Improper Baffles Modelling?

[Waffle.wav]

Why do submarines equipped with a towed array still have a baffel zone behind the submarine ingame, if the towed array is supposed to eliminate this zone irl?

[toinkertoy]

Well I’m no expert but I don’t think the primary goal of towed arrays was to “eliminate the baffles” as much as for better lower frequency detection. Also remember that they work best when the towed array is orthogonal to the contact (which a contact in the baffles is not!) so it makes some sense to me that it will not detect a contact in baffles, or at least as easily.

This prolly explains a lot of it!

https://www.quora.com/The-Hunt-for-Red-October-1990-movie-Is-it-true-that-if-one-submarine-comes-in-behind-another-submarines-propeller-hes-deaf-as-a-post

“All the benefits lean toward detecting somebody from further away, but do relatively little to safely protect your baffles (read, keep your butt from getting run over). As such, most submarines today still primarily rely on hull mounted sonar systems for driving the ship from a safety standpoint. Collisions can happen when the crew loses sight of this reality. Can't see the forest for the trees, so to speak.”

[rokvam]

Yes, the towed array does negate the baffles, but the arrays are very sensitive, so great care needs to be taken both with manouvering and the use of speed while using it.

Also back im the 80's the towed arrays did not give you the bearing to a sound contact as fast and accurately as the spherical array did, but they had great range.

Back in the day it was a long range detection tool. Not a "look behind you" tool.

But I thought this was modelled in game. I thought units with towed arrays moving slowly did hear in their baffles.

Am I wrong about this?

- Dolphin 48

[Antti-san]

Doesn't the towed array hang lower than your boat, so if there's a layer, you could still be blind to your baffles, right?

But I think Killerfish should add an icon to the HUD so you can immediately see if the array is operational.

[Waffle.wav]

Originally posted by Antti-san:

Doesn't the towed array hang lower than your boat, so if there's a layer, you could still be blind to your baffles, right?

But I think Killerfish should add an icon to the HUD so you can immediately see if the array is operational.

Honestly I think they should just model the array at this point lol.

[Irving Mainway]

Originally posted by Waffle:

Honestly I think they should just model the array at this point lol.

They've not been able to yet, the towed array wouldn't just be a straight line it would stream out from the back of the boat and the slope of such would be dictated by the boats speed and as I understand they've not been able to arrive at something which looks the part (i.e. it probably looks about the same as the towed array in Dangerous Waters and Sub Command, which would be a visual step down compared to how well the rest of this game looks.)

Originally posted by toinkertoy:

Well I’m no expert but I don’t think the primary goal of towed arrays was to “eliminate the baffles” as much as for better lower frequency detection. Also remember that they work best when the towed array is orthogonal to the contact (which a contact in the baffles is not!) so it makes some sense to me that it will not detect a contact in baffles, or at least as easily.

This prolly explains a lot of it!

https://www.quora.com/The-Hunt-for-Red-October-1990-movie-Is-it-true-that-if-one-submarine-comes-in-behind-another-submarines-propeller-hes-deaf-as-a-post

“All the benefits lean toward detecting somebody from further away, but do relatively little to safely protect your baffles (read, keep your butt from getting run over). As such, most submarines today still primarily rely on hull mounted sonar systems for driving the ship from a safety standpoint. Collisions can happen when the crew loses sight of this reality. Can't see the forest for the trees, so to speak.”

As I understand it, getting back to the very early design requirements, eliminating the baffle area was one of the reasons the Towed Array was developed in the 50s-70s (pre-dates much of the low frequency developments which made long range detection possible) and why it was quite quickly issued to the SSBN fleet in the early to mid-70s (AN/BQR-15 I think). That being said Towed Arrays still have "end-fires" i.e. areas which they don't hear sound namely immediately in front and behind the boat which is towing them, but these are much smaller "blind-spots" than a hull-mounted sonar would have.