Running Silent

[Matt0!]

Whats required to run silent, there's no guides on this, what stuff do you guys recommend turning off ?

[Scrogdog]

Mouse over the eye icon on the right to see what is currently making noise on the boat. Should be fairly easy to figure out where to go to shut things down. The only slightly non-intuitive one is that you shut down the steering engines by right clicking on the steering station and selecting 'manual'.

[FrAgGeD_BE]

Also , the blue lighting is used for silent running. It makes your crew use less oxygen. For the rest , yea turn everything off thats making noise.... compressors, pumps , navigation aid, slow down your speed,.... The eye icon tells you whats making noise.

[Matt0!]

Ahhh thanks, I didn't know that's what blue running was for cheers!

[FrAgGeD_BE]

Your welcome
Fyi , red is used at night for better spotting , and the white can give a morale boost at day.

[Blasted]

MattO!, think about manuel dives planes, because on auto that make noise ( it control by specefic electric motors and generate lot of noise ).

1 - drive ahead on 1 not more ( make engineer and 3 crew on motors ) !
2 - Switch off the "gyrocompass".
3 - manage with officer ( Mecanic ) the dives planes in manual mode.
4 - In logic don't load torpédo ( but i'm not shure about is it implement in game for this about generate noise...).

5 - in case of dd pursuit you have some "flare" "leurre" ( in french ) to get in "pillenwefer" ( sorry for mistake of vocable ) and launch it and go deeper ( but i suspect that "flare" don't really work as require in game and possibly it's buggy...!

I hope it will help you !

Good game to you ! :-)

[DAN-di-WARhol]

Where is the light switch? I can't got o silent running.

[dbond1]

Light switch is located in the control room above the hatch leading to crew quarters. Use alt to make it pop

[Micullus]

Somehow you can even take the fuses out and the boat still makes 80db noise.
Gladly it's silent enough to hide in 20m depth on the floor.

[Ramseur]

For immersion I like to be in the control room during silent running and keep an eye on the engine rev counter, I learned over on SH5 to keep it as low as possible.

[Mel Bigson]

there is a good mod for this, creates a menu item from the tab key on the left that says silent running and shuts off most if not all the little things.

[Bovvy88]

Originally posted by Dondalinger:

there is a good mod for this, creates a menu item from the tab key on the left that says silent running and shuts off most if not all the little things.

Mod name?

[Svartkladd]

Staying undetected (at least in this game) is a bit different from what you expect from movies, it seems.
DO NOT rush to dive below periscope depth (it seems logical and it may be if there is a thermal layer, but I'm not even sure it's modeled here) - the closer you are to surface, the bigger bonus of "surface disturbances" which essentially hides your noise signature and, most important, hides you from sonar. You may get detected by noise mostly if you're running high revs or enemy is really close, like <500 m, in latter case it's actually worth to go in silent mode, stop working on torpedoes, etc. But mostly you get detected by sonar.
So safest place to stay undetected by sonar/hydrophone is on surface, but you can be detected there visually (or by German music being heard from open hatch), that's why best time for hunting is during the night - you can stay on surface longer (preferably till first booms, when escorts start firing flares) or go decks awash even when escorts are looking for you, if visibility is really low.
Sometimes it helps to set depth of 4-5 m, if there is no storm, you can stay above usual periscope depth and below decks awash, keeping visual signature to a bare minimum while also reducing sonar signature.
As soon as you go below periscope depth (which provides tiny bonus, btw, but it's better than nothing), you can be detected nicely be sonar and need to prepare for all that fun with dodging depth charges.

[9erRed]

The "TAB" key opens up the left menu.
- From there you can change all the light colour options with a single selection.
- Silent running is also there.

[Ax4711]

Running a proper commander with the three social skills in alarm mode hasn't been mentioned. Best measure to cut down on noise from the boat.

[Akeuila]

To answer the original question, switch to blue lights and the rig for silent running command. Blue lights automatically stops all torpedo work (loading and maintenance). Propulsion is up to you. Recommended when not making evasive maneuvers is 50 rpms, or dead slow ahead (Forward 1). Depending on ambient conditions, slow ahead may not be any more detectable by passive means than dead slow ahead.

As for remaining undetected by active sonar, it just depends when in the war you're in and what is hunting you. Early war up to the beginning of 1943, you only had to deal with Type 128 and older units that only had the main beam (searchlight). The beam had a nominal range of about 2000m, almost 3000m in excellent conditions, and was only about 16 degrees wide in the vertical. This means at 500m, you were below the beam at around 90m. At 1000m out, you were below the beam at 180m deep.

The Type 144 and 145 begins to roll out in 1943. By itself it's still a searchlight beam. But it introduced automatic scanning, no longer requiring the operator to rotate it and instead only having to focus on listening for contacts. What's more dangerous is the Type 147 and Q units that were mounted with the Type 144. This allowed for quite accurate three dimensional tracking within 1000m to virtually on top of the target. The Q was the vertical component and the Type 147 "sword" was the horizontal component. Both sets could cover 60 degrees in their respective orientation at about 5 degrees wide. Basically, if you were detected by any component of this suite, it was a near certainty that an attack run would quickly follow. Range and depth with this suite was very accurate as well. Use of decoys, knuckle turns, clever repositioning and other such tricks will be needed to escape.

Ax4711 also brings up a good point that commander skills also drastically reduce the noise made by crew, including during torpedo reloading.