U-Boat average tonnage

[Freiwillige]

What was an average tonnage patrol in 39' 40'?

Is 33000 tons good against historical figures?

[GoldenRivet]

according to UBoat.net:

Most successful boat of the war was U-48, she had completed 12 patrols for a total of about 326,000 tons... this averages out to about 27,000 tons per patrol

however those results span most of the war and the results are not typical.

There were many many boats which never fired a single shot in aggression

I would say a good average per patrol to go by... with all difficulty settings checked would be about 10-12,000 tons per patrol.

[Freiwillige]

Thank you Golden Rivet:up:

[Weiss Pinguin]

Once I get started, I usually try to go for 15,000-20,000 tons per patrol, or whatever keeps me towards the top of the scoreboard. :arrgh!:

[FIREWALL]

Tonnage scores depend on realism settings.

100% settings (manual targeting) + bad weather = low tonnage per patrol.

If you can get your hands on U-BOAT ACE The Wolfgang Luth Story alot of questions will be answered about surface shooting in bad weather as oposed to submerged. And deckgun useage in bad weather. It was done. In one Steamer he put 108 shells into it. :huh:

[Freiwillige]

I do 100% and manual targeting. I am a realism buff! Although I leave external veiw on cause i love my oh so pretty type VIIB but durning combat I refuse to use it as it is a cheat in my eyes. I wont even use it to identify my target instead I chase and identify the merchant flag visually.

[FIREWALL]

I do 100% and manual targeting. I am a realism buff! Although I leave external veiw on cause i love my oh so pretty type VIIB but durning combat I refuse to use it as it is a cheat in my eyes. I wont even use it to identify my target instead I chase and identify the merchant flag visually.


:up: :up: :up: Isn't it more gut wrenching that way ? Just the way I like it. :yep: :D

[Robert Fulton]

German post war estimates:

1939 - averaging 13 U-boats at sea, 25 ships per month sunk.
1940 - averaging 12 U-boats at sea, 39 ships per month sunk.
(U-boats that did not return counted as 1/2)

So it looks like average per boat per month at sea would be 2 in '39 and 3+ in '40. Given that many of the patrols were in the North Sea and lasted less than a month, the per patrol numbers would be even lower. Average tonage per ship was what? Maybe 5,000.

33,000 tons was a great patrol in the real world. Even the great Kretschmer only averaged about 17,000.

[meduza]

Kretschmer, Lüth and Topp have some 13-17k tons average out of the 14-16 patrols. Merten, Schütze and Schltze have 21-36k tons, but less patrols (5-8).

They are the most sucessfull commanders, and we should compare only with them. :D

The most successful patrol was that of Hessler in mid 1941, when he sank 86000t.

My average patrol is around 70000t, so that is far from realistic. I do use manual targeting, but not 100% - I have map updates on and external camera (for screenshots :yep:), and some other stuff, which IMO doesn't realy have any effect on realism.

What is your average torpedo hit percentage? I would estimate mine to about 75-90%.

[Weiss Pinguin]

I'd say my torpedo hit percentage is about 75-85% at the moment. Still takes me about 2-3 eels for a target. Need to get back into the habit of aiming for the bow...

I play at 94% difficulty, with weapons officer assistance enabled. (I was never good at maths :P)

[meduza]

Still takes me about 2-3 eels for a target. Need to get back into the habit of aiming for the bow... Against a convoy, I recently started to use one eel per ship. If I fail to achieve simultaneous hits, some ships will dodge the bow shot. Because of that I started aiming at the stern, and found it to be very effective. Most of the big ships will sink within few hours, and if not they will be crippled enough to fall back.

[Bosje]

The difference lies in the kind of target that you go after, I suppose

regardless of the 100% realism etc, I tend to aim specifically at the biggest ships whenever I encounter a convoy. On top of that, I tend to leave those smaller coastal freighters alone when I come across them, to save torpedoes for the bigger ships.

That yields scores which are 20k above average since the real Kaleuns would just sink most of what they could get their hands on, including all those small steamers

Oh, and they did not have a screen which said the exact tonnage, they often had to guess.

just another two cents :)

[Jimbuna]

20k is a fair return if manual targetting IMHO http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

[Murr44]

I think that it depends a lot upon where & when you're operating in the game. I find that Mediterranean patrols tend to yield less tonnage than Atlantic ones. There tend to be less merchants & they're usually smaller targets than I find in the Atlantic. There are also far fewer merchants travelling unescorted, for example, about 100km north of Tobruk I destroyed a single large merchant that was being escorted by 3 Black Swans.