How long does a patrol take?

[Frank0001]

Hello all,

I was wondering, how long did an actual patrol take in real life? Of course they would become longer during the war, and perhaps they would vary between operating theatres (Pacific, North Atlantic etc.)
But is there an average length of patrols? I am doing around 30 days so far (early '40s).

[Brag]

The longest patrol was two hundred eighty some days

[danurve]

Check out uboat.net they have information on boats and a lot of patrols they took.

[Graf Paper]

I thought the average patrol length was thirty days but I'm no U-boat scholar by any stretch of the imagination. :roll:

I belive the longest patrol I've had so far, out of ten patrols, is twenty-eight days. I usually expend all my torpedoes within twenty days and head for home.

It's currently Christmas Eve, 1940, and my crew and I have been on patrol for two weeks with not a single ship sighted. You couldn't cut the restless boredom on board with a chainsaw! Although, when the action does start, I'm sure every last soul in the crew would gladly exchange the inevitable "tin can fever" for the cabin fever permeating the confines of U-47 right now.

[Sailor Steve]

The longest patrol I had was 85 days. Lots of patrollin' without a lot of sinkin'.

As was mentioned, www.uboat.net (http://www.uboat.net) has a section just dedicated to patrols, including length of each.

[Sirkam]

The longest patrol i had was about 35-45 days. Then, i usually return to home to do a party with my crew :yep:.

[GoldenRivet]

I LOVE that songebob sig. :rotfl:

i swear man im 29 years old and sometimes flipping through channels SpongeBob Squarepants is the only thing on TV worth watching.

[melnibonian]

I've done a 179 days patrol in WaW in a IXC with three stops for fuel and a grand total of 197.481 tonns (38 ships) :yep: :cool:

[Brag]

Nice tonnage, Mel :D

[melnibonian]

Nice tonnage, Mel :D
Thanks a lot. It was Mid-1941 in South Africa where the ships move unescorted, unarmed and alone :yep: