Cormorant ASW Helicopter
Dipping sonar and homing torpedoes: the aircraft that hunts submarines. A torpedo has to be dropped into water — attack from over the sea.
Stats
- Tier
- Tier 3
- Cost
- 700 metal
- Build time
- 34 s
- Hit points
- 340
- Armor
- Aircraft
- Speed
- 2.9 tiles/s
- Unit cap
- 2
- Vision
- 9 tiles
- Sonar
- 10 tiles
- DPS
- 35
- Range
- 5 tiles
Production and tech
Counters
Weapons
airtorpedo
- Damage
- 140
- Reload
- 4 s
- Range
- 5 tiles
- DPS
- 35
The Cormorant is the first aircraft that can find a submarine: a dipping sonar that reaches ten tiles — a tile past the Orca's — and homing torpedoes that bite hardest below. It is the answer from the air to the Barracuda and its warhead, and to the Kraken and the Moray.
How to use
Torpedoes go in the water. Dropped over land they fizzle where they fall, so attack from over the sea, and come at a boat lying off a beach from seaward. Its torpedo reaches five tiles and the Aegis Frigate's missiles reach eight and a half, so a screened fleet is closed to it; a fleet without a frigate is open, though it sinks a surface ship slowly. Park a pair over the approaches to your harbour and nothing sneaks in under the water; take them along when a Kraken is shelling your shore, because the Orca that would hunt it is what the Kraken's escort is waiting for.
Anecdotes
A helicopter cannot listen while it flies. It hovers, lowers the sonar into the water on a cable, listens, hoists it and hops to the next spot — dipping, the crews call it. The Sea King of 1961 was the first to carry both the sonar and the torpedoes, so one aircraft could find a boat and sink it without calling anyone.