BB or Merchants. Which to (try and) take?

[SinkingFeeling]

I've found myself in an interesting situation, and am wondering what my real-life counterparts would have done.
I've taken my VIIB into the Irish Sea and intercepted a convoy just outside of Belfast. The convoy is headed into the port, so I haven't got much time to play with. Using my Cheatomatic magic eye(tm) I've found that the centrepiece of the convoy is a Revenge class battleship, usually an extremely tempting target. However, in this case, all the random convoy generator numbers must have fallen in my favour, as it is surrounded by a couple of large tankers, a whale ship and an ammunition ship!
My problem is this: In real life would my counterparts have weighed up the damage to the war effort that sinking the BB would do, versus the damage that the merchant's cargos would do once landed? Or would they just go for straight out tonnage glory, and take the merchants? Or would the glory of sinking such a BB be too much to resist?
As much as I would like to, I don't think I have the time to attack both sets of targets, so I have a difficult choice to make. Any hints?

[Albrecht Von Hesse]

My 2 pfennig worth ::grins::

I'd go for the merchants. The value they potentially carry with regards to the war effort is a lot more than the battleship. But I have to admit, that'd be a tough choice to make!

[Dread Knot]

:|\\ Get more bucks for the bang. Go for the soft merchants. They don't take as many torpedoes to sink.

[cheese123]

I would go for the battleship... it gives lots of renown and this might be the only time you will ever see one, merchants are everywhere.

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

I'd think about how close to the convoy you are,how many escorts there are, and how many torpedos it would take to sink each one. Trust me it will NOT be the only battleship you'll see out there.(I'll give you a hint, go to Narvik, Norway at the start of the invasion there and you will see a few.):yep:

[cheese123]

Trust me it will NOT be the only battleship you'll see out there.(I'll give you a hint, go to Narvik, Norway at the start of the invasion there and you will see a few.):yep:
What year is the invasion?

[Kptlt. Neuerburg]

April 1940.

[SinkingFeeling]

Thanks for the thoughts...

It's only November '39, so I've got plenty of time to get up to Norway, and I've been lucky enough in previous careers to have encountered BB's, so I'm leaning towards going for the merchants. I'm in a near ideal position, but the proximity of a number of escorts is starting to get me worried, so I might just try and put a torpedo in each of the 4 soft targets to slow them down (and hopefully sink one or two), use the reload time to evade (again, hopefully!) and come around for a second pass to finish them off. If I've got the time I'll get a shot off at the BB, and cross all my appendages that I get a magazine hit :D

Wish me luck, I'm going in!!

[gimpy117]

any dd's around? if no kill the cattleblip and gun down the tankers...

i say the BB, it's worth A LOT of iron, those ships were hard to build, and that's one less BB for the brits

i still cant tell why i haven't seen a BB yet....the best ive got is a large destroyer...

or you could shoot 2 at the bb, two at the choice tankers and save one in the aft for if you need it for A. another tanker or B. A mercy shot

[FIREWALL]

No Contest . A real Kaleun would follow Bdu doctrine and orders. ;)

[UnterseeBoogeyMan]

In reality, a sub captain would go for the merchants. I am assuming the battleships would travel at the center of the convoy and generally the most valuable ships were placed there. I read Convoy about HX-122 in 43, where the lower valued tramp-steamers and the like would be put on the outside. Therefore, it makes the probabilitylow that a torpedo would strike home on a target in the center of the convoy.

In GWX, 1939, ASW has not been fully developed in the Royal Navy yet, so you can get away with getting inside the convoy to loose off some shots at the battleship.
However, other posters are right, there are several opportunities to sink battleships, cruisers and troopships in Operation Weserabung, the German invasion of Norway.
Check out the GWX manual for Campaigns. The movements of task forces and groups will clue you in on where to intercept. This is very important as warships unencumbered by slow merchants are very fast - your window for a good intercept and a good shot are narrow. Good hunting :up:

[Torplexed]

The battleships are put there to protect the merchants from German surface raiders. So if you sink the battleship you are making life easier for the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, Bismarck, et al. :p We are all one big happy fleet.

[BulSoldier]

It is really hard choice to make.On one hand you have tankers that are very valeuble (oh my that vodka distrupt my typing capability) with the fuel they carry.BUt on the other hand you have BB that take several years( or less it depends on the ship)to be build.

In moments like this i would like to see 2-3 more submarines and send the whole convoy to the bottom :) I would go for the tankers.No fuel, no BBs would patrol around Fatherland :hmm:

[JG10r_Bull]

i would go 4 the BB with a magnetic Detonation but sitting on the out side of the convoy and then pick of the out side merchants:up:

[BulSoldier]

'39 magnetic pistols arent the most relaible triger of choice.

[Brag]

I know what Balz would have done: 2 torpedoes for the BB and one each for a tanker. But you must be pretty good at finding lethal spots for such an attack to succeed and calm enough seas for the torpedoes not to explode prematurely. Before April 40 torpedoes were terribly unreliable, so a spread of 4 against the BB, unless He also had perfect AOBs against the other targets.

Sounds like a shallow water operation--pretty suicidal.

[UnterseeBoogeyMan]

I know what Balz would have done: 2 torpedoes for the BB and one each for a tanker. But you must be pretty good at finding lethal spots for such an attack to succeed and calm enough seas for the torpedoes not to explode prematurely. Before April 40 torpedoes were terribly unreliable, so a spread of 4 against the BB, unless He also had perfect AOBs against the other targets.

Sounds like a shallow water operation--pretty suicidal.

Brag is right about the shallow waters of the Irish Sea. There are sections of it, deeper than others. If you can help it, try to set your attack up in the darker blue sections. That way when the DDs come pinging you have depth and room to run away. Deeper is better. If you are stuck at 60, 70, or 90 meters, its not hopeless. Just hug the bottom, track them on the hydrophones, and know when to crank it and make a hard 90.

If I see them take a steady course closing on the phones, and I hear the screws turn faster, I crank it to ahead flank, make my 90. Then I coast to silent running fter bombs are done. When this happens again, on another depth charge run I will make turn in the opposite direction. It is possible to escape this undamaged. It may take an hour, may take 2 hours, but it will be your own rollercoaster.

[Oberon]

Hmmmm, tough call, but there's a few factors you have to fit in. For example, where's the other escorts? How many of them and what types?
Depth under keel, because if there are escorts and you sink their pride and joy, you're going to get a lot of angry ships with guns after you.
If there's no other escorts, then fire everything you have at the Revenge, surface and deck gun the merchies and then sail home to a heros welcome :D

If there are Destroyers in the area, it might be worth to try and slow down a couple of merchants before plugging the Revenge. Either way though you're going to get some good tonnage. Look up the Revenge class's weak spots too, the less torps you use on the BB, the more you'll have to hit the rest. :D

Lucky swine though, I've yet to come across a BB, just a couple of Cargo ships so far, two of whom have eaten a torpedo and carried on going :damn:

Did come across a small HK group of four or five destroyers but went deep and silent and they just wandered on by. :D

[TomcatMVD]

Sinking BB's is a known cure for the itching on the neck that affects all Kaleuns:arrgh!:

[Jimbuna]

Sinking BB's is a known cure for the itching on the neck that affects all Kaleuns:arrgh!:

Precisely http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

[CapZap1970]

If I were you, following the advice of other kaleuns here, I would put a couple into the belly of the BB and then 1 for each tanker. :yep:
CapZap

[catar M]

BB for sure .Costs more to replace BB than few merchants , and how good it will look at front page of every german newspaper:up:

[Oberon]

Sinking BB's is a known cure for the itching on the neck that affects all Kaleuns:arrgh!:

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :up:

Very well put :up:

[SinkingFeeling]

Well, after reading a few more of the responses here, I decided to do the responsible thing and go for the merchants, whilst not overlooking the BB if the opportunity should arise. I was positioned to the front and right of the convoy, about 1000 metres off the track off the BB, in extremely shallow waters (~50m)
I fired one torpedo at each of the 4 major merchants, timed so that they would roughly hit at the same time, and aimed at the stern of each so that I’d hopefully knock out the engines if nothing else. As soon as the hits started registering, I went to flank speed and bored straight into the middle of the convoy, figuring the extra traffic would make life a little harder for the escorts to come and get me. Luckily for me there was only one Black Swan, but what seemed to be an in-exhaustible number of Armed Trawlers, all of which were pretty fired up. Of the 4 merchants I hit, the ammunition ship had the decency to sink pretty much straight away, while the whale ship was looking pretty sickly and slowing down quickly. The other two tankers felt the impact, but kept going at the same speed.
I passed into the middle of the convoy, just in behind the BB and, despite everything I had promised myself, couldn’t resist taking a stern shot at it. I aimed for the rear turret, using an impact pistol, and scored a hit, but I don’t think it even noticed :)
I kept up with the main traffic flow, dodging from side to side to avoid the by now numerous escorts trying to depth charge me. The BB proved to be quite useful here as by ducking from one side of the ship to the other, the escorts got quite confused :)
After what seemed like half of forever, I got two tubes reloaded and managed to get magnetic torpedoes off to the two tankers I had hit before. Luckily, both worked, and even more luckily, both ships rapidly caught fire and fell apart, leaving me in rapidly shallowing water, with 6 escort ships taking it in turns to kill me.
At this point I decided that as nothing I had done so far was particularly subtle, I would continue the trend and headed at flank speed for deeper water, weaving and ducking. The stern tube was reloaded as I headed out of the convoy, and again I couldn’t help myself, and used it against the BB. I heard it hit, but I was far too busy to use the Cheatomatic™ to see the results, so it will forever be a mystery :) My ever faithful sonar operator also gave me notice that the whale ship I had hit in the first salvo had foundered, so my primary mission was complete.
I got out into deeper water, after taking a fair pounding from the escorts. My stern tubes were destroyed, the observation periscope was junk, along with my deck gun, flak gun and 35% of my hull integrity. I had long decided that my beloved U-52 “Axolotl’ was not going to be sunk by a jumped up fishing boat with delusions of grandeur, so I headed down as close to the sea floor as I dared, and went quiet, tooling along at 2 knots. The weather helped me out greatly here, as it was quite rough upstairs. To cut a long story short, I managed to avoid the escorts eventually, no doubt to their inexperience rather than my skill and cunning and surfaced to recharge my ailing batteries and limp home to what hopefully should be a warm welcome :D I think I’ve earned my wages today!