I've seen the gun emplacements as well and I wonder when the guns will be installed. Did Japanese ships have guns installed as soon as the war began or did they get them around '43/'44 when things started to turn bad?

Some had, some hadn't. From my reading I think most of them got guns later. What really surprised me was the number of marus with depth-charge racks. A lot of Japanese convoys had no other escort than a merchant ship with depth charges. No way to track the sub, just drop them and hope for the best.

I have a book writen in Japaese,
thats is correct, many of merchant had equipted a depth charge rack until 1944.
Because they doesn't escorted by war ships.

They use it not sink for the sub but give scare to the sub !!!

Trivia
Almost Japanese ships are named xxxx-maru.
But warships are named never xxxx-maru.
If it is called xxxx-maru,that ship are not belong IJN war ships.




I am surprised.Because Now days in Japan, it is hard to get
ship plans photos etc.....

They did good work !!! :up: :up: :up: :up:

I don't speak or read any Japanese, but I thought that maru meant merchant, so there could be no warship marus.

Marus can be Auxiliary warships, though (small patrol craft etc.) :hmm:

Nice ships, and I'm glad we will not need to give the Axis American standardized classes anymore. Many of the ships can pass for Allied types (note that several of them are described as European-built). Hopefully we can add them to non-Japanese rosters easily.

pff they cant bite back....last time i checked they had no teeth:rotfl: :rotfl:

I wonder what the neutral/allied to enemy ratio will be like with the merchants. With SH3, you could be sure you had an enemy in your sights most of the time. I hope they included alot of other SE Asian countries.

Boris,

There should not be too many Neutrals. Most of the other countries in the Western pacific did not have large Ocean-going merchant navies, they were mostly coastal ships. The Ocean going ships were mostly European ships and shipping lines, French, British, Dutch, U.S., Etc. By the time the war kicked off in late 1941, there were not really any Neutrals left in the area. If you tie into a convoy between Java and Japan, it's going to be Japanese ships.

Throughout the war, mainly the only ships U.S. subs had to avoid shooting were Russian, and the odd Japanese ship given "Safe Passage" by the Allies. There were a few accidents with them both, mostly involving shooting at night and / or in bad weather.

Wasn't a US skipper court martialed because he sunk a Japanese ship in a storm that had been granted a save passage? I wish I knew where I read it!

Awa Maru
 

@ hyperion2206 - Yes, that was the hospital ship Awa Maru.:yep: Also, near the end of the war, another skipper accidently sank a 10,000 GRT Soviet freighter, but the US tried to blame it on the Japanese instead of court-martialing him.:cool: Or so I read.:hmm:

Good strategy in my book. :yep:

Barkhorn.