[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

Originally Posted by shipkiller1

US boats need to be quieter. In real life, you could get really close with out being counter detected if your crew was good. In all but the quietest Soviets boats, you normally do not loose track at a 2/3rds bell (10 knots), sometimes even at a standard bell depending on the contact.

You can track many subs at 2/3rds bell. It depends on their speed of motion.

You are not the first person I see claiming both actual experience and that the American subs should have more acoustic advantage. Gameplay aside, having integrated testimonies from both the Soviet and Americans, the impression I get is that the Americans did have an acoustic advantage, and there are days and scenarios when they can indeed get very close. But overall they probably overestimated the degree of advantage they had - my post on this issue from 2011.

Originally Posted by Kazuaki Shimazaki II

Yeah, read that book years back & it was an eye-opener. My perception is that the American superiority is more in the system more than the individual boats. Leaving aside the vague issue of training, SOSUS turned the undersea fight into one b/w a side with "AWACS" and a side without.

Another factor is that the Americans started really deploying rafting in their Permits in 1960 or so, while the Soviets started in 1972. That ensured a large glut of noisy Soviet submarines, and that pulled up the "national average" (and thus the American perception) of Soviet submarine noise and vice versa.

A third factor is that the Soviets seem to know when they are losing more than the West gives them credit for. In Blind Man's Bluff, there is a section where the Soviet Admiral let slip he was near USS Dace in a Victor I. Sontag tries to make it an issue of who trailed whom, and of course the American, which had an acoustical superiority, and who presumably waited in an ambush position, had the edge in that fight.

IMO, Sontag misses the point, which is that the Soviets had managed a counterdetection, even if it was late, and the Americans don't seem to know about it. Winning is better than losing, but in ASW warfare, managing to know when you've lost is a massive step up from not knowing, and not realizing that your victory is not quite complete is in itself a fair loss.

Towed array ranges are also too short, but I think that these are not utilized in the current version of the game.

They are not implemented in their final form, but they are there, simplified.

Periscope depth starts around 68ft, depending on sea state. The top of the sail skims the surface at 50ft.

As I understand it, it is 68 feet counts from the bottom of the sub, and this game seems to count from the "middle" of the boat.

This is a BIG error: US Submarines can launch a torpedo at ANY speed.

I'm actually inclined to believe the variant where they can't. When looking at a Soviet submarine, you may notice its tubes are at the top of the bow and fire straight out. There were actually proposals to move the tubes to the "American" position so the bow can go for a big spherical sonar (and trying to get as much aperture for the sonar as possible is undoubtedly important to the Soviets with their noisier subs and less advanced electronics). The current form is selected because the calculated speed limit was 11 knots. It is a Path Not Taken for the Soviets and AFAIK the American limit was higher (18 knots IIRC), probably due to improvments made in optimizing this mode of launch, but the Americans are not immune from hydrodynamics.

Torpedo guidance wires are not a fragile as in the game. You can keep your wires at higher speeds.

If your wire is good, once a torpedo detects a contact or starts homing, it reports back contact range, course and speed as referenced from ownship. Thats not all but it is enough for a game simulation.

I agree. Those stupid wires can break a little less. I've stopped my sub and they still break.

688-699 - Flt 1 (all first flights were upgraded to flt2's in their first major yard period)
700-718 - Flt 2.

Which are all the subs actually in the game.