Aircraft in Early War
 

After reading carefully the manual for the original SH3, GWX and the forums, I came to the conclusion that people are afraid of planes quite a lot.

During my old playthroughs many years ago I came to realize how true it was.
But now that I have a new PC (well decent at any rate, a dual core, a decent graphics card, 4 GB Ram, standard issue), I noticed that aircraft is very, very scarce early in the war!

What I mean is 1939, 1940, even the beggining of 1941.

I have attempted to spam radio reports to BDU close from the British Isles, Guadalcanal but to not success. It seems they simply 1) Don't have the planes, since they are busy fighting off the Axis in Africa and the Dover Cliffs. 2) Can't find me because radar isn't in the equipement yet. 3) The Allies aren't able to decode messages from the Enigma code machine yet.

These things may be possible, perhaps GWX simulates that, perhaps I have a bug. Or maybe it's just Murphy's law?

I want to see aircraft in my campaign just out of curiousity at least. The training mission seems to have them. What am I doing wrong?

Aircraft have only got to hit you once.

You have got to dodge them every time.

They'll turn up, eventually, and then you'll be thinking wistfully of the 'old days'. Enjoy it while you can, it's no bug.

KH

Not 100% if it's the mod or not but I've noticed that after installing USAM there seems to be some carrier patrols around the north of Britain in 39-40 .

You could try giving it a go if you sail around that area

NYGM has many more Early war aircraft patrols. time compression x128 max to let them find you.

Aircraft were incredibly ineffective during the early war, so this is accurate. In fact, in the entire first two and a half years of war, only 4 U-boats were sunk by aircraft alone (plus another 4 jointly by aircraft + warships) - none in 1939, 1 in 1940, 2 in 1941 and 1 in the first two months of 1942. To put that in context - there were roughly 1000 war patrols made by U-boats in that time period. It was only by the second half of 1942 that aircraft became effective, and by the end of that year the tally stood at 37 U-boats sunk by aircraft alone. Then came 1943, when 30 boats were sunk by aircraft in the single month of July (!)

Airplanes were not an effective weapon at the start of the war for a variety of reasons - tactics, technology, and the all-important numbers factor simply hadn't caught up yet. It took time to build these things up. The same could be said of surface escorts. Although the British developed technology, experience and know-how by the end of 1941, they first needed to produce enough units (of airplanes, ships, weapons), and secondly they needed an opportunity. For the first half of 1942, the U-boats effectively disappeared from the Western Approaches and the convoy lanes to go hunting in the Wild West (i.e. the coasts of North America and Caribbean) where they faced an unprepared, inexperienced and disorganized enemy. When the U-boats returned to hunt convoys again in the 2nd half of 1942, the British suddenly effectiveness went up. They did not yet have enough airplanes or ships to go after U-boats offensively, but if the U-boats came to them to attack convoys, they had the resources and experience to hit them - including with aircraft. When finally they had enough resources to go for U-boats offensively - as they did in the Bay of Biscay from 1943 - the results were disastrous for U-boats.

Early in the war, the numbers of effective ASW aircraft were very limited. Although in SH3 you might often find yourself attacked by Hurricanes and the like early in the war, this was not common - that was Coastal Command's job, not Fighter Command's, and especially once mid-1940 came around the RAF desperately needed every fighter they could get to defend in the Battle of Britain, and every bomber to hit back at the German home front. Even in 1943, Bomber Command fought tooth and nail not to give up their precious airframes to Coastal. In short, there was a chronic shortage of ASW airplanes. Even the immensely successful "Derange" patrols in Biscay during March-May 1943 were run with a fraction of the aircraft that were actually requested by Coastal's operational plans. Contrary to popular belief, there were never swarms of airplanes out looking for U-boats, and their numbers were always desperately short - and even in 1942 and early 1943, it was still perfectly plausible and even likely that a U-boat would see no aircraft at all during an entire patrol. Coastal Command simply never had enough aircraft - it was not until American squadrons arrived and were fully trained, equipped and ready that the air coverage was actually complete. And even then it was no shooting gallery - even with effective centimetric radar, good weapons, and competent crew on board, the average result for Coastal Command was that it took about 1200 flight hours of patrolling by aircraft over Biscay to sink a single u-boat. The majority of Coastal air crews on ASW duty in fact never even saw a boat during the entire war. Those who did rarely had more than one successful attack. More attacks ended in the loss of aircraft than of the u-boat, and many more planes yet fell tto German air cover and accidents. Tough job and all the more impressive what they were able to accomplish!

Long story short: lack of aircraft and their total inability to hit you early in the war is completely realistic. You have to be either very unlucky or very foolish to be sunk by an airplane before late 1942.

Thank you for the detailed response!
I was thinking the game was bugged since even getting into enemy ports didn't seem to do the trick (maybe I just got in the wrong time or in the least populated ones).

In that case I suppose it's reasonable to expect planes well after 1941, when they'll have radar.

Another odd thing that I thought of is that by attacking enemy ships, let's say a typical coastal freighter in the Irish Sea, giving them enough time to report me as an enemy to their HQ, they still didn't send any help.

I suppose then you are correct, probably they would rather send Destroyers after me than any planes.

Interesting if anyone got to see an enemy plane before 1942. Perhaps it's just a GWX thing.
But this mod seems rather solid and historically accurate.

I was almost beggining to think that it's too easy :know:

Thank you to everyone who replied!

Finally some luck - February 1941, 3 to 5 planes in a few days attacked me in the Irish Sea, North of Londonerry.

A couple of Hurricanes and some floating boats. Destroyers also went late to intercept me but they came way too late and I managed to sneak away on surface when they're going the opposite direction.

A plane isn't much of a problem anyway. Just shoot it down.

It's when 2 or 3 show up that you need to be careful.

It's that attitude that usually gets one killed :D Though I don't know about it in GWX, it's been a long time since I played with it! I'd consider counting on being able to shoot down aircraft an unrealistic tactic, if nothing else.

The most important skill to dealing with planes (and this was very true in the real war) is being able to quickly judge their distance and decide on when to dive. If a plane is far enough to dive safely, pull the plug right away. But if it's already closing in, diving is one of the worst things you can do, because that's when the U-boat is at its most vulnerable. Most of the kills were on U-boats in the process of diving, often a few seconds after they submerged. If a plane is close enough, the best thing to do is fight back and maneuver hard, then dive as soon as it moves away for another pass. For larger aircraft, that usually takes a while. For smaller aircraft, they only have 1 or 2 passes in them anyway.

Otherwise, fighting it out with aircraft is a bad idea. Although it's true that more airplanes were shot down by U-boats than vice versa, it wasn't by much - the ratio was never acceptable and no U-boat ever scored more than 4 aircraft kills.

And your U-boat is lucky if it can make 20 knots on the surface, the average aircraft can do 200+ knots, therefore, anything you can do, he can do 10 times faster. Exercise extreme caution...

Yup! They even go underwater faster if you manage get them down :D

Oh, there's another reason not to fight aircraft - shooting one down on the attack run often ends in it crashing straight into your boat, which never ends well! While it wasn't that common historically, there were a few known incidents of the aircraft and u-boat successfully killing each other.

Well to be honest nobody had to suffer.
We only had good catch in ships. But I'm just glad that my game isn't bugged. They missed their depth charges because of the steep turning rate of our boat.
The trick is to kill them when they're diving at you or going from you in a straight line.

Well I must be no U-boat then, because I already have 7 aircraft kills to my name–all Swordfish. I've suffered some damage from planes, that is true, but I've never had a person injured or killed (knock on wood).

If an aircraft shows up and I'm on the surface, I simply turn tail and run at full speed. Yes, it's true that you cannot outrun a plane, but the anti-aircraft batteries are at the back of the boat, and the speed gives the men a few precious seconds to acquire the plane and shoot at it.

Once the plane has made its attack run, by all means dive! No need to crash dive, a simple dive will work. Go at least 100 meters under, run silent, and resume your normal course. Stay under until your CO2 hits 2, then come up for air. Problem solved.

If, on the other hand, 3 planes show up you're in trouble. There really isn't much you can do. Yes, you can try to crash dive, but as other posters have pointed out, even if you're 20 meters under, a plane can easily score a direct hit and kill you instantly. Your men can probably shoot at least one of the planes down, but it's small comfort if you kill two planes and the third kills you.

My tactic, as I've said before, is to run submerged as often as possible. The only time I run on the surface is when I have 16 km of visibility, when I'm maneuvering for attack against a convoy, or when I'm moving torpedoes inside. Hydrophones work WAY better than 8.5 km of visibility for finding ships.