Convoy Decoy ships
 

Years back I watched a movie in which I distinctly remember ships which either led or trailed Convoys, that looked much the same as the other ships but had a nearly non existent draft and no cargo. The idea being torps would be waisted on them passing harmlessly beneath. I know Q-ships don't fit this bill as my understanding is they were merchants vessels with hidden weaponry for ambushing submarines.

I can't remember the movies name as I was probably 8 or 9 at the time but I do remember the concept.

Were these ships real, what are they called, and are they represented anywhere in the silent hunter series?

They were real. My Dad's Uncle was on one in WWI and sunk a U-Boat off NW Africa. They were top secret during WWI because (I was told) they were against the Rules of War.

Q Ships also served in WW II.

'Run Silent, Run Deep'
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Si...eep_(1958_film)
-
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052151/

Good film, I agree. Depending on the mods you decide to play, Q ships are represented.

If you consider ship identification, get it wrong and you can get an armed merchant in Stock when you don't expect it.

Happy Hunting!

Yes. No.
 

Yes, they existed, no, the stock game doesn't simulate them. The British in particular used shallow draft cargo ships loaded with empty airtight barrels or boxes of kapok (used for life preservers back then). If the torpedo was set shallow enough to hit, it would blow the usual hole in the side with the usual flooding, but with all the extra flotation from the cargo you'd need a dozen torpedoes to actually destroy it. In some cases the Brits had hidden guns and a "panic party" along with a large crew, when hit by a torpedo the panic party would abandon ship while most of the crew remained hidden to try to trick the sub into surfacing. That version wasn't actually a "Q ship", but close to the same idea.

TMO/RSRD has a Q ship of sorts., classified as an Elite Patrol craft. it's basically the Taihosan Maru(small split freighter) with plenty of guns, depth charges, elite crew, sonar and later, radar.

Problem is it shows up as a warship on sonar and while draft is shallow, its not so shallow torpedoes wont hit.At night though if dont use the auto id feature ( I dont) in the dark, when not part of the screen but in with the merchants, have mistakenly targeted it, wasting torpedoes. When set to Elite skill level, its a dangerous adversary as well.

So weird that this idea popped up! Just the other day I was dogging a medium sized convoy. Did an end around but when they showed up it was just half the merchants and no escorts. The merchants were all the runts from the pack I ran into earlier.

Right away my conspirator's mind thought that the tankers and the escorts veered off and sent the scrubs into the lion's den. Now THAT would be some programming.

Alas, not to be.

Turns out that something (natural sinking mechanics mod, me thinks) sank the big merchants and the three escorts were stuck with decks awash and couldn't move. They weren't sunk but they weren't moving either. We were in deep water so they weren't sunk and sitting on the bottom. Very strange.

Anyway, in my very next encounter, two big juicy troop transports showed up and sank for no reason before I merged with them.

That put me off my GFO obsession and back onto TMO. In fairness I should say that I don't know much about modding and probably screwed it up by loading contradictory mods. GFO has some fantastic features that I really enjoyed.