How to handle ships with sonar?

[Pip Squeak]

I know a good way to combat this is to lay your ship on the seabed, but I couldn't when I was out in the middle of the ocean with the sea floor thousands of meters below. So how do i stop these ships from circling my sub like vultures?

[MJN]

take the "dummies" in your inventory, go to the back torpedo room and fire a dummy. It will make alot of noise and you may be able to escape.

[Pip Squeak]

Originally posted by 𝕰𝖘𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍:

take the "dummies" in your inventory, go to the back torpedo room and fire a dummy. It will make alot of noise and you may be able to escape.

Thanks! I'll give it a try.

[Pyrrhus]

Not sure if smooth or rough surface applies in this game. Rough water hence from high wind is supposed to diminish sonar ability to track sub. Harder to get way from vultures while the surface is smoother or low wind. So position yourself into a convoy for attack would be easier during rough surface whether day or night time. During smoother surface, surface attack during night time from great distance as possible then get away at flank speed without submerging while torpedoes are still swimming toward their targets.

[Hjalfnar_HGV]

Dive deep. Really deep. Depending on where you are they might lose contact. Early war ASDIC wasn't good for extreme depths, especially not if there was a thermokline. I think this is already implemented so you should be able to evade SONAR/ASDIC if you dive deep enough and manage to get under the thermokline.

[Prophet_01]

There are basically 2 approaches.

a) Dive very deep and evade until your opponents eventually run out of depth charges. They usually won't hit you, because the charges take such a long time to reach that low. After that they often stop following you much further and return to the convoy. A decoy might help, if the charges get too close or rhey won't get off your back.

b) In rough weather you can also stay very close to the surface (slightly above the usual periscope depth) and that will reduce your visibility quite a bit. While I wouldn't bet on it alone, it works quite well in combination with a decoy. Some upgrades help a lot with that tactic. I also use it to sneak into ports.

[Clara]

Don't get so close!

[ZombieHunter]

Not sure if temperature layers are in the game but best bet is to dive deep under one. Sonar won't pass through certain thermal layers and will bounce back as if the layer is the bottom or it will cause the speed of the sonar wave to lessen thus curving it and deflecting it similar to light when it hits water.

[branimir.maksimovic]

According to game intro while loading, thermal layers are implemented.

[Pete Puma]

The decoys do not make noise to cover the sound of your boat. They are fizzy tablets.......they make air bubbles in the water to simulate a submarine to active sonar. The "sonar" ping does not react to the metal hull. The ping is reflected when the sound encounters air. The speed of sound in air is much less than in water or steel so the sound wave slows. Waves behind it are reflected back when they run into" the slower wave. A ship using active sonar has very limited to NO ability to track you passively. It would be like trying to hear a whisper at a AC/DC concert.

Also...I do not know if this is modeled in the game but DDs used sonar to look ahead. the sonar was focused forward and down. this means a DD would lose contact with a sub prior to the bow crossing the subs location. The deeper the boat, the farther out the DD lost contact. The type VII could out turn a DD the captain would wait till the DD got close.....then go flank and turn hard, usually change depth also. The boat would get away from the DD drop zone. Plus the big boom made the DD blind due to the water being all disturbed. The sub would go back to slow prior to the DDs ears coming back. To counter this "flaw" the side launched depth charge was added. The Americans used to put two DD in line...the trailing DD would tell the lead DD when he was over the target...ouch. The Americans also start attacking U Boat 3 abreast. the depth charge drop zone was too wide to get clear of. Once the Hedgehog was invented is got nasty. The Hedgehog fired ahead of the DD, while it still had sonar contact. The weapon sank fast and only exploded if it hit the boat.

Depth is you best friend. The higher water pressure reduces the damage radius of a depth charge. It also has to sink to the depth. The cylindrical depth charges sank slow. Also there was a good chance of finding a thermocline to hide under. The sudden change in water temperature restricts sound transmission to shallower depths such as where a DD would be hunting.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by Pete Puma:

The decoys do not make noise to cover the sound of your boat. They are fizzy tablets.......they make air bubbles in the water to simulate a submarine to active sonar. The "sonar" ping does not react to the metal hull. The ping is reflected when the sound encounters air. The speed of sound in air is much less than in water or steel so the sound wave slows. Waves behind it are reflected back when they run into" the slower wave. A ship using active sonar has very limited to NO ability to track you passively. It would be like trying to hear a whisper at a AC/DC concert.

Also...I do not know if this is modeled in the game but DDs used sonar to look ahead. the sonar was focused forward and down. this means a DD would lose contact with a sub prior to the bow crossing the subs location. The deeper the boat, the farther out the DD lost contact. The type VII could out turn a DD the captain would wait till the DD got close.....then go flank and turn hard, usually change depth also. The boat would get away from the DD drop zone. Plus the big boom made the DD blind due to the water being all disturbed. The sub would go back to slow prior to the DDs ears coming back. To counter this "flaw" the side launched depth charge was added. The Americans used to put two DD in line...the trailing DD would tell the lead DD when he was over the target...ouch. The Americans also start attacking U Boat 3 abreast. the depth charge drop zone was too wide to get clear of. Once the Hedgehog was invented is got nasty. The Hedgehog fired ahead of the DD, while it still had sonar contact. The weapon sank fast and only exploded if it hit the boat.

Depth is you best friend. The higher water pressure reduces the damage radius of a depth charge. It also has to sink to the depth. The cylindrical depth charges sank slow. Also there was a good chance of finding a thermocline to hide under. The sudden change in water temperature restricts sound transmission to shallower depths such as where a DD would be hunting.

Sonar DOES bounce off the hulls of objects and solid objects. But it also bounces off of other things as well and there are ways to fake it out so it bounces off of something that acts as a ship hull or looks like a submerged contact when its not.

The problem with decoys is they are almost too noisy. They are pretty easy to spot by a trained operator and sometimes do the exact opposite of what the sub wants. My advice is to not use them as much as is humanly possible and use tactics, depth and other evasive manuevers to get out of harms way. Turn off all non-essentials, limit speaking and volume, run 1/3 which should be silent running and face away from the ship(s) pinging you so as to present a minimal sonar signature. But with 2 or more pings it becomes difficult to present a low signature to all active sonars. Best bet is silent and depth. And don't use the depth to keel as it uses active sonar as well.

To me decoys just confirm what I don't want confirmed....that I'm really out there somewhere.

[Razors_Edge1 || TTV]

One thing to remember is when you hear the splashes of depth charges change your direction, When they start to explode away from the sub the ship can no longer detect you, speed up, change direction again, including depth. You'll notice the ship will stop for a second to hone in on you again. If you follow the above with this combo I'm almost always able to evade any ship.

[gerald2]

Originally posted by Razors Edge:

One thing to remember is when you hear the splashes of depth charges change your direction, When they start to explode away from the sub the ship can no longer detect you, speed up, change direction again, including depth. You'll notice the ship will stop for a second to hone in on you again. If you follow the above with this combo I'm almost always able to evade any ship.

yep if it would be not bugged but it often is:) i goty situation wheer i was going on silent running at max safe depth and DD was cruising over me thru hours,whats better he not dropped single depth charge just shoot her guns always exactly in direction where i moved ...finally i ran outa oxygen ,this game needs tons of work and balancing yet.

[El Rushbo]

Originally posted by Razors Edge:

One thing to remember is when you hear the splashes of depth charges change your direction, When they start to explode away from the sub the ship can no longer detect you, speed up, change direction again, including depth. You'll notice the ship will stop for a second to hone in on you again. If you follow the above with this combo I'm almost always able to evade any ship.

Destroyers would speed up when getting ready to drop a pattern of charges. Once you hear it spool up then go flank and change direction. The Destroyer won't be able to hear you over the sound of his own engines. It wasn't uncommon for subs to face several hundred depth charges in one go. Traveling on the surface at night was also a way to counter ASDIC as it couldn't detect anything on the surface. Until the development of radar, the majority of U-boat attacks were done at night on the surface because they were difficult to spot on the surface in daylight let alone night time. When U-99 was taken, they had come to the surface very close to a British destroyer. The watch crew panicked assuming they were spotted and the boat dived. The Destroyer caught them on ASDIC and attacked eventually leading to U-99 surfacing and striking their colors. (That's how Otto Kretschmer was captured) Had they stayed on the surface, it was likely they wouldn't have been spotted and been able to slip away.

[Menace]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Not sure if temperature layers are in the game but best bet is to dive deep under one. Sonar won't pass through certain thermal layers and will bounce back as if the layer is the bottom or it will cause the speed of the sonar wave to lessen thus curving it and deflecting it similar to light when it hits water.

I think this was in Cold Waters (I don't own the game though), but I thought I read that it was in there. If you find the 'sweet spot' concerning the temp layers you were more hidden form sonar.