Attackinng a convoy in 1943

[U-104]

In 1943 what is the best way to attack a large convoy with a type IXC/40?

[Ducimus]

Depends on how good you are at plotting ;)

Ideally you want to be ahead of the convoy and just off to the side. The trick is to be out of the way of the lead escort, and once he crosses your bow, move in before the side escort comes up on your position.

Once your inside the screen, make your solution, fire your fish, and Dive right away.
Don't crash drive, that makes too much noise.
Don't wait for the fish to hit. You need time to get under.

Just shoot, and dive. After that... crawl under the convoy and hope for the best :D

[Heibges]

I would dive at flank speed, once I fired my fish, until I got to my desired depth. Say 175m.

[Ducimus]

Problem i find with that is i find it sort of tips your hand, allowing them to get a frim fix on you. Something i like to avoid. At best id go 1/3rd. Theres really alot of variables involved such as how long the torpedo's are going to be running. If distance to target is short, you might not have a choice but crash dive. Another variable is after the torpedo's hit, is any escort heading directly AT you, or just in your general vacinity?

The thing is, torpedo's hitting ships are like saying, "hello!". Opening up the throttle to flank speed is basically saying, "Here i am!".

*shrug* regardless, odds are your in for a good depth charging. I just like to try my hand at remaining undetected, but that can be something of a gamble depending on the circumstances.

[Heibges]

six of one half dozen of the other. i would rather they knew where i was for a little while, which they do anyway because they know where the torpedos came from, than be caught at above 175m

[Ducimus]

The thing is, i have acutally gotten away undetected a few times. Much to my disappointment.

Although being honest, my assumption is the tin cans in question when i did slip away were not elites.

[VonHelsching]

Once your inside the screen, make your solution, fire your fish, and Dive right away.
Don't crash drive, that makes too much noise.
Don't wait for the fish to hit. You need time to get under.


This is a good approach if you play on the safe side. I just want to add that you have to make sure that all your torpedos are going to hit targets at almost the same time. After the first hit all the ships will start zig-zagging and you may miss; so it is wise to minimise the time between detonations.

[Heibges]

I agree, in that I have evaded many times staying at pd, silent running, speed 1 kt, and cruised right out the back of the convoy. Plus staying at PD, I can use the periscope to really see what is going on.

177.) "If the submarine remains at PD after the attack, it will have the advantage of being able to observe the methods and extent of the enemy counteraction, besides finding fresh opportunities to attack. In this way the submarine is also enabled to discover gaps in the pursuing forces of the enemy.

I would always rather stay silent at PD, but if I have to dive because I think the escorts have detected me, I don't want to be caught slow and blind at an unsafe depth.

The analogy I always think of is the depth between 13m and 175m, is the the area between the serviceline and the baseline in tennis: no man's land.

And the best chance you have of getting killed by DC's in SH3, as in real life, is that first drop after you have fired your torpedos. Of course much or this is determined by escort location at the time of your attack.

[its a viic]

What I usually will do is let lead escort pass by also and sneak in. Fire torps and dive to about 150-200 ft. I then turn towards direction convoy is heading while reloading torpedoes. The ships cavitation usually will help. After reloading is complete go to periscope finish off any stragglers. :sunny:

[Keelbuster]

I agree, in that I have evaded many times staying at pd, silent running, speed 1 kt, and cruised right out the back of the convoy. Plus staying at PD, I can use the periscope to really see what is going on.

177.) "If the submarine remains at PD after the attack, it will have the advantage of being able to observe the methods and extent of the enemy counteraction, besides finding fresh opportunities to attack. In this way the submarine is also enabled to discover gaps in the pursuing forces of the enemy.

I would always rather stay silent at PD, but if I have to dive because I think the escorts have detected me, I don't want to be caught slow and blind at an unsafe depth.

The analogy I always think of is the depth between 13m and 175m, is the the area between the serviceline and the baseline in tennis: no man's land.

And the best chance you have of getting killed by DC's in SH3, as in real life, is that first drop after you have fired your torpedos. Of course much or this is determined by escort location at the time of your attack.

I agree; stay at PD - only dive when you _have_ to. Don't give up the visual advantage. I wouldn't go at 1kts though. You need to make distance. Right after you fire your torps, go to Ahead 1/3. Go through the convoy (along the course of your torps). The escorts will converge on where they think your torps were fired _from_.This strategy is opposite to what is written in the UBoat Commanders Handbook. They say to go away from your torpedoes. But, I've found that the turning maneuver wastes time, and, worse, lines you up to encounter the side escort as he converges on your position. Rather, go straight and pass through the convoy lanes, and drop to ahead slow when the escorts are ~1.5km away. They will tend to get tangled up in the convoy lanes; even if they hear you, they won't be able to make a straight approach. Distance Distance Distance. And keep your eye on them.

Kb

[tycho102]

There is a certain amount of "truth" to staying at periscope depth.

Namely, the active sonar won't get a ping on you at PD. There are l33t (or elite, in a sarcastic tone) destroyers that can accurately fix your position underneath the thermal layer. So, by staying at PD, you avoid these "expert" destroyers and their "asdic of death" lock.

I'm partial either way, and to be completely honest, I save the game just before the first torpedo impacts (I always play with torpedo speeds and target distances to minimize the time between first and last impacts). I try a deep-dive first, and if the convoy pulls one of the super-elite destroyers, I reload and attempt a PD evasion.





As I have mentioned before, Ubisoft's decision to balance the game with "super destroyers" was very poor. They should have changed other elements of the game, rather than put elite destroyers in there. Possibly by not wasting several thousand man-hours on that worthless intro movie, and instead putting that work into the XXI and more accurate modeling of the snorkel's radar cross-section.

[tbarak]

Yeah, what those other guys said, but also watch your periscope depth. Once you're spotted it gets dicey, so keep the view head close to the water's surface and poke it up only momentarily. If you select the escorts you'll see their various line-of-sights so try to stay out of the inner-most ring off their bows. And like was said, shoot and scoot, go as deep as you can and creep away on silent speed.

Runing underneath one of the ships in the convoy is a good place to hide. Works really well if you destroy a merchant's rudder and/or props then linger beneath it. Destroyers will circle around but they eventually move off. :) You can re-acquire the convoy again if needed.

I'm less scientific than some of these guys. I bee-line it to the T2s and T3s, shoot and run. Repeat as needed.

[MuscleBob.Buffpants]

I got creamed at shallow depth once when I stayed too close to the surface. Although the escort set it charges to somewhere about 50 meters or so (I was just below PD, about 20 meters) the explosion blew my boat onto the surface and I broached. Got back under before they started shooting, but the next salvo caused enough flooding for me to get a good look at a depth gauge reading 350 meters before it was all over.

[Wulfmann]

While I play at 100% and no saves, no restart, once dead start new career and I have more than doubled the number of escorts for all convoys and have no escort lower than a veteran rating (3) I have eliminated almost all 4 rated (elite) escorts in the game. If there are 2 elite escorts there is virtually no chance of escaping and with a bunch there is no point in going on patrol except to die (not unrealistic but really)
I start by going to 13 meters on approach as my standard PD (12 is default) If escort makes a run on me I drop to 14. If I dive deep I go to 220-240. But, before I dive I have taken the chance to stay up long enough to plot an escape route by observing where the escorts are and which are reacting. I prefer cutting an angled line across the convoy. When I go deep (slow if not persued fast if I have been found and they are on the way) I, by carefully listening to each of the escorts and when you hear them accelerate and drop their cans I make a 90 degree turn and go to flank for 10 seconds. They know where I am so I am not giving them new info and being where the cans go off is the biggest concern. At 220plus I have enough time to be somewhere else. As I make my flank run I deploy a decoy go to slow and make another 90 turn. I have survived for as long as 4 hours and remember no escort I face is less than a 3 rated one.

To eliminate the elite rating (it is really simple even for noobs) Open the RND.mis file in the campaign folder.
Click “edit”,
scroll down to “find” click that and a window opens.
In the window copy the line that has the crew rating by finding the first one in RND Group 61 and paste that in the find window.
Change the number to 4 so it says;
CrewRating=4--------------------in that window in your “find” box
Now click “Find next”.
Change each 4 to a 3 which will make all the elite escorts into veteran.
Continue to click “find next” until you have change every 4 to a 3 (but I would leave a one or two 4s as by themselves they are not as bad as two or more.
Click “save” for the RND.mis file
Then open the SCR.mis file and do the dame thing.
This will make 1944 almost possible but in truth the improved weapons in 44 make a 3 as bad or worse than a 1941 elite rated escort.

Before doing this make a back up copy of the RND.mis and SCR.mis file so if you screw up you can always have a known good one to copy and try again or give up and go back to the same ole same ole (NEVER!!!)

Wulfmann

[Ducimus]

When i said there was alot of variables involed when making your decision i meant it :D

One thing i neglected to mention was the state of the sea. In rough water, escorts cant hear very far with passive sonar. The bigger the waves, the less their passive sonar distance becomes. Which means you can move at higher RPMs then you normallly would under fairer weather.

[Heibges]

I was on the surface, in the middle of the Atlantic, at night, medium fog, wind 15ms, overcast, when a lone destroyer appeared out of nowhere and crossed my stern, on a perpendicular course, at about 400 to 500 meters.

I couldn't believe the destroyer couldn't see me.

[Ducimus]

What year? :D

[Heibges]

1942. it must not have been equiped with radar. lucky for me. in the limited visibility i would have been dead.

[Keelbuster]

That's wicked. I've had sh^t like that happen before.

Not realistic, but f$ckn intense.

Kb

[Heibges]

I don't know, it sounds like the situation Erich Topp describes in his SH2 interview.

The escort is bearing down on him, he can see the folks on the bridge, then it drops depth charges, and turns away. He couldn't believe he hadn't been spotted.

[mike_espo]

What's the trick? I attacked a convoy in Spr 43 with a IXC/40. Escort was ridculously easy to penetrate-way too close to the convoy. No air cover at all. :huh: :nope:

I guess random generated escorts are only a Km or so from the convoy. They need to be 5+Km distant to be effective escorts. :know:

Anyway, I sneaked in during broad daylight right inside the columns fired 6 torps hit with 4 sunk 2 ships. :o

Way too easy for 1943...

[Heibges]

What mods are you using?

[SkvyWvr]

That's wicked. I've had sh^t like that happen before.

Not realistic, but f$ckn intense.

KbI think it's very realistic. I've been at sea and have almost had a collision with a guided missle cursier. The MkI ModIII eyeballs on both ships weren't working very well. :-j

[mike_espo]

What mods are you using?

RuB 1.45, NYGM CMM, NYGM RuB campaign mod, Btty fix, Diesel mod, Emachinen mod, sky mod.

I tweaked the SIM.cfg file to make it easier for AI escorts to detect. I found out in mods forum that escorts detect using hydrophone and not ASDIC. So I changed noise level to 0.5, which is .05 less than stock RuB which is 1.0. Still, using silent running was able to sneak right through escort screen which is ridiculouosly close to convoy, if they were 5+km from convoy, they would have spotted me and forced me under. Then I allowed convoy to steam right over me...

Also, too bad that my presence would not start a random zig zag of convoy, Convoy just plodded along at 8kn....too easy :down:

[Heibges]

This is from SH3/Data/Cfg/Sim. Does it apply to escorts of rust player sub? What if you increased the sensitivity of the hydrophones. I increased the visual sensitivity from .01 to .02 and fixed the problem of planes right on top of me in clear visibility.

What if you increased hydrophone sensitivity from .03 to .06

[Mech]
Waves amplitude=0.5 ;[0,1]
Waves attenuation=0.03 ;>=0

[AI Cannons]
Max error angle=4 ;[deg]
Max fire range=6000 ;[m]
Max fire wait=12 ;[s]

[AI AA guns]
Max error angle=8 ;[deg]
Max fire range=1000 ;[m]
Max fire wait=7 ;[s]

[AI detection]
Lost contact time=43

[Visual]
Detection time=0.5 ;[s] min detection time.
Sensitivity=0.01 ;(0..1) at (sensitivity * max range) we have a double detection time.
Fog factor=2.0 ;[>=0] was 1.0
Light factor=1.0 ;[>=0]
Waves factor=1.0 ;[>=0]
Enemy surface factor=400 ;[m2]
Enemy speed factor=15 ;[kt]

[Radar]
Detection time=1 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.01 ;(0..1)
Waves factor=1.0 ;[>=0]
Enemy surface factor=5.0 ;[m2]

[Hydrophone]
Detection time=1 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1)
Height factor=0 ;[m]
Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=15 ;[kt]
Noise factor=1.0 ;[>=0]

[Sonar]
Detection time=20 ;[s]
Sensitivity=0.03 ;(0..1)
Waves factor=0.5 ;[>=0]
Speed factor=20 ;[kt]
Enemy surface factor=200 ;[m2]
Lose time=30

[Ducimus]

That's wicked. I've had sh^t like that happen before.

Not realistic, but f$ckn intense.

KbI think it's very realistic. I've been at sea and have almost had a collision with a guided missle cursier. The MkI ModIII eyeballs on both ships weren't working very well. :-j

:rotfl:

[U-104]

That's wicked. I've had sh^t like that happen before.

Not realistic, but f$ckn intense.

KbI think it's very realistic. I've been at sea and have almost had a collision with a guided missle cursier. The MkI ModIII eyeballs on both ships weren't working very well. :-j :rotfl: