Now this is too much !
 

It is 1939, Western approaches.

A convoy of one battleship (!), 10 destroyers, and appx. 12 merchant ships is heading toward England.

- I was 8000 meters ahead of the convoy at night in rain and fog. They saw me.
Next try:
- I am at 10000 meters and dive, let the convoy go on above me. They find me at 160 meters depth, engines stopped, silent running.
- Next time i got in surfaced, the battleship destroyed me at some 8000 meters with no visibility (night, fog, whatever).
- Next time i got in submerged, sunk the battleship and two freighters.
Am down at 160 meters, some damage. At last 10 destroyers above me hours later, circling around my exact position, dropping charges and charges and charges. Not every charge hits but those which are most distant do the most damage. Each destroyer must have 100 dephth charges at least, i have stopped counting.
Does anyone notice that the modders try to fix the same things again and again ?

Guys this is ridiculous.

1. No battleship would escort a convoy in 1939, ok maybe they just tried that out ?
2. Not much convoys in 1939, not yet.
3. England did not have enough destroyers, anyone remembers the lend and lease thing with the US ? 40 old 4-stackers because England had not enough destroyers before 1942 ? Initially those had no ASDIC and most not even Radar. Now in 1939 we have 10 radar- and ASDIC equipped full-blown destroyers for one convoy, from late Fletcher class to whatnot in 1939, with well-experienced crews from 1945, or maybe much later.

Not to forget that the type VIIa is obviously not able to dive below 150 meters without taking hull damage.

I could list another hundred details that do not fit, from one screw not turning whan charging the batteries to all that other B$ that resides in the Silent Hunter series from SH3 on. Why the hell did they not improve the sim by also making it a bit more historically correct ? This has all been mentioned a thousand times ! Here, at UBIsoft forums and in numerous other simulation forums.

There's nothing more frustrating than such concocted history.
Sorry for the rant, but i am really disappointed; first you see a promising sim, and then that. :stare:

Doenitz would have resigned in september 1939, under those conditions. :rotfl2:

Well, rant over,
Catfish

Are you playing the Vanilla game or modded?, but otherwise i agree, the same old, same old, Problems, all of which could be sorted by the devs before releasing.

Sometimes i wonder who their target audience is!, i mean, the sim gamer especially those who will be choose something as niche' as a Subsim, will almost certainly be buying for subject interest and wanting something as close to the real experience as possible.

The casual gamer need not apply and most probably won't.

Catfish, a couple of points:

actually, the Royal Navy did use capital ships as convoy escorts in 1939, since they were as worried by German surface warships (Graf Spee, Scharnhorst, Gneiseneau, etc.) as by submarines.
convoys started as soon as the war did in early september. England had suffered in WW1 from starting convoying late and on that point, the RN was ready in 39.

Actually, the RN had many destroyers available in 1939 with experienced crews. The French Navy was also available. The escort shortage started in summer 40 and was caused by many factors: France surrendered, many RN warships were damaged/sunk at Dunkirk and the RN kept a sizable force, including many fleet detroyers in england to guard against a German invasion.

RN fleet destroyers had ASDIC in 1939, although you are right about radar, it only became generally available starting in spring 41.

On the other points, what mods are you using? it does'nt sound like the stock game.

If you use IRAI you can tone down the AI . I personally use 0.9 for non merchants and leave merchants as is .

I thought we already had this discussion with Catfish a couple weeks ago. But we didn't quite make it to this point. But it was Catfish's thread that got me to set IRAI to 0.9 as well.

The first convoy left Capetown for Gibraltar on September 3. By October there were up to 16 convoys at sea at any one time.

The third point you say you got in and sunk BB and 2 Freighters. Nice Job! Though they got you, you at least got way further than try 1 and 2.

I may town down IRAI as well. (lets face it, most of us are prob. using Magnum Opus)


Anyway, yeah there are still things wrong with the game, but look where we are now compared to release. If modders stay interested in fixing the game, we could have a great sim in another year or so.

Like anyone, id rather have a complete game upon release, but sadly that is not the state of the industry it seems. Shes a beaut to look at though! I say shes got legs, looking that good, to provide entertainment for years to come, perhaps perfected over time!

Its not real life , you are not actually in ww2 .

Oops :oops:

:rotfl2:

Hmm, i wonder which ships were sunk then ? Compared to all ships heading to or from England convoys were the exception as far as i read, in 1939 and the first half of 1940 ?
You may be right, but in most of the accounts that have been published the few convoys that were, were scarcely defended, if at all.
Seldomly a real destroyer, but often just harbour tugs and hastily repaired ships of all kinds, pressed into duty. Up to 1941 seldomly a corvette, but those were slower than the U-boats, which would just outrun them on the surface.
What rendered the ASDIC useless was that the boats were going in surfaced, at full speed like a "Schnellboot", so ASDIC was pretty useless and few ships had radar - even then a U-boat closer than 1000 meters was invisible on a radar screen, so the boats were relatively secure at night.

Most accounts well into 1940 show U-boats halting single freighters, still under the prize law (giving a warning shot, control papers, and then let a neutral go, or sink a british vessel). I admit England reacted much faster however, than it had in WW1. After 1940 usually only fast ships like modern freighters or troop ships sailed alone, relying on their speed and the U-boats being interested in the convoys.

Greetings,
Catfish

Hello Bilge_Rat,

Hm, ok with some warships, but much convoys in 1939 ? And defended convoys ?
The british declaration of war was at september 3rd 1939, and despite the declaration the british merchant fleet was not really ready for a war, and initially also not for convoy duty (the german fleet and Navy wasn't so well prepared either).
As the sinking numbers and accounts in the reports of 1939 show the majority of the english trade fleets were not sailing in convoys then.
It also takes some time to organize convoy systems and train the crews. But ok, some obviously did.


Ok, this sounds reasonable, and i did not know it. Were so much destroyers sunk, at Dunkirk ? I have heard two differing accounts of this - some say Hitler let them go intentionally unharmed while other sources speak of heavy attacks - frankly i don't know, but a lot of the british troops made it to England.


They relied heavily on ASDIC, but ASDIC was rather useless against U-boats attacking like torpedo boats at night, on the surface. And yes Radar was used, but as you wrote not all Navy ships had it. But i really doubt there were enough fleet destroyers to guard all convoys that were necessary to support England. They used all kinds of ships as an "Ersatz" escorts. Even the corvettes used as destroyer escorts were slower than the U-boats; as soon as a boat had penetrated the escort screen, it was pretty much unreachable.

Anyway like in Silent Hunter V : 10+ Fletcher class destroyers with well-trained "Walker-like" crews, for a 12-ship convoy, plus a battleship, in 1939 ? :-?


Yes i use TDW's "Opus magnum" mod (with patch 2), where the IRAI AI seems to be increased. Will see if i tone it down a bit, at least in 1939 :hmmm:

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

It is true that most of the ships sunk by U-boats during the war were sailing alone, either by choice or stragglers from a convoy. Except for certain areas and time, namely as I recall the North Atlantic run in the middle of the war, sailing in convoy was never obligatory, and certain fast ships were always exempt.


However, convoys did start in september 1939, so there would be nothing unusual in running into a convoy at any time in the war, even one escorted by a BB in 1939. The HMS Royal Oak was assigned to convoy escort duty, before it was sunk at Scapa Flow by Prien, although I agree the composition of the one you ran into looks a bit strange.

what we need to do is 'clone' the sonar's and hydrophone's and reduce their effectiveness. Then assign these clones as the ship's hydrophone's and sonar's in the early years via the ship's .sns files. This would model the ship's hydrophone's and sonar's in the early years of the war more accurately :yep:

There were plenty of convoys and on the approaches to England they were generally escorted, including by large surface units to protect against German raiders - the convoys were only left unescorted further out in the ocean.

I think you're interpreting the lack of historical attacks on convoys as a lack of convoys as such, and the British concern over their ability to escort them as a lack of escort. Neither is true. In fact the lack of attacks on convoys has more to do with the fact that the Germans had very few boats available at the start of the war, these numbers being too few to execute Doenitz's successful wolfpack tactics. It's not an easy task finding a convoy with just one or two boats, and an impossible task sticking in contact with it (something that SH games don't make obvious enough). Even a small (but competent) escort can deal with one boat - something Doenitz realized from the start. Make it a half-dozen boats, and then even a heavy escort might struggle - but you need to actually have those boats available and deployed to hunt that convoy first, something that's hard to do with what was at best 30 ocean-going boats in total in the first year of the war. As a result, only a few convoys were subject to attack - which, more than anything, is an indicator that the convoy system was in fact quite successful from the start. However U-boats had plenty of other targets to hunt at that time, and so they were simply not deployed to actually hunt down convoys until enough boats to actually became available. It wasn't until 1941, though, that wolfpack tactics and with them substantial convoy battles really started happening in earnest. But again, that's really not an indication that convoys weren't there or were unescorted - this had much less to do with the British situation and more with the Germans' initial lack of boats.

I do not know what is available, but is there only one type of SONAR/ASDIC available?

from my reading of Blair and other sources, the issue appears to be more one of crew rating than the equipment.

For example, I re-read part of Blair vol.1 last night on actions in september 1939. The RN started the war with with 175 destroyers, although only about half, the more modern ones had the up to date ASDIC equipment and crews trained in their operation. In sept. 1939, the RN formed their 4 fleet carriers into ASW groups guarded by the most modern destroyers. Results:

1. around sept. 15, U-30 was attacked by 3 fleet destroyers detached from the HMS Ark Royal Group. They found her, tracked her and kept her down for 6 hours until U-30 managed to break contact and escape;

2.on sept 14, U-39 unsuccessfully attacked HMS Ark Royal. It was attacked by 3 destroyers from the group which first tracked her in line abreast formation, each ship 1 mile apart, and then carried out multiple DC attacks most at 100-150 feet depth, but the last one with DCs set at 250 and 500 feet depth. The U-39 surfaced and scuttled.

3. in mid-september 39 again, U-27 attacked what it thought was a group of cruisers at dusk. It turned out to be 7 RN destroyers which counterattacked. U-27 dove "deep" to 120 meters (393 feet), but suffered a damaged prop shaft from the DCs. The U-Boat surfaced at night to try to escape, but was spotted, ran down and forced to scuttle.

obviously, these destroyers would probably be ranked "veteran" or "elite".

I can't speak to who the u-boats attacked. I only know my research into the convoys. You can find out how many convoys and what ships were involved on any day of the war here:
http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/index.html (click on 'Convoy Finder')

On October 1, 1939 there were 15 convoys at sea. Eleven of them were cross-channel convoys; the other four were from/to Halifax or Capetown. The Halifax convoy (HX.3) was escorted by a light cruiser and two Canadian destroyers. That's not much, so even a single u-boat would have a decent chance of bagging a merchant or two.

Even worse, the so-called convoy out of Jamaica was three merchants with no escort.

What I find interesting, and unexplained, is the fact that the Channel convoy leaving Loire for Bristol on the 1st had no escort, while the one the very next day had five!

You're right - there were a lot of single ships at sea, but every day saw a large convoy and a bunch of smaller ones somewhere.

Hello,

thanks for the links and information, SailorSteve the convoy page link is really a phantastic resource. You wrote
" ... You're right - there were a lot of single ships at sea, but every day saw a large convoy and a bunch of smaller ones somewhere ..."
Well, Germany somehow lost the war - and it was decided at sea, with all kind of resources getting to England despite the odds.

To CCIP - i agree later in the war, but initially few destroyers were doing convoy service or so it seems. Anyway their numbers were too scarce to protect all merchant shipping around the british isles - the 40 (?) aging US destroyers received through the lend and lease agreement were requested for a reason.

The boats would then try to attack before the destroyers met them for the last miles to escort them through the western approaches, or along the northern route.
Later in the war, but long before Hitler declared war to the US, the US destroyers had accompanied convoys to mid-atlantic, and then let them go from there, then shielded by british destroyers - at the "Momp" (mid-ocean meeting point). Some destroyers just steamed on and helped their british friends in detecting U-boats, sometimes even dephth charging them, without war declaration.
The US had just extended their territorial waters to the mid-atlantic, to make any attack on "their" western side a reason for entering the war - something Hitler tried to avoid at all costs. But this took some time and it was not done until 1942 or so i think.


To TDW and BilgeRat:

There seem to be different generations of sensors built-into SH5, but i have no idea whether and how they work correct - or if at the right time - or if at all.
This is a very good site for ASDIC information:
http://jproc.ca/sari/index.html

I know it is usually doubtable to quote the internet, however this is exactly what i read in german books (and i am very thankful i do not have to translate all that, already at 50+ pages english text about Zeppelin attacks to translate) ..

From this site:
" ... To say that convoys were well protected by Asdic would be an understatement especially in the early years of the war. Typically, a convoy consisting of 30 to 50 merchant ships created a perimeter distance of 16 to 18 miles. In theory, the escorts were positioned so that their Asdic beams overlapped, providing unbroken coverage of the convoy perimeter. The reality of the situation was different. An escort group usually consisted of one destroyer and three of four corvettes, barely enough to provide proper coverage especially with Asdic whose range limits averaged around 2000 yards under normal conditions. When convoys did have sufficient escorts, not all the Asdic sets were used simultaneously. ..."

I have no idea how to use the information in SH5, or if it is possible at all - would sure be a hell of a task.

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish

sounds like the sh2 ai?:shifty:

I wonder if you can 'cloak' by having your rudder go hard to port, hard to starboard and then midships.

Don't forget Catfish is not playing with the mild watered down stock AI, but with TDW's IRAI mod, which in its unadulterated form can be like "Bungo Pete" reincarnated..:arrgh!: