what was realistic patrol tonnage like ?
 

I just struggled through my first full real mission, and came out of it with a rather embarrasing 28K. Still makes me top ace by a clear 8K.
and im just wondering, with one torp chasing me about the place forcing me to break off my attack.
my first ever sinkings in a campaign with manual aim, came in a zero visability storm.
one ship i missed once, one torp exploded, 3 hit and it took a 4th to finally sink it.
next one took 2.

third and final kill i got into a task force and took out the Mogami.
1 missed. 1 blew up on the way in, 2 hit and sent her down.

later in the day i engaged a task foce not far behind them, 4 remaining torps irc, 1 missed, 1 hit damage only, 2 blew up on the way in.

thats it no fish left, RTB.

so after some weeks at sea, mainly low visability, but even in high vis always very rough seas.

is 27ish K acceptable ? what would have happened to a real commander who came back home with that ?

I must admit it makes a change to comming home with 80K a patrol. actually earning kills is difficult.
that said why do some of my fish now chase me, they just go in circles. early war feature ? or will this bug me forever ?

A really good patrol averaged about 30K tons. The average was probably from 15-25K.

Every time a sub came back and a ship was sunk the crew was awared a star for the combat pin. The captain of the Crevalle got the "Navy Cross" and the XO and several key officers got Silver Stars for @30K

Frank
:cool:

Ah ok, nice to know then that im comming home with a realistic score.
because realisticly, 27K is about my limit.
ill come home with more, and even less im sure. but its going to be fun finding out :)

By way of an example:

The submarine Gato (SS-212), which the class was named after, was built in August 1941, she conducted 13 patrols throughout the war, received 13 Battle Stars and a Presidential Unit Citation, and her total tally of ships sunk was nine, adding up to 26,085 tons. Certainly not one of the highest-scoring subs, but definitely earning her keep, in that a sub's success was not just measured by tonnage. Lifeguard duty, dropping off agents, reporting sightings and offering experience to upcoming commanders were all other ways in which a sub's success could be measured.

So your figure represents a realistic one for a high-scoring patrol.

Here's a list of best war patrols by tonnage sunk. As you can see, 28,000 tons would be enough to put you at #13 on this list:

http://www.valoratsea.com/tonnage1.htm

Also look at the number of ships sunk per patrol. It's not like a 'clean sweep' was an entire convoy (unless of course the entire convoy was 3 ships).

THe reason we as players get so much more tonnage is that we get multiple chances at the war :up:.

Theses guys only had 3 or 4 years to practice...and it was dangerous practice.

I typically come back with +20k. About my top has been a port-sneak with 3 carriers tied up. Dropped two (60k) on my way out, plus some deck gunnery on a passenger liner (10k). Early '42 in a Gar.

It was highly splendiforous. Halsey sprung wood on the radio report.

The game is a "target rich" enviroment leading to somewhat unrealstic tonnage totals.

Not sure which disturbs me more. The fact you visualized Halsey springy a woody on that radio report, or the fact I did.
Either way, that was TMI!:damn:

I beg to differ. If you're lucky to come across two taskforces and sink a Carrier and Battleship for a total of 62500 GT then live to tell the tail, I consider that a great achievement in itself. That's only sinking 2 warships with a useage of 12 torpedoes. Besides that, there were many so called "Target Rich" environments around especially during the earlier stages of the Pacific war when invasion was at its peak.

....and torpedos were at thier worst!

Realistic was more like 5-10k per patrol if you got anything. Certainly some guys did 15-30k on occassion (some more frequently), but they were the cream of the crop. A 10-20k run was a rare, phenominal patrol for many crews.

man all you ppl finding carriers are making me jealous :)
i havent seen a yamato since i started my full real career either. and ive never seen a carrier.
pretty sure im in a Tambor, early 42 second patrol.
so far i have a tanker. and large euro passenger to my name, along with 3 other ships, ive cleaned my forward tubes havent had a chance to use the rear tubes yet. may just pay a port a visit on the way home.
traveling on the surface isnt even possible now, im out of AA ammo. there is a litteral walking carpet of planes out there.
i ran into the first lot on my way to engage a task force, and it had me hoping.
after the 30th attack i went under and lost all hope of ever catching up with them however. having these guys come in 3 at a time, visual warning only, its not easy.

so if there was a carrier in the area :) im afraid i wont be seeing him.
ive found singapore a wonderfull place to hunt. lots of activity in that area, very risky though with depths not exceeding 150 feet. makes it hard to evade.
now back to my patrol area for the umpteenth time to say if i can convince it i actually patrolled there.

WWII patrol tonnages are much lower than SH 4 ones for a number of reasons.

1.) Putting torps into a target is much harder IRL as: To get good solution even with TDC, , Range, Speed and AoB is required. IRL, these were hard to get.
- Ranging using stadimeter was dependent on the height of the target and there was no magic book showing the height of targets.
- Since range was hard to determine, speed was also hard to determine as well.
(In SHIV, solutions can be perfect. IRL, even with accurate info from SJ radar, scoring 2 hits out of 6 on large spread was good.)

2.) IRL, high value ships tended to use higher speeds when sailing around. In SH 4, your task forces tend to steam at around 12 knots. IRL, you would expect high value ships to cruise at least 16 to 24 knot range. They will also zig zaging in areas with a known submarine threat.

I think one difference is that we know how the war went and how tactics changed. So we tend to completely disregard sub doctrine. If you could take the great sub captains and crews of '44-45 in Manilla in '42 with Mark 10's instead of Mark 14's then they probably would have been having 20-30k patrols regularly. As it was, tactics and equipment only got refined by the time that Japanese shipping was really hard to find.

We also have the ability to disobey direct orders with no repurcussions, and go to areas we know have lots of targets without worrying about running into another sub.

The IJN fleet numbers also seem to be way to big. I cant believe the IJN had that many task forces, especially large task forces running around.

I cant help but believe the number of IJN vessels and large convoys needs to be decreased, and if thats not the case, the number of COMSUBPAC targets need to be decreased. Even with the ULTRA intelliegence, COMSUBPAC didnt give out every ULTRA recieved in fear the IJN would catch on (I think the USS Indy fell to that, sub activity was known to be in the area but not deciminated).

I agree wholeheartedly.

Reasons why tonnage is higher then historical record:

1.) Torpedo failure rate is NOTHING like it should be.

2.) Target rich enviorment with high tonnage ships as commonplace. (ive sunk more ocean liners and capital warships in two weeks in SH4 then over 2 years of playing SH3)

3.) Player is given too much information from various source in game which makes our "job" infinitely easier then a real sub captains. (map contact updates, the myriad radio/contact reports, external free camera, etc.)

I´m agree

Also i think that there are too many huge task forces and capital ships.
i´ve played Sh1 and convoys were smaller . and pehaps more realistic.

is difficult believe how they can lost the war with several yamatos, carriers, and cruisers lurking around