Most escorts ever?

[Renesisfury]

I just ran into a TF in July of '44 off the Luzon Strait, it had 2 Furataka Heavy Cruisers and 1 Light Cruiser, that in itself is not big deal. It was the fact that the TF had over a dozen DD's as escorts! Is that normal at this stage of the war?

[Ducimus]

:hmm: Tater would probably know. He's well versed in that area. I just wonder if i could penetrate that escort screen. Im thinking i could, but i woudlnt have much of a window to shoot.

[Renesisfury]

:hmm: Tater would probably know. He's well versed in that area. I just wonder if i could penetrate that escort screen. Im thinking i could, but i woudlnt have much of a window to shoot.
Well, I managed, I stuck one CA with 6 fish, thankfully 4 of them were duds of he really would have been screwed. He ended up sinking anyway, the other CA managed to turn before my stern tubes sent him down too, the first CA must have had 5 other explosions after the fish hit, just blew up like a fireworks stand.

[Snuffy]

When I started my career just recently with the 1.4 and TM xxx etc and ROW etc, I started out of Manilla and headed north to the Luzon straights.

On the way we bumped into a task force and followed it into the gulf on the western shore of Luzon ... big mistake.

There were two other task forces lost in the gulf ... so now I have 3 task forces by the tail and no less than 22 DDs lookin for my ass.

But some of the prizes were juicey ... Morgamis, and other large cruisers, and 1 BB don't think it was the yamato.

They churned up the water pretty good! I didn't get any good shots at any targets, I was more concerned about getting out of the gulf alive. I did.

[tater]

Sounds like stock to me. The Kido Butai didn't have 22 DDs OTW to Midway, lol.

[M. Sarsfield]

When I started my career just recently with the 1.4 and TM xxx etc and ROW etc, I started out of Manilla and headed north to the Luzon straights.

On the way we bumped into a task force and followed it into the gulf on the western shore of Luzon ... big mistake.

There were two other task forces lost in the gulf ... so now I have 3 task forces by the tail and no less than 22 DDs lookin for my ass.

But some of the prizes were juicey ... Morgamis, and other large cruisers, and 1 BB don't think it was the yamato.

They churned up the water pretty good! I didn't get any good shots at any targets, I was more concerned about getting out of the gulf alive. I did.


I ran into the inavsion force off of western Luzon in mid-Dec. 1941 with my Sargo class sub - I have the RSRDC mod installed. I ran into them at night and there were more cargo ships than I could count. I decided to run in on the surface and hit the last merchant on the right rear corner of the formation. Several escorts started to engage and I decided to submerge. When they got closer and I relaized that they were sub chasers, I went to the surface and dueled it out with my 3" deck gun. I managed to sink 4 sub chasers, but sustained 30% damage and was running low on ammo - rough seas caused a lot of misses. My initial thought was to pick off the rear escorts and then take out a merchant, but several more sub chasers and a mine layer decided to join the fun. I dove and slinked away without ever taking a DC attack. Two days later Manila fell.

[Kaleun]

hi,

Just got my first task force using TM1.7.5 - there were afew escorts, didn't really count them; too busy avoiding them! Lo behold 2 x Ise Class Battleships. left rip with all eight torps and bailed deep. Got approx 4 hits (as playing in Jan '42 in the Luzon strait) because of the amout of duds early war. Ventured up to persicope depth to see what mayhem i caused only to find that a screening Takao Heavy Cruiser had put itself in the way and i'd given a very messy nose job - it was missing everything forward of "A" turret! - tracked it for 3 hours limping at 3 knots towards Formosa and then put it out of it's misery with another 2 Mk14's!!

Kaleun

[FAdmiral]

It sounds to me like all those escorts should have located your sub and sunk
it. If everyone got away, I think that those escorts need to be beefed up
somewhat to at least give the player some real tough moments. I don't
remember ever getting to the point when the escorts were good enough to
actually sink me unless I made a glaring mistake. The one exception to that
was ole "Bungo Pete". He stuck to me like glue and the only way to get away
was to KILL him....

JIM

[Snuffy]

Part of the problem I saw on the surface when I was looking was that 22 seemed to create more confusion for the IJN than it did for helping it.

DD were constantly stopping and going into reverse to allow others to continue on their course, or they couldn't drop because of the proximity of a friendly ship.

I think any more than 3 mebbe 4 DD doing a search pattern is optimum. Any more and the AI goes nuts trying to coordinate em all.