Oh, but it very much is.

The argument that they did attack escorts has nothing to do with history. It has to do with the fact that gamers will use any justification they can find to play the way they want, whether it happened that way or not. I've been playing wargames for forty years now and I've seen this happen over and over. They want to do something, so they come up with reasons why they should.

The reality is that, as I said, a u-boat kaleun was unlikely to sink an escort in his entire career, much less one every patrol, even less one every attack. Citing the 85 escorts sunk by u-boats is the lie, because what you're trying to justify is sinking all the escorts so you can attack the convoy with impunity. This never happened in real life. Not once.

It's just a game. Play it the way that makes you happy. My objection is when you try to come up with an excuse to do so and twist history all out of proportion in the process.

Interesting references to somewhat unreliable (not panned fast enough) 'tunis' FuMB-26 radar,https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...B-26_Tunis.png not detecting aircraft; as opposed to an earlier reference

Quote:

Fu.M.B. "Tunis" is brought out and yields continuous detections in the 9 cm range. A lone bomber was present on the bearing when first seen by the operators. Trust in the gear is thereby established.

dismounted antiaircraft guns or bad ammunition upon surfacing and sound buoys hampering operations. being forced to do night attacks underwater cannot have been optimal either as poor visibility was commented on:

Quote:

In the attack periscope only smooth shadow masses are distinguished. Switched over to the control room periscope. Here it is bright enough for a submerged attack. In fact the boat is again in the middle of an inbound convoy, ran along on the same course, the nearest steamers are easily distinguished, but failed to gain an overall view of the formation and strength of the convoy.

Great stuff! learned new stuff... mostly that close calls and chronic surveillance required constant snorkeling at this point.

So you call me a liar, because you claim to know my motivation for providing some historical facts?

Not at all. Two different people have tried to do exactly that in this thread. You aren't one of them. I'm not even calling them liars, because they aren't. I do, however, think they are using partial facts to come to a mistaken conclusion, because that's the conclusion they want to see.

To reiterate: Yes, it is historically accurate for a u-boat to attack an escort. No, it is not historically accurate to do so even once in a career, much less every time you attack a convoy.

That was you, right?

Well...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoys_ONS_18/ON_202

The Germans assumed to have sunk 12 escorts - as they attacked them with T5 homing torpedoes. They managed to sink only 3 escorts in this convoy attack, performed by a wolf pack.

HMCS St. Croix (I 81) - Canadian Town Class
HMS Itchen (K 227) River Frigate
HMS Polyanthus (K 47) Flower Class Corvette

http://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ships/3079.html
You may want to read the notes on event!

So far your statement "has never been done!"

Why do you talk about lies?

What exactly do you know about statistics?

You're right. I made a mistake. Of course that means that you can attack try to sink all the escorts to get a free attack on the convoy.

Once.

Do you intend to do it only once? My point still stands. Now ask yourself this: how many u-boats sank more than one escort? Also my other point still stands, which is that by and large most u-boats never sank an escort. You're still trying to justify a style of gameplay that is not realistic.

I wasn't. I was using a famous old statement to explain how people misuse statistics to justify an argument, and that statistics can themselves be lies depending on how they're used.

A bit. Not as much as I'd like. Enough to recognize when somebody is trying to use them to convince themselves or somebody else that their course of action is the right one.

Of course can I try to sink all escorts to slaughterv the convoy. It doesn't require any historical accuracy at all - thanks to all gods.

You consider the lack of wolfpacks in SH3 to be historically correct?

You consider yourself to be the authority over the game play style of other players?

Cling on thight!
I once sank a convoy with ~ 20 freighters and 4 escorts - all by myself, running Vanilla SH3. I made it through the war in a VIIb with snorkel. I downed 21 Short Sunderland over the Biscaya - in a row. I modified my deckgun to act like a gatling cannon.

I even used a Weapons Officer telling me all firing data instantly - like you do it. Cheater! History Cheater!

^ Peace Hombres! Sailor Steve is simply misusing an olde English expression: "gives the lie" to show that something is not entirely true as with the use of escort sinking statistics. This does not mean someone is an outright liar so much as misrepresenting all the facts slanting his particular argument. Ie: excluding exculpatory facts not supporting a side of an argument. Sailor Steve does not permit name calling offences in the forum and would not indulge in it gratuitously himself;:timeout: And there U have it in an obfuscated semantic Nutschell :arrgh!:

Have you ever heard me say anything of the kind? Of course not.

Did I say anything like that? No, I didn't. What I did say was Good! I'm glad you're having fun. I wouldn't want it any other way.

I freely admit that I do it, because I'm no good at manual targeting. I also lament that he's too perfect, and I use H.sie's mod that makes him less so. What I don't do is tell people (as I've seen some others do) that I'm doing it because the captain didn't do all the calculations himself. He didn't, so the game doesn't allow for a real fire-control team. I compromise, and I admit doing so. I don't try to justify my compromise to myself or to others.

I freely admit that I do not play at 100%, but I also don't try to justify it. I was also once accused of the same things you're saying now, because I supposedly criticized a player for playing at the lowest possible settings. I didn't criticize him for playing that way. I criticized him for bragging about the huge amount of ships he'd sunk while playing that way.

It's the same thing here. I never would have said a thing, but when someone else said it wasn't accurate you started citing "facts", proving that it was done that way. I pointed out that your facts are correct, but that you come to a different conclusion than I think you should. Yes, it's a fact that escorts were attacked, and sunk. It's also a fact that compared to the amount of u-boats in the war and the amount of escorts, it happened so rarely as to be for practical purposes non-existent. It happened less than once per hundred encounters. Maybe less than one in a thousand. That is what I mean by "statistically insignificant".

As I said, play the way you want. it's a game and it's none of my business anyway. But when you go public trying to justify it with facts that don't support your argument, I feel the need to say something.

Statistics were not relevant in my listing of facts. The only question was - did Uboats attack escorts? And they did, as the list shows.

You made up the statistics - your own statistics - so much months only so much sunken ships - to support your statement some players only try to justify attacking escorts anytime.
You are clever enough to recognize exactly this behaviour, you've said. So are you?

No one but you came up with this accusation and no one but you activated his oh-so-stressed-out-war-game-veteran-authority-caring-for-historical-accuracy-in-other-players-gaming-style warrior and started to accuse others to lie, cheat and justify.

I showed the true 'liar' - the statistics abuser - the proven 'cheater' - and you start to justify your cheating yourself.

I guess we are through with this...

That wasn't statistics. That was simple math.

No, I didn't criticize the way you play. I went out of my way to show that, and the example I provided was to show that I try not to do that. I also didn't accuse you of lying or cheating. I've also gone out of my way to repeat that several times. You don't need to take it that way, and you don't need to be so hostile.

As for justifying, According to Miriam-Webster's dictionary, to justify is "to provide or be a good reason for (something) : to prove or show (something) to be just, right, or reasonable". It seems to me that is exactly why you showed the facts that you did. Someone disagreed with you. You brought up your references to prove you were right in playing the way you do. Why need to prove it at all?

So I disagreed with your conclusions, and said so. My choice of the quote I used seems to have been unfortunate, but my point was that facts can be used to support whatever we want them to. I tried to show that while the facts you quoted were indeed true, they also disguised the truth that this happened only rarely, and not all the time as they happen in the game.

Again, I never called you a liar, or a cheat.

I'm sorry you took all this so personally.

You see, until you got so angry I thought we were having fun.

If i learned anything in my virtual u-boat careers, you would try to not alarm the escorts, but sink as many freighters as possible and get away fast, to reload, and further shadow the convoy for a further attack. Depending on the time of the war also calling in other boats.

If you manage to sink one escort, the others will be alarmed. And they usually do not run in a straight line, so observing and find out a zigzag pattern is mandatory.
Six torpedoes to sink an entire escort screen at once is.. highly unlikely. Real torp. reloading times assumed, you would have to dive, and at least lose a lot of time. Even more when forced to run silent. Torpedos would have to be loaded later and so forth.

The difference to reality in all sims i played is that the sensors of the escorts are usually much too good. They "visually see" you in the densest of fog, they use their hydrophones in the midst of a convoy and detect you surfaced using them, where the sound of 20 or more props would completely screw up (lol) detection.
In rl they mostly did not even see you when you were running parallel at 50 meters distance, at night, let alone at an ideal attack position at 090 degrees, at 300 meters.

Radar was useless under 1000 meters, so in a convoy you would have been relatively safe, unless the freighters had guns. Also radar back then was not what it is today, not even marginally, and often unusable due to weather, salt water and resulting shorts.

As far as i read the "Reuben James" tried to shield a freighter and ran into the torpedo path. Topp did not intentionally sink the american destroyer, but had aimed for the freighter. As can be read in his KTB, he then observed through his periscope how other escorts threw depth charges between the shipwrecked swimming sailors of the Reuben James.

So german U-boats did attack escorts, and of course bigger warships (see carriers, and battleships), but their main task was to destroy resources on their way to England. If they did significant damage to escorts .. the people on the appropriate ships probably thought so.

To me this is really simple. The actual orders BdU gave during the war varied according to time, situation and sea area. JFO mod or reading BdU's KTB's gives the idea what was expected. I just then try to follow the orders if I can.

Interesting thread. It shows that sometimes U-Boots sunk some destroyers. So that's not so unrealistic ! But yes, it was not very frequent. A torpedo was precious, and it was much more useful to spend it against a 10.000 tons cargo full of vital freight for the tommies or the bolchevists ! :cool: