A close-range example shows why a target could evade a narrow pair of torpedoes or turn between a widely spread pair. The attacker therefore needed more tubes and, more importantly, more boats. Even at about 1,100 yards, a 35-knot torpedo took roughly a minute to arrive, while a battleship could start maneuvering as soon as it saw the attack developing. Torpedo fire was aimed at a predicted future position, so the defender's rudder and formation discipline could defeat calculations that looked convincing on paper.
Chapter · 1:05:18-1:13:50
A torpedo sniper had to predict a moving target
A pair of torpedoes from a single boat offered poor odds because the target could turn before the weapon arrived, making simple sniping increasingly unreliable.