AirBases

[andy_311]

Does anyone know if there's any Airbases in the Azores?
Reason am asking I just did a patrol to DG31 26/04/44 and every time I encountered a ship I got jumped by aircraft.It's the first time my flak crew have ran out of ammo trying to shoot down the planes I encountered nearlly all types of planes in that grid apart from the sunderland and the wellington.

[jasondef]

I'll bump this to the top again, and I've wondered if anywhere in the game one can find out where all or any of the airbases in general are located, both axis and allied? It'd be cool to have that intelligence to know exactly if your u-boat is in range of allied planes, and whether or not an enemy convoy is in range of the Luftwaffe. Thanks!

[Torplexed]

Don't know about the Luftwaffe range but the fold-out map that came in the game case has the various Allied air coverage range circles for 1939, 1941, and 43. The Azores have a circle starting in 1943. The same map in jpeg form is also located in the documentation file of the game itself.

[Stiebler]

SH3 does have an airbase on the Azores, but it wrongly becomes active in January 1943. I remember this painfully, because the first ever time I steered my U-boat past the 'neutral' Azores in April 1943, it was promptly sunk by an American bomber.

The Portuguese leased bases on the Azores to the British in October 1943. By February 1944, the American Sea-Bees had created a giant American airbase which drove all U-boats out of the surrounding waters.

I've modelled this more correctly for the new NYGM-RUb campaign files, which you can download from various places.

Stiebler.

[rcs929]

I'm curious, does aircraft only come from airbases directly or do carriers spawn aircraft as well? If a hunter/killer group was in the area would it spawn aircraft as well as notifiy the H/K group of your presence?

[Takeda Shingen]

I'm curious, does aircraft only come from airbases directly or do carriers spawn aircraft as well? If a hunter/killer group was in the area would it spawn aircraft as well as notifiy the H/K group of your presence?

Escort carriers will spawn Swordfish. I don't know how much the enemy units 'talk' to each other, as OTH communications would be more complicated during the second World War. If in line of sight, they will notify each other of your presence.

[Der Teddy Bar]

If ANY in game unit sees you then it will report your position, that includes, fishing boats, merchant ships, planes, escorts, land unit such as guns.

Now where the entire system falls apart is that only escorts within 20k's will actually respond, and then the bit that breaks the whole allied response network is that this response often does not arrive to you as the 'Lost contact time=' means that if he does not 'see' you within the time specified here, then the escort will do a u-turn and head away. Aften the escort will not even arrive anywhere near you....

As far as aircraft are concerned, the airbase modifiers come into play.

So those who allow themselves to be seen run a higher risk of being engaged by the escorts or airplanes. Though, sadly, not that effectively.

[andy_311]

There were Avengers Torp bombers in the area which I assumused came from a carrier which I found out to be correct and I took her out call it a lucky shot fired at around 3500 meters in rougth seas as well dived deep 190m and heard nothing until my WO goes "yeah" hit the K button and I got myself a carrier.
but the PBYs.B-24s,P-38s still came rolling in.
I could not honestly envisiage my flak crew running out of ammo andI modify it so they had buckets full of it but they did.
Now am not one for realism (a lot here are am not dis respecting them) but planes are harder to shoot down now,.In overall then in earlier in the career say 39-40 if a 109 encounterd a Hurricane none would be shot down because there armour would be too thick to knock a plane out of the sky(think about it) thus the allied forces according to this game would not get AirSuppiority and the D-Day landing would not occur.wierd eh?