Re: AP Sheels
 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor-p...shot_and_shell

An armour piercing shell is a type of ammunition designed to penetrate armour and detonate. In naval warfare and older anti-tank shells, the shell had to withstand the shock of punching through armour plate. Shells designed for this purpose had a greatly strengthened case with a specially hardened and shaped nose, and a much smaller bursting charge. Some smaller calibre AP shells have an inert filling, or incendiary charge in place of the HE bursting charge. The AP shell is now very rarely seen except in naval usage, and is not commonly used there.

I DIDN'T say that in SHIII you CAN sink a DD with the AP shells, but what purpose they should have.

The captains are the ones that wrote the book. The tactics were thought up by Dönitz after WWI, tested by these captains in the Wargames of 1935/1936 and proven in their brilliant successes until May 1943 despite having only a thin slice of the German industrial pie.

It was their inability to use these tactics after Black May, that caused their lack of success.

And remember, in Das Boot, the captain stays on the surface even in that heavy storm because there is no fog. He only dives to rest the crew.

He does a quick soundcheck when he gets to the place where the convoy should be, but doesn't spot it. All according to the Uboat Commanders Handbook.

Think of it this way. If you were in the US Army and had to conduct a raid, and you would come up with the smartest plan you could based on your mission, the enemy, time you have for the operation, the terrain you are fighting on, and the troops you had at your disposal.

But no matter what your plan looked like, you would always have an assault and support element. You would always have a standard SOP for actions on the objective.

Good enough for me then! :up:

This i always knew. the double 42 3.7 MM is arguably the best piece you can strap onto your boat. Continuous fire and versitale. You can use those AP rounds on light shipping, tugboats or fishingboats and they're effective. Not to mention deadly AA.

Thats the book answer, and i think everyone sort of knows this. Trouble is, well, it's suicidal to engage a warship with a deck gun to begin with. So loading AP for the deck gun is rather pointless in my opinion.

Your quote from the Commander's Handbook mentions 'incendiary' but where is this reference to "ventillate the boat" from?

I ask because the only source I have on weapons of the period mentions SS and AP for surface ships only. I'm not saying I'm right on this, or even trying to argue; I'd just like the matter cleared up once and for all.

I've gone after Corvettes and Trawlers before with the 88 and 105, but of course, a destroyer is out of the question. Although I did try it once at night: he was passing in front of me and I decided to light him up with a starshell and bang away with the 88. Of course, a 105 might have been more effective but still fool-hardy. The benefit of attacking a destroyer at night was that he couldn't see me at first, I had him lit up and he didn't have radar, so there I was, firing at the destroyer, 5 km away, he fired some shots, but totally missed me being that I was probably really hard to make out and he even fired some star shells in the wrong direction. I fired all my AP rounds and then started on the HE, but he got too close and was heading to ram me, so I dived, surprisingly with little, to no damage, as I think he only hit me once in the stern.

When you mention the 3,7 mm, in the Book about the Graf Spee they wrote that they used the 3,7mm to stop Ships using the Radio but in one case they found out that the Radio Room was Protected by Sandbag and that the 3,7 was useless in that case.

A tatic I employ with great success is to sneak into the convoy, track the single escort ( this is when there is only 1 and its has to be either a Corvette or Armed Trawler) and creep up right behind it. I then do an emergency blow and surface directly behind the escort. I then get my Gun crew to lay into the escort at close range (~400M or less). Whilst they are doing this I maintain the sub directly behind the escort as it try's to ZigZag and get a beading on me. By doing this I only have the small caliber AA gun of the escort to worry about. This is easily destroyed by the DG. After that its pound that escort into submission and sink it, then make merry hell with the convoy.

For this tatic the DG crew always load the AP ammo. It makes very short work of the Corvett/Armed Trawler's. It also leaves me with HE rounds to use on the convoy.

Something tells me this tactic is not in the handbook! :rotfl:

Hmmm. I don't know where I heard that. But I just realized that to a submariner it would be a double entrendre. I wonder if it is on the Erich Topp interview from SH2. But whoever said it was probably a submariner.

I'm in mid-42 and it's not just the escort guns you have to worry about. Every little merchant seems to have at least on one deck gun. Thank Poisidon lone T3s so far have nothing bigger than MGs. LOL, it's funny when you target the weapons and the gunners get flung into the air when you hit their guns.