really hard to sink.Today I have hit one of this "Battleship" small tankers near Dover with the last TI torpedo of my IID.
That was one good hit in the aft section between the bridge and the stern, usually there is the machine room and boilers in the tankers. Well, the tanker was complete ablaze; stop the machine and go to the bottom to wait his sink(there were some PT boats and trawlers near).Accelerated time, coffee,and checking several times with exterior view, the guy was always there, unsinkable,burning and floating very happy, two hours, three hours...ufff.Nothing to do, and finally decided to sail back to Kiel.

- feel your pain -

[predavolk]

I'm a big fan of bow shots, as the momentum of the ship drives it under. I've never failed to sink a small ship with a bow shot. I have seen them settle on their stern though, when I suspect they are able to control the flooding. It is unrealistic for a small ship to be tougher. Proportionally, they may be stronger than a larger ship, but proportionally, the same explosive charge should also do much more damage. A 15' hole in a 150' ship is 10% of its length, in a 75' ship you're looking at 20%. Volume-wise, the difference is bound to be even larger proportionally.

[KeldorKatarn]

Try the following (carefull, exact hit needed, only fire if 0° gyro possible, a near hit will usually not work):

3m depth, hit the rear mast exactly. The tanker should be reported as destroyed immediately and sink a few mins later.

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Keelbuster

I wonder....bigger to me means proportionally more volume (volume increases by the cube of the dimensions) and more displacement. More displacement means more buoyancy. But this buoyancy is reduced by the load the ship carries. So the hypothesis is this: whether or not the ship has cargo (i.e., westbound vs. eastbound tanker) should make a bigger difference for T3s than small tankers because when a T3 is empty, it has oceans of extra buoyancy compared to a small tanker.

To me it feels like small tankers are unrealistically buoyant - there's something glitchy about their displacement/load. Finally, I still stick to the point that a torpedo would be more likely to compromise more than one compartment when hitting a smaller ship than a larger one, because the bulkheads would be closer together in a smaller ship. Hence catastrophic damage should be more common in hits on small ships.

One other thing to wonder about is this: ships are more likely to sink with damage at the extremeties (bow/stern). When the ship's bow is compromised, it starts to lean that way, like a lever. In a long ship, the lever is longer, and hence the water that is sinking the ship can more easily (with less force required) bring the ship into a fatal listing angle. With a smaller ship, the lever is shorter, and it requires proportionally more force to bring about the fatal list angle. What do you think about that?

It would make sense that a solid hit to the forecastle or engine room should cause the ship to sink on its on with just one hit; especially a hit to the forecastle. Besides the water that would normally flood from the initial hit, you've got the engines still propelling it forward which forces water into the boat at high pressure. It's like a bilge pump working in reverse.

A hit to the engines will cause the same sort of effect, though generall not as fast. Just like the forementioned, it works on the lever principle. The ship will still have momentum and creates a vacuum of sorts sucking water into the ship until it either tips upwards and goes down, or the flooding gets contained; in which you end up with a ship that has no propulsion and becomes a sitting duck that you can come back for later and take out with the deck gun. The (good) homing torpedos can usually do this pretty well provided the ship is travelling fast enough.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

I'm afraid not

There's a one based on anilla/stock (available from my GWX FF account)