Dick O'Kane lead angle question

[Rockin Robbins]

I received a PM from taukarrie that was so good the I think it needs its own thread:

your first O'Kane method tutrial that is. first off, very well done. a lot of my most recent ciritcal questions were answered by watching it just once. one question though...

when estimating your lead angle you, as a rule of thumb, go for 15 degrees. but you also said that it doesnt really matter what that number is. my question is why would you choose 15 degrees and why does that not matter?

it seems to me that the lead angle estimate is crucial for this method and to regard it so lightly confuses me.

thanks for your time.

OK, I'm going to do this without reference to my video, so I may be correcting my own error here. Here is where language becomes very important and I believe that it's important that we be careful to use the same terminology as the military.

Why? Because knowing that lives are at stake, they take great pains in using carefully defined terms that can't be mistaken for each other. They are extremely disciplined in their use of terminology. They don't tolerate sloppiness too well. In this case the sloppiness may be mine, so let me set things straight.

Taukarrie, I think the problem comes with the definition of "lead angle." The lead angle is the difference between the shoot bearing or aiming bearing, along which you sight your periscope at the target, and the bearing the torpedo travels to impact the target you're looking at. Of course, if the TDC just sent the torpedo up the aiming bearing, by the time the torpedo got there the target would be gone! But you've told the TDC that the target is on a course at right angles to your own, traveling at 8 knots. From that the TDC does its analog calculation mumbo-jumbo and says, well, I have to send the torpedo 10º (or whatever lead angle) ahead of the aiming bearing.

You see, Dick O'Kane came about because of my stupid mistake. I was using Gutted's great chart, which he had just adapted for fleet boats. It looks like this:


OK, so you pick the target speed out of the first column, travel across the row to the column reflecting the torpedo speed and there's your lead angle. We'll take a target traveling left to right at 8 knots. For a fast torpedo your lead angle is 9º. You subtract 9 from 360, where you want the boom to occur, and sight your periscope up the 351 bearing. So your lead angle is 9º and your aiming bearing is 351º. When the target crosses the wire, you push the button, the torpedo zips up the zero bearing and kaboom!

So I did it wrong when I first tried it. I looked across the 8 knot line and picked the wrong column. That gave me the 14½º lead angle for the slow torpedo. I aimed up the 345½º bearing and pushed the button. The torpedo shot up the zero bearing just as it was supposed to but there was no boom. The target got there after the torpedo did. I was a bit miffed.

Then I had an idea. If I could screw that up, so could everyone else. And that chart only had columns for fast and slow Mark 14s. How about Mark 18s and Cuties? Heck, that's two more columns to make twice as many mistakes! The chart is great but we are not. How can we fix that?

It just so happens we have a built-in chart on board that automatically knows what torpedo and what torpedo speed we have selected. It NEVER makes a mistake. It's called the TDC. When we're using the chart, we tell the TDC where we want the torpedo to go and WE pick the lead angle. Let's do it backwards!

Instead, let the stupid people pick the aiming bearing only! The TDC can calculate the lead angle for us and send the torpedo up any bearing it needs to to make a boom. In the Dick O'Kane bearing we pick an arbitrary aiming bearing with a goal of getting somewhere close to a boom at the zero bearing. That's where the rules of thumb come from: under 15 knots, pick 350 or 10 as the aiming bearing, knowing that the lead angle is going to be somewhere around 10º. If you have a faster target than that pick 20º and aim up the 340 or 20 bearings, depending on which direction the target is coming from.

Now this aiming bearing means nothing at all to the solution! Let me explain. Our target is coming left to right at 8 knots. I'm going to choose my 10º offset and aim up the 350º bearing. The TDC is set for 8 knots, AoB 90º-the 10º correction for an aiming bearing of 350º. But that 10º isn't the lead angle! It is the correction for the aiming bearing. We're letting the TDC set the lead angle. And if you check Gutted's chart you can see that the TDC does its magic and calculates the lead angle as 9º. So it adds 9º to the aiming bearing of 350º and sends the torpedo up the 359º bearing. BOOM!

So aiming bearing: where you point your scope. THAT's what we arbitrarily pick by rule of thumb in the Dick O'Kane method!
torpedo track bearing: the path of your torpedo. That is calculated by the TDC much more precisely that we can with a chart!
lead angle: the angle between those two bearings

Clear as mud?

[I'm goin' down]

I downloaded and ran the dick o'kane mission yesterday. I hit the tanker with all six shots. Shots nos. 5 and 6 were slow speed torpedoes. I assume the TDC automatically adjusts the lead angle when you switch from a fast torpedoes to a slow one? Or, when the speed of the torpedo is different do you have resend the range before firing?

Also, O'Kane, being a rule of thumb, becomes less accurate at long ranges. For example, you describe a scenario at 8 kts. where impact occurs at a bearing of 359 degrees. The lead angle is 9 degrees and firing point under O'Kane is when the target crosses the 350 degree bearing. Let's accept that it works at 1,000 yds. (practice verifies it does). It might not hit the target at 2,000 yds., since the firing point(a bearing of 350 degrees) is not when the target crosses a bearing of 351 degrees. The difference of one degree in the firing point (351 degrees [precise firing point] - 350 [Dick O'Kane firing point] = 1 degree.) when the range is 2,000 yds. rather than 1,000 yds. could result in the torpedo arriving at the impact point (359 degrees) before the target does. RR pointed this out in one his posts a long time ago, and, as I recall, the safest ranges for OKane are 800 (?) - 1,500 yds.

And, don't forget:

For the long distance shot, Rock n Shoals constant bearing method or gutted's chart diplayed above or gutted's Solution Solver program are good ways to go. The Solution Solver is pretty amazing.

And, for the angled shots, Cromwell or gutted Solution Solver program or manual targeting using the Easy Aob mod (PK activated) are tried and true techniques.

And my favorite: close your eyes, push all the buttons, and pray.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

Also, O'Kane, being a rule of thumb, becomes less accurate at long ranges.....

You weren't paying attention. You are confusing a rule of thumb lead angle, which O'Kane does not do as explained above, with rule of thumb aiming bearing, which is the glory of Dick O'Kane. Yes, you pick the aiming bearing by rule of thumb. But the TDC calculates the lead angle with much greater accuracy than you could from a chart and with much more possible variability. It NEVER picks the wrong torpedo speed. It NEVER picks the wrong row unless you enter the wrong target speed.

Also, the lead angle changes depending on the aiming bearing. HUH??? Think about this. With an AoB of zero there is no lead angle at all no matter what the target speed. But lead angle is maximum when impact is at the zero bearing. Your charts can NEVER reflect the constantly changing lead angle with AoB. The TDC calculates it continuously and accurately.

Therefore if you decide not to wait and shoot when the target bears 340º, you can do that with Dick O'Kane and hit every time. With your charts you'll have to wait until he crosses the wire at 350º or just miss. What if you get distracted and don't shoot at 350? Using Dick O'Kane, you just aim up another bearing, like zero, press the send button and you'll still hit because the TDC adjusts for a new lead angle not found in ANY CHART! Dick O'Kane is MORE ACCURATE than a chart, not less because you are not using a chiseled in stone chart, you are using an analog computer which blows that chart all to Hades! It also eliminates a whole horde of human errors that come from using those charts.

So nothing that comes after your quoted statement has any validity whatever. The chart contains dozens of numbers. The TDC generates millions and millions. My money's on the TDC.

By the way, Fast-90, usable only by U-Boats, is even more flexible than Dick O'Kane because you don't need to do anything after TDC setup but point the periscope at the target, no matter what the bearing and shoot. You'll hit your mark, With Dick O'Kane in a fleet boat you have to press the send bearing/range button to send the new aiming bearing to the TDC. For maximum accuracy with Dick O'Kane you should also adjust the AoB, but the U-Boat's active periscope/TDC link automatically adjusts the AoB also!

[I'm goin' down]

Very interesting, Herr Doctor. So, why am I screwing around with other methods when the range is 9K or less. (9K seems too far, so let's settle on 4K.) Regardless of the position of the target vis a via my boat, O'Kane yields accurate lead angle that should produce an impact, assuming I have the course and speed of the target and set range to max distance. Admittedly, a broadside impact point yields the largest target profile, but the theory should apply to angled (i.e. smaller) profiles as well.

I may be experiencing a 2001 "dawn of man" moment.

[Rockin Robbins]

Exactly! O'Kane is the closest approximation we can get to the flexibility of the U-Boat attack at 90º to the target track. With it you can accurately shoot at any time before or after the only valid aiming bearing for a chart attack. This flexibility leads to more shots taken, therefore it leads to more hits per patrol. A shot not taken never hits its mark.

Remember that the Dick O'Kane instructional video is a BLOWN ATTACK. I was busily running my big mouth as the target blew past the aiming bearing. No matter! Without even updating the AoB (because there just wasn't any time) I just aimed up the zero bearing, pressed send range/bearing and shot anyway. Because the TDC automatically calculated the correct new lead angle, which was no longer 9º, I still sunk my target, salvaging both the attack and the video.

[Dignan]

Good stuff here. Thanks for the explanation/answer to taukarrie's question, RR.

I've got a follow on question of my own. I'm familiar with the Dick O'Kane method and have used it with great success. I recently read the tutorial for the "constant bearing" method. Basically, my question is "how is the constant bearing method different from the Dick O method?"

I will attempt to answer my own question to help myself understand the difference but if any of the experts could weigh in I would also appreciate that.

My perception is that CB differs from DO in the two following ways:

1. In constant bearing you are not limited to a 90 degree angle on the target track. You can attack from any angle.
2. In constant bearing method you must input a fairly accurate range to target track, unlike in DO method.

Are these the only two differences?

[taukarrie]

Making lots more sense now, thanks for the detailed explanation. I thought that with method you needed to pick an already calculated lead angle. I had the whole thing backwards.

Dignan mentioned that O'Kane is limited to 90 degree angles. I haven't seen it used at any other angle but I don't see why it couldn't work at any other angle. Especially since the TDC is doing the work

Rocks and shoals' tutorial for his constant bearing method is not quite the same as O'Kane. But it does seem a little more similar than that.

But, as always, im probably missing something.

[greyrider]

.


You see, Dick O'Kane came about because of my stupid mistake. I was using Gutted's great chart, which he had just adapted for fleet boats. It looks like this:




rockin robbins + gutted = Plagiarism!

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as "the wrongful appropriation, close imitation, or
purloining and publication, of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,
and the representation of them as one's own original work."


you are one disturbed individual rock, remember what i said in 8010, the more you try to cover your tracks, the more you expose?

another pathetic attempt at covering your tracks, and with obvious point and shoot material no less!

you seem to forget the people that downloaded the combat information mod, and the individual torpedo data sheets, which i called the bearing/speed charts
back in 2006 and 2007, from sh3 and sh4. you forget that they are witnesses to your lie, and gutted's fraud! you forget the people posting in the treads i made
of point and shoot as well as the sonar overlay and angle solver thread, that they are witnesses, and in which i might add, was the first posted instance of the point and shoot technique,
during the shooting phase of that post, when was that post posted? what year? 2005! where were you and gutted in 2005?

i remember now, you werent here! you didnt come here until 2007, haha! and gutted even later!

there is no civil crime for Plagiarism, but it is a moral crime, but one thing plagiarists do is validiate the work of the authors they steal from,
point and shoot is that good that you and gutted had to steal from it, copy it, and call it your own!


i wouldnt let you come into my house to steal something rock, you wouldnt get 3 feet before i dropped you with that intent , so im not going to let you steal point and shoot either,
i have a little bit of inside and outside work to do today, when i get back, i will spend the better part of the day here gathering evidence from my past posts, for the community to research,
then ill post it here in this tread, anyone still willing to stand for the truth, justice, and morality, will read, and will take a stand.
this really isnt for me as much as it is for future authors, modders, contributors to the game, and its also for the subsim management to make the decision,
will Plagiarism be condoned, or will it be condemned?

[Dignan]

I reckon this thread is about to get a bit unfriendly

[razark]

Originally Posted by Dignan

I reckon this thread is about to get a bit unfriendly

Ya think?

Edit:
@Fish40: Have you read the 8010 thread? "Innocent mix up" went out the window a long time ago...

[Fish40]

Please guys, let's not get out of hand here. It could be just an innocent mix up.

@ General Tso: As far as I understand it, the DO method dose not use the PK at all. According to the tutorial, the PK is never turned on.

[I'm goin' down]

See post 11.

[General Tso]

Originally Posted by Fish40

Please guys, let's not get out of hand here. It could be just an innocent mix up.

@ General Tso: As far as I understand it, the DO method dose not use the PK at all. According to the tutorial, the PK is never turned on.

In real life Dick O'Kane used the PK so that's good enough for me.

[I'm goin' down]

Greyrider, is your beef that Rockin Robbins and gutted failed to attribute some of their work to your ideas? And if so, why does it matter? Are you making a claim that gutted's Solution Solver program is your handiwork? I am not sure I understand the point you are trying to make other than that you believe you were left out of the mix and claim you have not been credited as the originator of the theory applied and expounded upon by RR and/or gutted. Is it possible that they did not know of your ealier work? If you have been left out of the mix in terms of being credited for ideas, techniques, etc., so what? Is it your goal to have Captains stop using the the attack techniques Robbins and gutted refined? Or do you just want Captains to hold them in disdain for taking advantage of your ideas? Or do you want the techniques renamed (presumably to identify your alleged contribution.)?

I am not up to speed on the 8010 method, if that is what your post references, but I understand that there was some controversy regarding its theoretical underpinnings. If this is going to turn into am airing of accusations, may I suggest that it be dealt with in a different thread, as this one is intended to clarify the mechanics of the Dick O'Kane method, or if I understand you correctly, what should be known generally as Greyrider's technique? I wonder whether many will get overly excited about the issue you raise, but if it important to you is important that you aired, go ahead. Please do it in a separate thread as it will not confuse this one. One final note. If you are going to state your case, take time to think it through and present it carefully and dispationately, as the readers will not likely have much patience for a rant filled historical account of past events.