Type IID boat question

[PapaG39]

I just finished my longest patrol of 23 days in the North Sea & the type IID boat.

I spend most of the time down listening & slow (1-2kts) travel on the batteries.

But I got to wondering... How long the average patrol in the type IID boat actually was.
The North Sea area is quite large & has a lot of shallow spots so in 1939/1940 you still have a fairly large area that you can spend on the surface, however by mid to late 1940 that area is getting quite small..It's best to stay down in the day time... Summer has a lot of day time that far north also, so a lot of time is spent just waiting & listening...You can move at 1-2 kts withoug depleting your batteries to much in a 12 hour period, but that is about the limit & then you really need to get a charge going...

I don't get a lot, but I'm kinda picking up the strays that you hot shot kaleans miss...lol..

[Jimbuna]

Not 100% sure, but it can't have been much more than 2 weeks. Most of them served in the Black Sea (transported overland) and as I'm sure your already aware that sea is not very large.

[andylegate]

Food.

That was always a biggy. It takes up space, but it's a necessary evil. Your crew has to eat.

I can remember the working parties we had to onload food on board. And we had the luxuary of fridgerator decks to keep food frozen. On a small sub like the type II, I bet they depended a lot on canned foods as they were sealed and easy to store. Still, you'd run out after a while and would need to replenish at some point.

[PapaG39]

yeah, food is what I was thinking about also. type II wasn't that roomy inside and 27 men can go through a lot of grub in a hurry. They didn't have freeze dried like we do today. Mostly it was smoked, dried or salted to preserve it.
I was thinking that about 10 days should be the max time out, but I don't know just how this game does the days.
I started out of the Kiel canel on the 6th & did a fast forward & 15 minutes later it was the 9th.
I sunk a boat on the 12th & a few hours later it started getting light so I submerged for the day & by morning the next day it was the 15th... maybe I slept through two days due to lack of air...
I think the TC skips a bit sometimes.
I have started using 128 TC more because I think you may end up missing a lot of traffic with the 512/1024/2048 TC speed.. It just seems that I find more with less TC speeds.
Now I just use the 2048/1024 for homeward bound after the torpedos are all gone.

[Lzs von swe]

I had a look over at uboatwaffe.net and it seems most type II patrols were about two weeks, but look at this http://ubootwaffe.net/ops/boat.cgi?boat=9 .
U-9 did up to five weeks in one go, they must have resupplied somewhere along the way.

[Jimbuna]

I had a look over at uboatwaffe.net and it seems most type II patrols were about two weeks, but look at this http://ubootwaffe.net/ops/boat.cgi?boat=9 .
U-9 did up to five weeks in one go, they must have resupplied somewhere along the way.

Yeah, that sounds about right.....the biggest limitations were lack of torpedo stowage room and obviously the small fuel tanks :up:

[PapaG39]

I would imagine after 2-3 weeks with 27 unwashed guys & all that foodstuffs the inside of that boat had a real U-Boat tang to it...lol.
Open the hatch & pass out from the fresh air...
The extra torpedo in GWX has actually made the patrol go longer. Now I usually have two left instead of just one so I spend more time searching.
In GWX I have found that even a small freiighter usually (in my case *Always!*) takes two hits to get-er-to-go-down...