How to evade ASW helos and aircraft

[loede]

Hi everyone,

I would like to ask for your advice on a pretty general tactical question, if I may:

How do I - as a submarine driver - avoid detection from ASW helicopters/aircraft? Whenever I am confronted with airborne ASW assets, I am pretty much screwed. I have no idea on how to evade them and always get killed fairly quickly.

To be clear, I am not so worried about torpedo evasion (since at that point, things have gone downhill anyway). Rather, I would like to avoid detection altogether.

So far, I have been unsuccessful with high or low speeds, as well as with sprint-and-drift tactics and jumping between layers. And surfacing in order to deploy surface-to-air missiles seems suicidal and not very realistic.

My general thoughts on this come from my favourite book ("The Shipkiller" by Justin Scott), where a sailor on the run on his sailing yacht says something along the lines of: "I am like a fish in a barrel. I cannot hide inside the barrel. So my only chance is to hide the barrel itself." I have no idea, how to achieve this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Loede

[Mike Abberton]

It depends a lot on the scenario, but in general, the helicopter/aircraft patrol a very specific section of the map and start dropping a pattern of sonobuoys right at the beginning. It's these sonobuoys that are detecting you.

If you can get to periscope depth and figure out where they are operating (from a safe distance), avoid that area at all costs. You'll likely get picked up on a sonobuoys and they'll start dipping on you. As you've said, very hard to get away at that point.

Try to move around the area they are working to get access to your targets. Sometimes if you wait long enough (and can stay in contact with the targets), the original sonobuoy pattern will start to degrade and the scenario might not really attempt to replace it effectively.

[MaDef]

Depth and distance, You'll need to get out of the way of their search pattern.

If the helo is already deployed, I try to put the task force between my boat and the helo while avoiding it's search pattern.

However if I'm stalking a task force and notice a helo headed my way, it means they heard something and are headed to investigate. At that point if I have decent firing solutions I fire my fish, drop a decoy or two, go deep and haul ass and try to set up another run at them.

Finally, if you get in undetected and the task force has air assets that haven't been deployed by the time you're ready to strike, target the ships that have them in your initial salvo.

And finally, there is a reason you have wire guided torpedoes, they allow you to fire at targets while remaining outside the enemy's detection range, which means when they do start looking for you, they'll do it on the torpedo bearing, rather than where you really are.

[FPSchazly]

All good advice. If you want to drop your torps at the fleet, I would recommend closing your doors because when the doors are left open, they decrease spherical/cylindrical sonar performance and increase your radiated noise because of the increase in flow noise.

If you're in deep water, try your best to stay below 500 feet. The MAD detection range extends about ~1000 feet down from the sensor (from the manual), so try and stay as deep as possible, in fact. So for you folks playing OpFor in the air assets, stay as close to the water as possible when collecting MAD data (always keep that thing running!)

If you're playing against humans, an active counter measure is always a great decoy. The return off the active will look nice and juicy to your opponent while you slip away in an advantageous direction at a slightly increased speed of, say, 15 knots.

Overall, try your best to avoid where the air ASW assets are located!

[loede]

Thanks for the good advice, everyone!

It never even occurred to me to try and track the airborne ASW platforms...