Mk37

[tony18662]

Fired and hit a november sub it diden´t sink put active sonar on and fired torpedo and sink me with one hit any advise to a newbee

[maxx99]

Did the November torpedo hit you on your reactor or screws? Then 1 hit should be enough to sink you. Did your torp hit him in the front section? Then better finish him off with another torp after you have cleared the datum after launching and your weapon has acquired. Good luck!

[hoffmannjames]

Usually 1 torpedo hit works for me. But I would recommend practicing being as stealthy as possible:
- silent running
- crawl at 5 kts
- position yourself at opposite sides of the thermo layer to the enemy to minimize their chances to hear you.

When you are around 10 kyds away and have a 95% solution, fire a torpedo and try to keep the wire intact so you can guide to the enemy as long as possible. Don't let the enemy sub get close to you. If you fire in his baffles, you can usually guide the torpedo right up his rear before he even knows you are there. If he does fire a torpedo at you, immediately launch a MOSS in his direction and go to max speed, max depth and change course to go 90 degrees from his bearing. This will maximize your chances of survival.

[tony18662]

midships flooding killed me no pumps no reactor

[AKD]

Is there a speed limit for safe Mk. 37 launch? I launched one going about 20kn in a Skipjack and the torpedo almost instantly detonated and sunk my sub. In fact, although credited with 2 kills, I have only sunk myself. The two soviet subs fell victim either to their own torps or to diving too deep or into seafloor. :)

[maxx99]

Originally posted by tony18662:

midships flooding killed me no pumps no reactor

Don't forget to blow ballast Shift R as a last ditch effort to surface when you are diving out of control.

Originally posted by AKD:

Is there a speed limit for safe Mk. 37 launch? I launched one going about 20kn in a Skipjack and the torpedo almost instantly detonated and sunk my sub. In fact, although credited with 2 kills, I have only sunk myself. The two soviet subs fell victim either to their own torps or to diving too deep or into seafloor. :)

I try to launch under 15 knots, I've had plenty tubes jam after firing when chasing a target at high speed.

[MosulVet]

I'm having mark 37 problems as well. I've sunk myself now twice (out of two campaigns) right after firing. I get 'wire broken' even though the target is dead ahead and my speed is low (under 15 knts). What am I doing wrong?

[SweatyNeckbeard]

Originally posted by AKD:

Is there a speed limit for safe Mk. 37 launch? I launched one going about 20kn in a Skipjack and the torpedo almost instantly detonated and sunk my sub. In fact, although credited with 2 kills, I have only sunk myself. The two soviet subs fell victim either to their own torps or to diving too deep or into seafloor. :)

20 knots is too fast. The mark 37 is slow. The top speed is 26 knots. Unless you are close to what you want to hit or you are targeting something slow like an LST it's useless. I know you have to use it against subs in the '68 campaign but your going to have to get close, because the Soviet subs can easily outrun it. Preferably you're going to have to be in it's baffles as well.

At the speed you were going it basically came out the tube and smashed into the nose of your sub.

[SweatyNeckbeard]

Originally posted by Sage:

I'm having mark 37 problems as well. I've sunk myself now twice (out of two campaigns) right after firing. I get 'wire broken' even though the target is dead ahead and my speed is low (under 15 knts). What am I doing wrong?

You're still going to fast. I've never had a problem firing these at 5kts.

[theCarthaginian]

The Mk37 is a poor weapon... it wasn't designed to cope with nuclear submarines, period. It was made to work against diesel subs that had top speeds of about 16 - 18 knots, and could only sustain those for extemely short durations without draining most of their batteries. Soviet nukes can easily outrun them.

Here's how you use a Mk37 effectively.
1.) get a TMA and establish your target's base course.
2.) approach your target in their baffels (60* cone directly astern the sub).
3.) close to <4,000 yards; you have to play this tight.
4.) launch 2 Mk37s and hold course/speed until the enemy unit hears the torp.

You have GOT to get that close, because the Mk37 is slower than most Sov SSNs. Getting right up their backside means that they can't accellerate sufficiently to outrun the torp - it is fast enough that no matter how hard they try, they simply can't speed up fast enough to open a gap.

[getysbug]

The Navy believes they lost the USS Scorpion to a Mk37 torpedo. Apparently, they would start up in the torpedo room for no good reason, and when they thought they'd gone far enough, they'd arm themselves, and all the metal surrounding them would activate the magnetic exploder and detonate the torpedo. Usual procedure when this happened, was to turn the boat as fast as possible to make the torpedo believe it was running circular, and it would disarm itself. It happened on at least two other subs where they were able to get the torpedo to disarm, but apparently they weren't fast enough with the Scorpion.

And for the record, the Alpha is fast enough to outrun a MK 48 ADCAP torpedo if it has some room to run. Perhaps adding the British subs and their 70 knot Spearfish torpedos would help in that respect...

[AbhChallenger]

On wikipedia it mentioned that the MK37 got upgrades as soviet subs got faster and dove deeper. Perhaps we ought to be able to use some of those upgraded versions on the more modern class submarines in the 68 campaign.

[ramjbjb]

the Alfa is not fast enough to outrun a MK48. Not the first blocks, not after the ADCAP updates.

An Alfa could hit 43 knots underwater. Even the first block MK48 could hit 45 which, granted, is a small difference but no bigger than between a Mk37 and a running November.

Later blocks and ADCAP addition progressively increased that speed. ADCAPs are officially "faster than 30 knots". Off the record figures vary from 55 to 65 knots depending on block. Either case, faster than an Alfa and perfectly able to catch one trying to run.

[Technopiper]

As in real life, upgrades seldom work as planned. We are unlikely to hear much about a weapon's incompetence. That's classified. Best example would be the WWII rivalry over acoustic homing torpedo. The German thought they had a wonder weapon, the allies thought so too. Information available after the war indicated otherwise.

[AbhChallenger]

A little off topic but I was wondering. Why is it that until the MK48 the US Navy submarine captains had to make do with torpedoes that were either unreliable or underpowered for the mission? Such as the terrible torpedoes of Early WW2 or MK37 that was absolutely outclassed by soviet designs?

We had the best submarines in the world. Yet armed them with crap.

[ramjbjb]

Soviet naval power didn't start really kicking off until Gorshkov rose to command the Red Navy. Up to the mid 60s the Soviet Navy was a very minor threat both in numbers and actual power, specially compared with the size and capability of the US Navy. Hence there was no huge rush to introduce new much more capable weapons.

Then Gorshkov kickstarted a huge growth of the soviet navy and things changed pretty quickly.