Detecting Submarines not yet on the board

[Jaesen]

What is the mechanism for finding a sub for which a model has not yet been placed?

Presumably ships with sub hunter can blind roll if they’re in a sector against running deep, but what about planes with ASW?  Can they even see things running deep?

[Nat]

Hi Jaesen,

If you look in the thread ‘news from the wardroom’ I’ve put a cheat sheet that covers most things about the game.  Along with a flights 101 guide, if its not in the cheat sheet its most likely because its not clear how its supposed to work so I’m waiting on the FAQ… which is due soon TM

But to answer your question Subs that are undetected & running deep can go ‘hidden’ (my term) and be removed off the board.  When a sub is deployed /gone hidden the subs owner notes which 12″ square its in – it cant leave this sector whilst hidden.

Before the movement phase any ship with sub hunter may attempet to reveal a hidden sub in the same sector as it is.  Done by making a Crew Quality Check (ie 4+) with the modifiers listed in the book  (sorry not got my book at work with me & cant remember the page number).

Off memory ASW flights & Observers planes allocated to ASW may attempt to ‘detect’ a sub at submereged or surfaced depths.  They Canot reveal hidden subs.

[Finn]

Another Question for this detection.
The Kriegsmarine has the special radar rule right in the frontpage of their ships. How does this work on the detection of subs? Does it not change the way you described it above?

[Nat]

The simple answer is it doesnt!  But thats because radar is only used on surfaced subs, and other surface vessels, and not submereged /Deep Diving Subs.   This is why I call submarines not on th board ‘hidden’…. and thinking about it, instead of detected it should really be called discovered.

Radar’s use of the word detected means that a ship outside of sight range (so I think its 20″ at night /bad weather – not got my book with me at the moment) can be ‘pre spotted’ as it where, so that you can either (with advance radar) conduct guesswork shooting or when they move in to sighting range auto spot them.

Basically if a sub is hidden then you NEED a ship (including other submairnes) with the sub-hunter trait to find it…

 

EDIT 2 – hmm…. intresting question of if Radar works when a sub is submerged…. but apart from that it works the same just limited to a single arc

 

EDIT – ps I’ve since updated the cheat sheet & added a subs 101 to the wardroom news thread …

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Nat.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Nat.

[invisible officer]

Well, the nerd answer 😉  Not based on the rules  .

German Funkmessgeräte (~ Radar) had no chance to detect a periscope. But British / US Radar had a fair one. So the U-Boot snorkel and periscope in late war got a waffled rubber plating. Sometimes it helped, sometimes……  Against a surface(d)  vessel the German systems worked well.

Kriegsmarine used the Gruppenhorchgerät a lot, a sound detecting system with many microphones. It was able to detect moving submarines and surface vessels in a passive way. Not like Sonar / Asdic that was an active system. Naturally Kriegsmarine had Sonar too.

[Author]

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