Quote:
Originally Posted by h.sie
... But even if they had the possibility to communicate among Uboats: Would they do that in that specific situation? I ask, because radiowaves could warn the convoy.....
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First off, I really have to salute you and all involved in your modding effort. Some of the results are nothing short of brilliant so thanks for your efforts.
Even without Allied ship borne HFDF (which the German's greatly under-estimated), U-Boats generally only communicated with each other by radio rarely and only in very special situations. There were rare occasions where captains in visual range would try and coordinate operations using flags, lamps or loud-hailers but they were unusual.
During the wolfpacking era, the German submarines lacked VHF voice radio (RT for Radio Telephone) and relied solely on High Frequency WT (Wireless Telegraphy) This meant the radio operator had to encode the transmission on Enigma and transmit using Morse code and so since HF works best at long distances, it was essentially useless to communicate with other boats in a convoy battle. The delays involved made real time coordination between boats impractical. Wireless operators would take in and decode messages addressed to other boats and the Captain could build a plot based on the signals and his own observations and act accordingly but he would almost never communicate directly with another boat in the same pack using radio.
The Type IX was originally designed as a command boat for wolfpack type operations but the communications problems were never solved and early in the war, command was determined to be best exercised remotely from BdU. U-Boat captains in the North Atlantic were generally on a very short HF leash during the time of the wolfpack.
Your mod facilitates this very nicely. Thanks again.