SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Merchants vs Warships

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- Silent Hunter III (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=182)

- - Merchants vs Warships (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=179303)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomizer (Post 1579230)

Find any objective historical instance after 8 December 1914 when a exclusively gun-armed capital ship force established and maintained unambiguous sea control.

No doubt we always fight the last war, don't we? With the advent of carrier task forces and naval aviation, I don't think you should get many (or any) takers on that one. Success at Midway was accomplished really without any U.S. BB presence, so that tells you something right there.

Thanks for the link. Definitely some good clues about how Roosevelt was drawing the map in the Atlantic. Here's the wiki entry for the 38th meridian west. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38th_meridian_west (Hitler's expansion in March 1940 -- Anybody remember the old Treaty of Tordesillas???) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_tordesillas and here's the 26th meridian west: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26th_meridian_west (cutting the Atlantic in half)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gargamel (Post 1579243)

My point is, IMO, if the germans had made a concerted effort to attack warships in convoys, I think the battle of the atlantic may have turned out differently. BUT, in order to do that, they needed more u-boats and capital ships, and more coordination between the Kreigsmarine and Luftwaffe. For that, the war would have to been delayed a couple years. And that falls back onto the "genius" at the top. If, If, If....

I'm not saying anybody is wrong on their opinions here, we are kind of playing the What if game. But I would like to see more critical thinking on strategic points. Argument for the sake of enlightenment, if you will.

The H-man was definitely a genius -- but with more than a few fatal "issues" and blind spots, eh? One of his critical self-delusions was pointed out by Donitz in lamenting that Hitler somehow thought war with England was avoidable and so didn't build up the Type VII fleet pre-war. Per Donitz, the 1942 U-boat fleet was only 10% of projected due to losses and competing priorities by that time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randomizer (Post 1579230)

Battleships were entirely irrelevant in the Atlantic except as propaganda tools.... the ships themselves were strategically useless.

When the topic of the battleship comes up .... nobody seems to note that the arbiters of sea control had become the submarine, mine, torpedo and airplane way back in WW1. Most battleships spent their entire wartime careers swinging around their anchors, too valuable to use but politically impossible to decommission.... Those that did sail into combat all too often failed to accomplish their missions and ended up killing their crews when their own ammunition exploded in action. The really effective warships, the carriers, cruisers, destroyers, escorts, submarines and light forces found themselves being worked to death while the battleships sedately acted as "fleets in being" from their secure moorings.

Find any objective historical instance after 8 December 1914 when a exclusively gun-armed capital ship force established and maintained unambiguous sea control.

I cannot think of a single example (assuming you meant 1941, not 1914). No comparison is possible between the carrier-plane platform and a battleship -- and Taranto and Pearl Harbor proved it.

Did any major power lay down a battleship/battlecruiser keel after 1945?

Quote:

Originally Posted by danexpat (Post 1579292)

Just as a sidebar, the date 8 December 1914 was not a typo for 1941 but rather a nod to the first Battle of the Falkland Islands where Sturdee's battlecruisers destroyed von Spee's East Asia Squadron. This represented arguably the last instance where the big gun established unchallenged sea control.

As for SH3, if you want medals, sink battleships, if you want to help the war effort target merchants or aircraft carriers.

Although I disagree fundimentally with Gargamel's argument re targeting escorts early in the war, it is well articulated and sound in a very narrow sense.

Escorts exist because the things they are escorting are intrinsically more valuable than themselves. This applies to everything from personal bodyguards to billion dollar AEGIS destroyers as part of a CVBG. If you shoot the escorts you are, by definition, letting the high-value targets escape.

Off Okinawa the Kamakazi's did great damage to the USN but the ships to suffer most were the picket escorts and other warships, the Japanese largely expended their resources attacking low value escorting warships while the vital transports recieved much less damage. Had they targeted the troop transports and supply ships they may just have rendered offensive operations on the island impractical. Warships made glamourous targets but the vital ones carried soldiers, Marines, beans, bullets and gas.

In 1982, the loss of the STUFT merchant Atlantic Conveyer and RFA Sir Galahad were almost decisive but most of the Argentine combat power was expended attacking the destroyers and frigates in the sound.

Remember the fifth of Wayne Hughes' Principles of Naval Warfare, The Seat of Purpose is on the Land. The only targets in convoy worthy of a torpedo were merchant ships that allow for the transport of war materal (provided you can sink more than can be built) or aircraft carriers which represent significant threats to the agressor submarine and act as significant force multipliers for the convoying side. Escorts in and of themselves make lousy strategic targets for submarine warfare and prioritizing attacks on them indicates a strategy of desperation rather than victory.

Just $0.02 Ch'ching...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gargamel (Post 1579243)

Actually, not true. An ASW ship had to be fast and maneuverable. It needed to be able to turn on a dime to make repeated attacks on the same position. How many times in game have you been able to sneak away when the escort DC'ing you made a wrong turn and lost acquisition of you? A slow merchant ASW ship would be nothing but a minor nuisance to a sub.

And they couldn't produce the ships fast enough. PArt of the reason Operation Drumbeat was so successful was that the Americans couldn't start a convoy system fast because they didn't have enough ships to do the job. Even at the outset of the war, The RN had to 'loan' 50 WWI era destroyers from the US because they couldn't produce enough. Also, a lot of the destroyers they initially had were fleet boats, not ASW specialists. While they could do the job, they didn't do it very well.

Roosevelt and other's at the DoW forced King to use multiple various types of ASW work, just like you propose, against King's stern objections. They failed miserably. The most successful boat, it seemed, from the American fleets were Coast guard cutters. They had a lot of success when they became operational.

Most of the shipyards in the US and Britain were mainly tasked with churning out Merchant ships, repairing merchants, repairing Capital Ships, and building new Capital ships, escort carriers seemed to be a favorite. Building ASW escorts became a problem as they just didn't have the logistics to do so quickly.

Another prblem leading to availability of ASW escorts was the War in the pacific. Initially King pledged something like 19 (yes only 19) destroyers to be assigned to the Atlantic convoy system. He ended up sending only like 12, due to transfers into the Pacific and other issues. While the brits were upset about this, King had no choice. The US was fighting a 2 front naval war, in which the majority of the front line forces in one theater had just been decimated.

They actually had to slow down the convoys. Halifax convoys sailed like every 5-6 days, but they had to extend that to every 7-8 days due to a lack of escorts.

I know I'm off slightly on the numbers, not exact quotes, but I'm damn close. This is all off the top of my head after recently reading Blair's first volume.

My point is, IMO, if the germans had made a concerted effort to attack warships in convoys, I think the battle of the atlantic may have turned out differently. BUT, in order to do that, they needed more u-boats and capital ships, and more coordination between the Kreigsmarine and Luftwaffe. For that, the war would have to been delayed a couple years. And that falls back onto the "genius" at the top. If, If, If....

I'm not saying anybody is wrong on their opinions here, we are kind of playing the What if game. But I would like to see more critical thinking on strategic points. Argument for the sake of enlightenment, if you will.

Well, I'll try. A note though - it's just my personal opinion, and I realize that a good chunk of Subsim forums' members knows a lot more about WW2 naval warfare then myself, so if it turns out I'm totally wrong, I'll be more than happy to be corrected and learn something new :)

1) An ideal ASW ship had to be fast and maneuverable, yes, but it still could be quite cheap compared to traditional surface combatants, like full-size destroyers. I may have been unclear in my earlier post - I wasn't aiming at arming random merchants with DC racks, but rather mass producing something like Flower corvettes (the "take civilian ship design" part was referring to the fact that Flower was based on a whale catcher and designed in such a way that it could be built in small civilian shipyards), as a probable counter to German submarines concentrating on escorts. This scenario is a pure attrition warfare, and the side that builds ships faster will win.

2) The idea of concentrating on attacking warships - the problem, as I see it, is that this would practically be delegating a task of wrestling sea control from RN, which was deemed impossible to Kriegsmarine surface fleet, to the U-Boats. And U-Boats, for all their advantages, make poor battle-ships. They can't take on even small warships while surfaced, and while submerged they're too slow to act as a unit (and thus, force a battle and destroy enemy unit). While thay might be effective ambushing warships, this is again situational - the warship in question has to sail into the ambush in first place. Their main advantage is the ability to bypass the escorts and take out escorted ships despite protection - here we order them to forgo that advantage and duke it out with enemy fleet in a war of attrition.

3) On the fact that there were too few escorts - the question is, too few to do what? Their task was to protect merchant ships, and there were many times more merchant ships than warships so they had to split their forces very thin. This doesn't mean that there were so few escorts that U-Boats could easily make a dent big enough to invalidate entire convoy system. Especially if you take into account that actively engaging warships is bound to result in more losses on German side as well. After all, even if we triple the number of U-Boats available at the start of the war, RN escorts alone still outnumber them.

I agree that there may be many specific scenarios when attacking convoy escort instead of trying to sneak past them would have given better results. However, basing entire strategy on the rule that U-Boats (and other Kriegsmarine assets) should try to concentrate on attacking warships and through that diminish their numbers to a point where convoy system would be no more viable - this would be, in my opinion, worse solution for Germans then what they were doing in real life.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kapuhy (Post 1581449)

1) An ideal ASW ship had to be fast and maneuverable, yes, but it still could be quite cheap compared to traditional surface combatants, like full-size destroyers. I may have been unclear in my earlier post - I wasn't aiming at arming random merchants with DC racks, but rather mass producing something like Flower corvettes (the "take civilian ship design" part was referring to the fact that Flower was based on a whale catcher and designed in such a way that it could be built in small civilian shipyards), as a probable counter to German submarines concentrating on escorts. This scenario is a pure attrition warfare, and the side that builds ships faster will win.

I disagree on this point, if you're using the Flower Class as your example.

They were designed for inland/coastal escort duty, and were never intended for ocean going work. They were too small, too slow (A surfaced U-boat could easily, and frequently did, out run them), did not have sufficient DC racks, could not handle storms (crews were rendered ineffective during heavy weather). The RN used Flowers only out of dire neccesity. (Blair, U-boat war I, Index 5600 (sorry, only have kindle version, no page number, but about 30% in)).

Producing an ineffective escort is almost as bad as no escort. The point to sinking escorts first, is because they pose a serious threat to the U-boat. If the escorts being used are a mere nuisance to the attacker, then there is no need to attack them, and just focus on valuable targets.

You can build all the useless ships you want, but If they deemed value-less by the enemy, then it's just a waste of resources. 121 were built, which could have instead made 60-80 destroyers (guessing), which were much more valuable.

For pt 3, my argument could be boiled down to the fact that a poorly escorted convoy is worse than no convoy. You don't see many convertible armored cars do you?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gargamel (Post 1581554)

You can build all the useless ships you want, but If they deemed value-less by the enemy, then it's just a waste of resources. 121 were built, which could have instead made 60-80 destroyers (guessing), which were much more valuable.

The problem is that it takes a lot longer to build a destroyer, and that is amplified by the fact that dock space is limited, and a dock that can outfit one destroyer can outfit two corvettes at the same time. As you say, a matter of necessity.

The Flowers sank or assisted in the sinking of 47 u-boats and 5 Italian submarines.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kapuhy (Post 1581449)

What he said :D

If you guys haven't figured out, I like in depth discussions that make people think, do research, etc.

But to Steve's comment, how many of those were against rookie subs that a guy in rowboat with some dynamite could have sank? And how many of those were assisted by destroyers with radar?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gargamel (Post 1581720)

But to Steve's comment, how many of those were against rookie subs that a guy in rowboat with some dynamite could have sank? And how many of those were assisted by destroyers with radar?

A good point, and 47 isn't really much compared with the total number of u-boats sunk. And most flowers were part of a team lead by a destroyer. I think it's mainly due to what I said about necessity and dock space. And while a Type VII was one knot faster than a Flower, and a Type IX two knots faster, neither was that fast submerged, and a Flower could follow a sub and drop depth charges just as well as any destroyer. And every destroyer was needed for the fleet, as only they could cruise at the 'Standard' 15 knots.

(see what I did there?)

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...51/ASW-10.html

Here's a nifty de-classified summary of ASW tactics during WWII.

Note Fig. 6 "Effect of number of escorts on convoy losses"

One of the biggest problems was that Atlantic convoys' max speed was 9.5 kts.

Here's an interesting table:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...3.html#table10

Where ASW craft lost sub signal for ~ 22 min, odds of reacquiring were 53%. But only 25% after 90 min of lost signal.

But check out how screwed the U-boats were with the advent of SERIOUS ASW aircraft search techniques c. 1943. Table 12 shows results of 18 sub hunts by U.S. aircraft. Sample size of 18 sub hunts with an average length of 59 hours (!) per hunt. And here's the kicker: they could lose the subs for 14 hours and still reacquire them with an overall hunt success rate of 61%. Ouch. :ping:

So you might be better off manning your flak guns and taking out those PBYs than bothering with destroyers!

I believe the debate over the wisdom of stripping convoys of their escorts would never have occured within the real u-boat command.

The accepted tactic employed to deal with escorts was to attack in number (not alone - as SH3 compels the player to do), thus forcing the escorts to divide their attention and leave entire sectors of the convoy undefended.

In-game it is a legitimate tactical decision as wolf-pack attacks are not possible. In the war, you would have radioed in a contact report, and waited for a few of your buddies to arrive.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Capt. Morgan (Post 1584140)

The accepted tactic employed to deal with escorts was to attack in number (not alone - as SH3 compels the player to do), thus forcing the escorts to divide their attention and leave entire sectors of the convoy undefended.

In-game it is a legitimate tactical decision as wolf-pack attacks are not possible. In the war, you would have radioed in a contact report, and waited for a few of your buddies to arrive.

Great point.