Real Submarine Technology & History Q&A - Page 4

DaveyJ576 · 02-07-09, 05:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LukeFF

Is the watch system simulated in SH4 (4 hours on, 8 hours off), similar to what was practiced during WWII, and if not, how was it different?

Luke,

You are correct. All hands (except the captain) were divided into three watch sections and this continuously rotated 4 on, 8 off the whole time you were at sea. Unfortunately, you rarely got a whole 8 hours in the rack. You were lucky to get 2 or 3 uninterupted hours of sleep at a time.

Post-war the Submarine Service changed things up a bit and the watch rotation changed to 6 on and 12 off. Even still, sleep was at a premium and you got it in when you could.

neotekgeek · 02-07-09, 06:27 PM

Davey,

Firstly, thank you for your service. Secondly, hi everybody, my first post.

I'm reading the reports from: http://www.subvetpaul.com/52BoatsIndex.htm. Very often it's indicated that a radio transmission was sent to a sub, requesting it give status. Sometimes ordering it to respond, it would seem. Given the nature of a sub having little to no contact during radio silence, being submerged or other various reasons; how is it they receive the message? Was the message rebroadcast at intervals or relayed from other ships?

If it was simply rebroadcast, who was privy to the information? I can only imagine the hit morale would take if you kept receiving radio traffic for another sub to make contact.

Again, thank you for your service!

DaveyJ576 · 02-08-09, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neotekgeek

I'm reading the reports from: http://www.subvetpaul.com/52BoatsIndex.htm. Very often it's indicated that a radio transmission was sent to a sub, requesting it give status. Sometimes ordering it to respond, it would seem. Given the nature of a sub having little to no contact during radio silence, being submerged or other various reasons; how is it they receive the message? Was the message rebroadcast at intervals or relayed from other ships?

If it was simply rebroadcast, who was privy to the information? I can only imagine the hit morale would take if you kept receiving radio traffic for another sub to make contact.

Neo,

Welcome! I think there should be some sort of prize for a "Stump the Chump" question on your first post! Communications was a little outside my area of expertise and information on this subject is rather fragmentary. If anyone else can answer this question more completely, please contribute.

As I understand it, there was a regular encoded broadcast called the Fox sent out containing information for all boats at sea. The Fox sched was repeated several times a day in case a boat was at deep submergence and could not receive. Each boat had a four digit call sign. The radiomen would tune their gear to the proper frequency at the proper time and listen for their call sign. After taking down the letter groups, they would decode it and get the message to the captain for action. Any replies were encoded and sent out as soon as possible.

With the volume of traffic on each Fox broadcast, it was not feasible for the radiomen to decode the entire broadcast. They listened for their call sign and passed on the rest. Radiomen however, are kind of a tight bunch and they usually knew each other's call sign. Repeated calls to a certain boat were usually the first sign that there was a problem. Most of the time, though, the first you knew of a missing boat was when you returned to port.

Not responding to a message was not necessarily a bad sign. Radio antennas and aerials were kind of fragile and were easily damaged by depth charges or bad weather. Many times the Radiomen had to make jury-rigged repairs to their gear at sea and sometimes the boats lost all comms and could not report in until they reached port. For this reason, unless some sort of independent confirmation was received ahead of time (which was rare) no official word was put out until the boat was several days overdue in returning.

The above info is based in part on educated guesses. If anyone has more or better info, please contribute.

DarkFish · 02-08-09, 12:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by neotekgeek

Given the nature of a sub having little to no contact during radio silence, being submerged or other various reasons; how is it they receive the message? Was the message rebroadcast at intervals or relayed from other ships?

First of all welcome to subsim

I don't think receiving radio messages was a big problem. Submarines sailed surfaced most of the time and only dived when really necessary. So the chance of a sub being submerged on the rare occasion a message was sent to it was really minor.
I don't know what they did if a sub failed to reply, but my guess would be to rebroadcast the message after a couple of hours if it was an important message.

Bosje · 02-10-09, 09:51 PM

fantastic thread
how does one add those appreciation stars to threads?

dave, could you gloss over this thread and correct me/us where I/we went wrong?
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=143174

much appreciated

kudos, bosje

AVGWarhawk · 02-11-09, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveyJ576

Quote:

Originally Posted by neotekgeek

I'm reading the reports from: http://www.subvetpaul.com/52BoatsIndex.htm. Very often it's indicated that a radio transmission was sent to a sub, requesting it give status. Sometimes ordering it to respond, it would seem. Given the nature of a sub having little to no contact during radio silence, being submerged or other various reasons; how is it they receive the message? Was the message rebroadcast at intervals or relayed from other ships?

If it was simply rebroadcast, who was privy to the information? I can only imagine the hit morale would take if you kept receiving radio traffic for another sub to make contact.

Neo,

Welcome! I think there should be some sort of prize for a "Stump the Chump" question on your first post! Communications was a little outside my area of expertise and information on this subject is rather fragmentary. If anyone else can answer this question more completely, please contribute.

As I understand it, there was a regular encoded broadcast called the Fox sent out containing information for all boats at sea. The Fox sched was repeated several times a day in case a boat was at deep submergence and could not receive. Each boat had a four digit call sign. The radiomen would tune their gear to the proper frequency at the proper time and listen for their call sign. After taking down the letter groups, they would decode it and get the message to the captain for action. Any replies were encoded and sent out as soon as possible.

With the volume of traffic on each Fox broadcast, it was not feasible for the radiomen to decode the entire broadcast. They listened for their call sign and passed on the rest. Radiomen however, are kind of a tight bunch and they usually knew each other's call sign. Repeated calls to a certain boat were usually the first sign that there was a problem. Most of the time, though, the first you knew of a missing boat was when you returned to port.

Not responding to a message was not necessarily a bad sign. Radio antennas and aerials were kind of fragile and were easily damaged by depth charges or bad weather. Many times the Radiomen had to make jury-rigged repairs to their gear at sea and sometimes the boats lost all comms and could not report in until they reached port. For this reason, unless some sort of independent confirmation was received ahead of time (which was rare) no official word was put out until the boat was several days overdue in returning.

The above info is based in part on educated guesses. If anyone has more or better info, please contribute.

Sometimes the skippers did not respond because they were "busy"

Flukey did not answer on the patrol he was using rockets for the very first time. As DaveJ stated, it was not always a bad sign. Flukey would not return until every last weapon was exhausted....period. The patrol Flukey used the rockets on, he ignored the calls because laying waste a village and other targets of opportunity were not going to escape his sights.

AVGWarhawk · 02-11-09, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bosje

fantastic thread
how does one add those appreciation stars to threads?

dave, could you gloss over this thread and correct me/us where I/we went wrong?
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=143174

much appreciated

kudos, bosje

Go to the top of the thread and click RATING.

Bosje · 02-11-09, 05:17 PM

yeah i got it by experimenting with the buttons

thanks

DaveyJ576 · 02-12-09, 10:46 PM

I will be on a family vacation all next week, so here is a long post to keep you busy:

In general, USN submarine skippers in the pre-war period were by and large a very cautious group. This led to some serious issues when the war started. There were several reasons behind this:

1. Being Lieutenants or Lieutenant Commanders they were too junior to have any experience from WWI. Even if they had, our contribution submarine wise to the first war was very limited and nothing on the order of what the Germans and British had. We just didn't have the time to develop comprehensive and cohesive strategies and tactics for the sub force during the first war. With the exception of this less than one year limited taste of combat, the U.S. Submarine Force was completely untested.

2. Several notable submarine accidents with the resultant losses of the boat and/or the crew in the interwar years (S-5, S-51, S-4, and O-5 among others) had focused a lot of negative publicity on the force. The problems in the Submarine Service mirrored what was going on in the rest of the Navy (USS Mississippi turret explosion, Point Honda disaster). Pressure on the Navy Department from the press and the Congress to stop the accidents caused a new emphasis on safety and caution to creep into operational orders. Placing your boat in any situation that smelled of danger was frowned upon to put it mildly.

3. Despite the problems of caution noted above the Navy was eager to showcase what it could do. Heavy emphasis was placed on the annual Fleet Problem (a fleet wide exercise), various smaller exercises, and the Presidential pass-in-review. These things were hyped up and promoted and the desire to have them come off seamlessly and problem free was foremost in the minds of the admirals. Excellence in performance during these exercises became one of the prime considerations for promotions. Aggressive sub skippers were judged to be reckless and their boats were ruled as “sunk” in the exercises. Given the relatively small size of the Navy after the post-WWI draw down and the lack of promotional opportunities this provided for officers, the desire to not screw up and follow the script became paramount in the minds of many sub skippers. Innovation had been effectively stifled.

4. The Navy at the time was dominated by the "Gun Club", a group of like-minded senior officers that had staked their long and distinguished careers on the idea of the primacy of the big gun battleship. They believed (not without reason) that the battleships and cruisers were the center of the fleet and that their long range guns would carry the day in any battle. Unfortunately, these ships were extraordinarily expensive and getting large numbers of them built was hard to push by an isolationist and passive Congress. They placed in jeopardy a great deal of their personal reputations, literally placing their careers on the line, to convince everyone that this was the way to go. These admirals held virtually all the senior positions in the fleet. They made almost all the major decisions, including the format of the fleet exercises. With the best of intentions in mind, and sometimes with not, weight in the exercises was placed on the gun line, other elements such as aviation and submarines were de-emphasized and sometimes the rules were even skewed to make the gun line virtually omnipotent. These men were not stupid; they fully understood that the airplane and submarine were tremendous threats to their precious battleships and in some cases vehemently opposed them. Submariners were bullied into a supporting role for the battle line, and had been cowered into a position of impotency in the face of destroyer opposition by the Gun Club officers, mostly to preserve the idea of the battleship as the queen of the fleet. Eventually the restrictive and unrealistic nature of the exercise rules became so prevalent and accepted that many of the submariners themselves came to believe in their supposed vulnerability. These false beliefs were reflected in some of the tactics that became standard in the pre war years and that proved to be totally useless or unwarranted once the war started. Some of these false beliefs included:

Attacking on sonar bearings only from 100 feet depth or more. This was done to remove the potential of the periscope being sighted. Unfortunately, the fairly primitive sonar gear of the day and the lack of emphasis on proper sonar training produced information that was not accurate enough to allow precise fire control solutions to be generated.
Unwarranted and unjustified fear of aircraft and destroyers and their ability to detect you. It is actually very difficult to visually detect (remember, no radar in the pre-war years) a surfaced submarine in most conditions. This led boats to dive too early and thus loose their all important asset of surface speed and maneuverability.
Depth charges held tremendous destructive power, were instantly fatal, and one or two is all it takes to destroy a sub. This is actually true, but only if the depth charge explodes less than 75 feet away from the boat! Actual tests showed that much beyond that range, a depth charge may give you a good shake and scare the hell out of you, but they rarely caused fatal damage. Only a large accumulation of damage over time caused by these far off misses would prove fatal. That is not to say that depth charges were not dangerous. Indeed they were. You still had to fear them, but not to the extent that was previously believed. They were very hard to accurately target and only very near misses or direct hits would be instantly fatal.

When the occasional submarine skipper raised the bull**** flag and tried something different, he was quickly hammered back into place by the exercise referees. These sore thumbs were quickly reported up the chain and the only thing that saved their careers was the occasional sympathetic squadron commodore.

Were am I going with this? Sub skippers of the USN in the late 1930’s and early 40’s could be broken into three main groups.

Some understood that the state of affairs prior to the war was complete rubbish, but kept their mouth shut and only rarely spoke out or acted on their beliefs. They understood that banging their head against the unmoveable wall of the Gun Club was useless. They worked from within the Submarine Force to improve things the best they could and bided their time until the conditions were right (the war) then unleashed their beliefs in a cold hard fury against the Japanese. Strange as it may seem, this group produced some outstanding skippers early in the war. They also mentored and trained the junior officers who commanded boats later in the war that shot the bottom out of the IJN and the Japanese Merchant Marine.

Another group spoke out strongly against the silliness of the policies and tried radical new tactics during exercises. They were determined to change the system and felt that they had the best interests of the Navy at heart (and they did). They sometimes proved their point, but they didn't last. The Gun Club wielded enormous power; they did not like being proved wrong and often squashed these mavericks like a bug.

The last group were the careerists and ladder climbers. They were so immersed in the system that they couldn't see the faults. They were utterly confident in their ability to drive a submarine effectively and believed their tactics to be sound. When the reality of war hit them like a sledgehammer, proving their entire belief system to be horribly flawed, they couldn't handle it and failed miserably. If the Japanese didn't get them then our Navy did and they were relieved of command.

As the USN moved into 1941 and the inevitability of eventually getting into the war became clear, a new attitude of getting ready came to the forefront of naval policy. This provided an avenue to implement some of the long sought changes in tactics and doctrine that some submarine officers had been wishing for. Unfortunately, it proved to be too little, too late and the U.S. Submarine Service entered into war on December 7th woefully unprepared for the battle that awaited them.

This post may seem like an indictment of the USN. It is not meant to be. I actually find a great deal of pride and inspiration in this. Despite terribly inadequate tactics and doctrine, and despite torpedoes that were one step away from being useless, the U.S. Submarine Service and the men who served it learned quickly from their mistakes, corrected their mechanical problems, and in three short years utterly destroyed one of the world’s largest merchant fleets and the navy that implemented their enemy’s draconian policies. It is this rapid progress up a very steep learning curve that I am the most proud of.

eljeffo41 · 02-13-09, 08:40 PM

I have read many books about the submarine war in the Pacific,but your post sums up our prewar state of readiness (or the lack thereof)better than any of them!I have read this entire thread with great interest and look forward to perhaps picking your brain a little bit myself.Unfortunately nothing comes to mind right now,mostly because many of my questions have already been asked and answered! Thanks for giving your time and knowledge so freely!

Steeltrap · 02-18-09, 12:09 AM

DaveyJ

Fantastic series of posts. As others have said, it's great to hear from those who have actually "done it". Maybe you could convince some of your other vet friends to pay us a visit: you won't finds a more appreciative and welcoming crowd than here. I'll go so far as to say I think this community is the best 'wargame' community I've ever found, which is why I'm still an active member 8 years after joining (hell, has it been that long??

).

One thing I've wondered is how people like Dick O'Kane were regarded by the rest of the service, both those who served in WWII and those who came after (such as yourself).

On another tack, your post about the pre-war deficiencies in US sub doctrine and training was a great one. O'Kane himself made some similar points in his book Wahoo. Mush Morton seems to be one of the first - if not the first - to "toss the manual overboard", with others soon catching on. You're quite right about regarding the achievements of the sub service as even more remarkable given the handicaps under which it started the war.

It's odd that so much misery should provide so much fascination for those of us who have never had to experience it. I'd like to think I have a high level of repect and regard for anyone who served in the wars, irrespective of their side (most service people of most nations were doing it because they believed it was what they were meant to do....excepting the outright bastards and sadists bound to crop up).

Again, thanks for the info. Like many others, I've read a great deal about this subject, but it always pales compared with hearing it from those who lived it.

Cheers

Aramike · 02-18-09, 03:37 AM

My .02.

Good stuff, keep it coming!

I wish I had some questions for you, but I enjoy reading your offerings!

Rockin Robbins · 02-18-09, 08:54 AM

Davey, the variety and quality of your posts is amazing. Keep it up. I agree with eljeffo41 that your last post is the single best short format account of the prewar and early war situation that I have ever read. I've read a lot. Have a great vacation and keep up the good work.

ReallyDedPoet · 02-18-09, 09:41 AM

That is one of the best posts I have read here at SUBSIM Davey

eljeffo41 · 02-19-09, 03:50 PM

I believe that all Fleet type submarines could fire a mark 10 torpedo,but could the S-boats fire a mark 14? I have never heard of one doing so.I assume there must be more to it than just having the correct diameter!Also wanted to say thanks for the cool thread.

02-10-09, 09:51 PM	#50
Bosje Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 732 Downloads: 89 Uploads: 0	fantastic thread how does one add those appreciation stars to threads? dave, could you gloss over this thread and correct me/us where I/we went wrong? http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=143174 much appreciated kudos, bosje __________________ And when an 800-ton Uboat has you by the tits... you listen!

02-11-09, 05:17 PM	#53
Bosje Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 732 Downloads: 89 Uploads: 0	yeah i got it by experimenting with the buttons thanks __________________ And when an 800-ton Uboat has you by the tits... you listen!

02-12-09, 10:46 PM	#54
DaveyJ576 Officer Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Norfolk, VA Posts: 241 Downloads: 20 Uploads: 0	Submarine skippers and pre-war tactics I will be on a family vacation all next week, so here is a long post to keep you busy: In general, USN submarine skippers in the pre-war period were by and large a very cautious group. This led to some serious issues when the war started. There were several reasons behind this: 1. Being Lieutenants or Lieutenant Commanders they were too junior to have any experience from WWI. Even if they had, our contribution submarine wise to the first war was very limited and nothing on the order of what the Germans and British had. We just didn't have the time to develop comprehensive and cohesive strategies and tactics for the sub force during the first war. With the exception of this less than one year limited taste of combat, the U.S. Submarine Force was completely untested. 2. Several notable submarine accidents with the resultant losses of the boat and/or the crew in the interwar years (S-5, S-51, S-4, and O-5 among others) had focused a lot of negative publicity on the force. The problems in the Submarine Service mirrored what was going on in the rest of the Navy (USS Mississippi turret explosion, Point Honda disaster). Pressure on the Navy Department from the press and the Congress to stop the accidents caused a new emphasis on safety and caution to creep into operational orders. Placing your boat in any situation that smelled of danger was frowned upon to put it mildly. 3. Despite the problems of caution noted above the Navy was eager to showcase what it could do. Heavy emphasis was placed on the annual Fleet Problem (a fleet wide exercise), various smaller exercises, and the Presidential pass-in-review. These things were hyped up and promoted and the desire to have them come off seamlessly and problem free was foremost in the minds of the admirals. Excellence in performance during these exercises became one of the prime considerations for promotions. Aggressive sub skippers were judged to be reckless and their boats were ruled as “sunk” in the exercises. Given the relatively small size of the Navy after the post-WWI draw down and the lack of promotional opportunities this provided for officers, the desire to not screw up and follow the script became paramount in the minds of many sub skippers. Innovation had been effectively stifled. 4. The Navy at the time was dominated by the "Gun Club", a group of like-minded senior officers that had staked their long and distinguished careers on the idea of the primacy of the big gun battleship. They believed (not without reason) that the battleships and cruisers were the center of the fleet and that their long range guns would carry the day in any battle. Unfortunately, these ships were extraordinarily expensive and getting large numbers of them built was hard to push by an isolationist and passive Congress. They placed in jeopardy a great deal of their personal reputations, literally placing their careers on the line, to convince everyone that this was the way to go. These admirals held virtually all the senior positions in the fleet. They made almost all the major decisions, including the format of the fleet exercises. With the best of intentions in mind, and sometimes with not, weight in the exercises was placed on the gun line, other elements such as aviation and submarines were de-emphasized and sometimes the rules were even skewed to make the gun line virtually omnipotent. These men were not stupid; they fully understood that the airplane and submarine were tremendous threats to their precious battleships and in some cases vehemently opposed them. Submariners were bullied into a supporting role for the battle line, and had been cowered into a position of impotency in the face of destroyer opposition by the Gun Club officers, mostly to preserve the idea of the battleship as the queen of the fleet. Eventually the restrictive and unrealistic nature of the exercise rules became so prevalent and accepted that many of the submariners themselves came to believe in their supposed vulnerability. These false beliefs were reflected in some of the tactics that became standard in the pre war years and that proved to be totally useless or unwarranted once the war started. Some of these false beliefs included: Attacking on sonar bearings only from 100 feet depth or more. This was done to remove the potential of the periscope being sighted. Unfortunately, the fairly primitive sonar gear of the day and the lack of emphasis on proper sonar training produced information that was not accurate enough to allow precise fire control solutions to be generated. Unwarranted and unjustified fear of aircraft and destroyers and their ability to detect you. It is actually very difficult to visually detect (remember, no radar in the pre-war years) a surfaced submarine in most conditions. This led boats to dive too early and thus loose their all important asset of surface speed and maneuverability. Depth charges held tremendous destructive power, were instantly fatal, and one or two is all it takes to destroy a sub. This is actually true, but only if the depth charge explodes less than 75 feet away from the boat! Actual tests showed that much beyond that range, a depth charge may give you a good shake and scare the hell out of you, but they rarely caused fatal damage. Only a large accumulation of damage over time caused by these far off misses would prove fatal. That is not to say that depth charges were not dangerous. Indeed they were. You still had to fear them, but not to the extent that was previously believed. They were very hard to accurately target and only very near misses or direct hits would be instantly fatal. When the occasional submarine skipper raised the bull**** flag and tried something different, he was quickly hammered back into place by the exercise referees. These sore thumbs were quickly reported up the chain and the only thing that saved their careers was the occasional sympathetic squadron commodore. Were am I going with this? Sub skippers of the USN in the late 1930’s and early 40’s could be broken into three main groups. Some understood that the state of affairs prior to the war was complete rubbish, but kept their mouth shut and only rarely spoke out or acted on their beliefs. They understood that banging their head against the unmoveable wall of the Gun Club was useless. They worked from within the Submarine Force to improve things the best they could and bided their time until the conditions were right (the war) then unleashed their beliefs in a cold hard fury against the Japanese. Strange as it may seem, this group produced some outstanding skippers early in the war. They also mentored and trained the junior officers who commanded boats later in the war that shot the bottom out of the IJN and the Japanese Merchant Marine. Another group spoke out strongly against the silliness of the policies and tried radical new tactics during exercises. They were determined to change the system and felt that they had the best interests of the Navy at heart (and they did). They sometimes proved their point, but they didn't last. The Gun Club wielded enormous power; they did not like being proved wrong and often squashed these mavericks like a bug. The last group were the careerists and ladder climbers. They were so immersed in the system that they couldn't see the faults. They were utterly confident in their ability to drive a submarine effectively and believed their tactics to be sound. When the reality of war hit them like a sledgehammer, proving their entire belief system to be horribly flawed, they couldn't handle it and failed miserably. If the Japanese didn't get them then our Navy did and they were relieved of command. As the USN moved into 1941 and the inevitability of eventually getting into the war became clear, a new attitude of getting ready came to the forefront of naval policy. This provided an avenue to implement some of the long sought changes in tactics and doctrine that some submarine officers had been wishing for. Unfortunately, it proved to be too little, too late and the U.S. Submarine Service entered into war on December 7th woefully unprepared for the battle that awaited them. This post may seem like an indictment of the USN. It is not meant to be. I actually find a great deal of pride and inspiration in this. Despite terribly inadequate tactics and doctrine, and despite torpedoes that were one step away from being useless, the U.S. Submarine Service and the men who served it learned quickly from their mistakes, corrected their mechanical problems, and in three short years utterly destroyed one of the world’s largest merchant fleets and the navy that implemented their enemy’s draconian policies. It is this rapid progress up a very steep learning curve that I am the most proud of.

02-13-09, 08:40 PM	#55
eljeffo41 Seaman Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Las Vegas,Nevada Posts: 36 Downloads: 318 Uploads: 0	Excellent post! I have read many books about the submarine war in the Pacific,but your post sums up our prewar state of readiness (or the lack thereof)better than any of them!I have read this entire thread with great interest and look forward to perhaps picking your brain a little bit myself.Unfortunately nothing comes to mind right now,mostly because many of my questions have already been asked and answered! Thanks for giving your time and knowledge so freely!

02-18-09, 08:54 AM	#58
Rockin Robbins Navy Seal Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: DeLand, FL Posts: 8,899 Downloads: 135 Uploads: 52	Davey, the variety and quality of your posts is amazing. Keep it up. I agree with eljeffo41 that your last post is the single best short format account of the prewar and early war situation that I have ever read. I've read a lot. Have a great vacation and keep up the good work. __________________ Sub Skipper's Bag of Tricks, Slightly Subnuclear Mk 14 & Cutie, Slightly Subnuclear Deck Gun, EZPlot 2.0, TMOPlot, TMOKeys, SH4CMS

02-07-09, 06:27 PM	#47
neotekgeek Bilge Rat Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 1 Downloads: 13 Uploads: 0	Davey, Firstly, thank you for your service. Secondly, hi everybody, my first post. I'm reading the reports from: http://www.subvetpaul.com/52BoatsIndex.htm. Very often it's indicated that a radio transmission was sent to a sub, requesting it give status. Sometimes ordering it to respond, it would seem. Given the nature of a sub having little to no contact during radio silence, being submerged or other various reasons; how is it they receive the message? Was the message rebroadcast at intervals or relayed from other ships? If it was simply rebroadcast, who was privy to the information? I can only imagine the hit morale would take if you kept receiving radio traffic for another sub to make contact. Again, thank you for your service!

02-18-09, 12:09 AM	#56
Steeltrap Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 818 Downloads: 3 Uploads: 0	DaveyJ Fantastic series of posts. As others have said, it's great to hear from those who have actually "done it". Maybe you could convince some of your other vet friends to pay us a visit: you won't finds a more appreciative and welcoming crowd than here. I'll go so far as to say I think this community is the best 'wargame' community I've ever found, which is why I'm still an active member 8 years after joining (hell, has it been that long?? ). One thing I've wondered is how people like Dick O'Kane were regarded by the rest of the service, both those who served in WWII and those who came after (such as yourself). On another tack, your post about the pre-war deficiencies in US sub doctrine and training was a great one. O'Kane himself made some similar points in his book Wahoo. Mush Morton seems to be one of the first - if not the first - to "toss the manual overboard", with others soon catching on. You're quite right about regarding the achievements of the sub service as even more remarkable given the handicaps under which it started the war. It's odd that so much misery should provide so much fascination for those of us who have never had to experience it. I'd like to think I have a high level of repect and regard for anyone who served in the wars, irrespective of their side (most service people of most nations were doing it because they believed it was what they were meant to do....excepting the outright bastards and sadists bound to crop up). Again, thanks for the info. Like many others, I've read a great deal about this subject, but it always pales compared with hearing it from those who lived it. Cheers

02-18-09, 03:37 AM	#57
Aramike Ocean Warrior Best of SUBSIM Chairman Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 3,207 Downloads: 59 Uploads: 0	My .02. Good stuff, keep it coming! I wish I had some questions for you, but I enjoy reading your offerings!

02-18-09, 09:41 AM	#59
ReallyDedPoet Canadian Wolf Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: The one and only East Coast Posts: 10,775 Downloads: 946 Uploads: 5	That is one of the best posts I have read here at SUBSIM Davey __________________ Back in the Day

02-19-09, 03:50 PM	#60
eljeffo41 Seaman Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Las Vegas,Nevada Posts: 36 Downloads: 318 Uploads: 0	Torpedo question I believe that all Fleet type submarines could fire a mark 10 torpedo,but could the S-boats fire a mark 14? I have never heard of one doing so.I assume there must be more to it than just having the correct diameter!Also wanted to say thanks for the cool thread.