Onkel Neal has made a Best of SUBSIM nomination.
Nomination Category:
Nomination basis: Well done.
Forum:
Destroyer - The U-Boat Hunter
Nominated Member: Furia
Nominated Post:
Link
Quote:
I am sorry to disagree with this but this is an extremely well documented historical fact.
A Type VII would out turn a Fletcher destroyer class dramatically.
Actually a Fletcher class was considered a real bad turning platform and there was even talks in the past that an Iowa Class battleship would out turn a Fletcher
LINK Pacific War Online Enciclopedia. Fletcher Class DD
Quote:
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One notable weakness of the class was its poor maneuverability, and it was claimed that even an Iowa-class battleship could out turn a Fletcher. Subsequent destroyer classes adopted twin rudders to improve the turning radius.
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In the other hand we do have the own US Navy assessment of the Type VII
turn capabilities.
LINK U-Boat Archieve Type VII analisis See pages 17, 19 and 19
So while a Fletcher class was supposed to have a turn radius of 700 meters at fast speed, the U-Boat could manage a turning circle of 270 meters at flank.
The problem of the Fletcher was that it was initially designed with a single rudder and it has a relatively long lenght.
Other Destroyer escorts of smaller size or the small flower class corvetes has a better turning circle but none of then matched the U-boat capabilities even close.
The Type VII had twin rudder directly in the propeller flow
Sinking U-Boats with depth charges (Rail and trowers) was extemely dificult, battles lasted 5 to 10 hours and the main tactic was to force the sub to run out of bateries or compressed air.
The future developement fo the Hedgehog would turn the tables because the sub captain could not identify that the DD was making the overpass to drop charges showing the moment to make a radical turn /speed /depth maneuver.
Actually I find the game now too easy, since the last two patches I am consistenly sinking all subs I find, just because they remain at shallow making my life easier. I can easily predict the sub possition even when turning for a 10 sec period (time for shallow DC to reach tgt) but if he goes deep, the more than 1 minute for the DC to get there, is sufficient for the sub to evade them nicely. So the fact the sub remains most of the time at shallow is the "unrealistc" thing while turn radius is historically accurate.
One of the limitations the developers should take into account is that battery life and availability of compressed air were the main factors a sub captain had to take into account. Normally no sub arrived to the convoy with just freshly charged and warm batteries at 100% capacity and he had to preserve them since he had no clue how long he would have to fight underwater.
As Neal mentioned in another post, the battery life at flank was expected to be 45 minutes to 1 hour. Compressed air was also used when making dramatic depth changes.
In real life DD just forced the sub to run and expend those comodities in order to force him to surface. A conservative U-boat captain that manages his resources is something we still do not have in the game.
Another element that needs tweaking is the acceleration /deceleration ratio for the submarine and for the destroyer. They accelerate and decelerate way too fast. The powerplant technology at the time did not allow for such fast speed changes. Ships need time to build speed and to slow down.
But I am happy with the turning capabilities of the sub.
There is a nice video here that explains this better than me
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