Quote:
Originally Posted by DelphiUniverse
gap,
point 1: Most ramming were done by battleships, battleships have much much stronger hulls than a light and simple destroyer.
point 2: There were extremely few ramming incidents with destroyers. And those who did, had their destroyer badly damaged. Quote "Borie was too badly damaged by the ramming to be salvaged", and btw, the u-boat that the destroyer rammed into, were not critically damaged he-he.
point 3: Only a tiny fraction of all the 1200 uboats during the course of the war was attacked by ramming, insignificant numbers, and most done by heavy ships or scared/suicide merchants.
point 4: What I am talking about are destroyers doing this in 100% of the cases in the game, there is a big, big, BIG difference here..  Ramming is an absolutely last resort attack, and preferably on wooden vessels. You don't attack uboats by ramming and as a primary type of weapon, its silly. |
You are so wrong in part of your statement that I had to just drop some quoting on it. This comes from 3 min googling wikipedia and a bit u-boat.net:
Quote:
In World War II, naval ships often rammed other vessels, though this was often due to circumstances, as considerable damage could be caused to the attacking ship. The damage that lightly constructed destroyers took from the tactic led to it being officially discouraged by the Royal Navy from early 1943, after the HMS Hesperus was dry-docked for three months following sinking U-357 in December 1942 and HMS Harvester was torpedoed and sunk following damaging her propellers during the ramming of U-444 in March 1943. USS Buckley (DE-51) rammed U-66; and HMS Easton rammed U-458.
Other submarines sunk by ramming included the U-100, U-224, U-655,[16] the Italian submarines Tembien[17] and Cobalto,[18] and the Royal Navy submarine HMS Cachalot.
During anti-submarine action, ramming was an alternative if the destroyer was too close to the surfaced submarine for her main guns to fire into the water. The tactic was used by the famous British anti-submarine specialist, Captain Frederic John Walker from December 1941 to the end of the war.
His first chance to test his innovative methods against the U-boat menace came in December when his group escorted Convoy HG 76 (32 ships). During the journey five U-boats were sunk, four by Walker's group, including U-574 which was depth-charged and rammed by Walker's own ship on 19 December.
In June 1943 Walker's own ship Starling was responsible for the sinking of two U-boats. The first, U-202, was destroyed on 2 June by depth charges and gunfire, and the other, U-119, on 24 June by depth charges and ramming.
The destroyer could not use its gun on the forecastle due to weather damage and the 4in gun on starboard jammed when firing a star shell, so they tried to ram U-432 which turned inside her turning radius and tried to escape at full speed on the surface but soon crash dived.
If given the opportunity, escorts will even ram a U-boat, whether it is on the surface or at periscope depth. The resulting damage will put the escort out of action for many months, but if that could sink a U-boat, then the price was considered well worth it.
Kosmos II tried to ram the surfaced U-123 off Oregon Inlet. The U-boat was in shallow water, without any torpedoes left and one of the diesel engines out of order. The Germans managed to get the engine running when the ship was only 75 metres away and slowly out-distanced her at full speed.
While the corvette headed at full speed towards it the fog lifted a bit and U-569 was sighted directly ahead. The commander intended to ram the U-boat but the gunners of the 4in gun opened fire without orders and gave the surprise away.
HNoMS Potentilla obtained a radar contact approaching her in this vulnerable situation. Hurrying up the rescue work, the corvette turned towards the contact and engaged the U-boat with all weapons from a distance of less than 300 meters at 05.21 hours. One of the five rounds from the 4in gun was observed to hit the base of the conning tower and several hits from the AA guns were seen. She had completely surprised U-174 but missed to ram by a few meters, turning astern of the boat and coming up along her port side, dropping five depth charges so close that the charge from the starboard thrower was fired over the crash-diving U-boat and detonated on her starboard side while the others detonated on port.
David Balme, like Hannifin, was an excellent source of first hand information. Balme was in fact the officer who captured the first enigma machine from a German U-boat. On May 9, 1941 he was engaged in a naval action in which his destroyer forced U-110 to the surface. The standard procedure was to ram the U-boat so that the crew could not get up on deck and start firing their guns.
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Ok so I stop because it's quite late and I think the point is clear. There are LOTS of accounts of escorts (corvettes, DEs and destroyers) ramming or trying to ram U-Boats. This was made, primarily, in order to force them under, locate with ASDIC and work them with DCs.
As you can read in the first quote I pasted, starting in 1943 the RN discouraged the escort captains from ramming since it was, as you said, very dangerous for their smallish ships, too. But that doesn't mean it ended, you can check that the famous Walker kept using that attack till the very end.
In the first years of the war ramming and trying to ram was VERY common, even for small escorts:
1) Don't forget that u-boats main attack mode at the time was surfaced at night, when they were almost invisible.
2) They were much easier to attack when they were submerged, since shooting was not easy on such small target as a u-boat presented, unless sea conditions were optimum.
3) Even if they were not rammed or located by ASDIC, if they were forced under that was considered a minor victory for the escort, since it would be quite long till they dared surfacing again, and convoys, merchants or whatever the escort was protecting would be far gone.
Later in the war, after radar was commonplace, it was not so usual for u-boats to attack on the surface so this situation changed. But even in some cases, mainly if/when after chasing they were so near guns couldn't be pointed down, and also commonly when u-boats emerged after being pretty shaken with DC attacks, they were still rammed.
There are quite a lot of stories about escorts coming back to port with huge damage due to this ramming, I recall some even sinking on the way back to port because of this, though I'm talking out of my... memory here
So, you see some of your points might be valid, and I wouldn't have answered which such a "thick" post if you hadn't insisted so much as to make it look like ramming was an "odd" thing. When a destroyer or a corvette found an enemy sub, the first thing to do was steaming to get as close to it as possible, and many times that was very literal!
No escort would just shoot subs from a distance, they would always get real close! Hell, even famous ace Joachim Schepke in U100 was literally crushed in the bridge of his sub when he thought the (old) enemy V Class Destroyer HMS Vanoc would miss and pass astern!
tl;dr: Ramming by escort ships, or "menacing" with it, was very common, in order to finish damaged u-boats, and in order to force them under so as to be able to attack them with DCs.
PS: Naval artillery in WWII, in North Atlantic weather, AND in small ships as destroyers vs u-boats, didn't work AT ALL like it's modeled in these sims. Many many times it was totally useless trying to hit a small u-boat from a really unstable platform as such smaller escorts were. As you said, trust me!