Excessive duds?

[Levethane]

I know the Germans had a real big problem with their torpedo quality control in the early years but by early 1942 should they not be a lot better? Fired 6 topedos at a lumbering C2 cargo boat, every single one of them was a dud (spending 30 minutes shadowing it while they rearm as well). 2 were not direct hits and Silent hunter seems to punish you for that even through my great uncle who was in the RAN (HMAS Napier) in WW2 said German torpedos were very touchy, just rubbing along the side of a ship would set them off (magnetic feelers on the sides), often with the same damage as a direct hit.

Also 3 torpedos to sink a coastal merchant? (again I followed him for 20 minutes after 2 direct hits, dispite learching to one side he never slowed down or started to sink the 3rd torp finished him off but such a waste of ammo on such a small target, (was to choppy for the deck gun)

[Teddy Bar]

Its all you http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif No offence meant...

I am afraid that your uncle is very much incorrect. The German torpedoes had woefull problems.

This is a quick overview on the torpedo issue...

For the Germans, from 1939 through till the begining of 1943, the magnetic detonator was unrelaible in its use. About 40% of magnetic detonator set torpedoes exploded at the arming range of 300 metres.

Of the torpedoes that did not suffer a premature explosion, a high percentage exploded too early when reaching the ships magnetic field. That is, they exploded beside the ship and not under it. When we say beside, we may be talking 5-10 metres away.

When this issue was countered by setting the sensitivity down, the magnetic detonator was not sensitve enough to be effective against ships of less than 3000 tonnes.

Now add to this the depth keeping issue, where as the torpedo would possibly end up as much as 2.7 metres deeper than it was set at. The cause of this issue was not identified until March (or there abouts) of 1942, and a solution available until the end of 1942.

Also, we can set our torpedoes to 1 metre deep in a gale and have a 100% true run. In real life, the torpedo was raely set above 3 metres, even in perfect conditions. As a shallow set torpedo would most likley become a surface runner, that is, it breaks the surface and as a result the sensitive gyroscope and the likes fail and the torpedo goes off course.

As far as I am aware, there were less than 10 escort type vessels sunk by u-boats before 1941.

Now as far as the impact pistol goes, it also had its fair share of problems. The designe was to work up an angle of 55 degrees, but in reality is was found to be closer to 20 degrees (off the top of my head, may have been slightly higher). So trying to detonate a torpedo on the fron of a razor edge bow was in reality, impractable.

Of course, the allies were also degausing their ships as a way to combat the magnetic mine. Obviously this also made the magnetic pistol less effective.

[Levethane]

Ah...ok.
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Thanks for that info.
Might consider cheating in removing the dud torpede realism feature as its so dam annoying, but I probably won't.

[HW3]

In the game impacts should be shot between 60 degrees and 120 degrees AOB. The closer to 90 degrees the better. Magnetics work best between .5 and 1M below the keel.