Q Ship
 

Sorry about sinking ship but I was stalking it for so long, I nearly forgot. Did the Japs have Q Ships, this one was bristling with guns and side panels and what looks like hidden torpedo tubs.

I have just tried to add image but manage attachments is gone, sorry this site cannot be reached????? It came back after a fw minutes

Maybe yes if I go through historical papers, but I don't think so. This didn't fit Japonese 'Imperial' mentality of the 1940s. Quite the contrary: The Japonese used more kamikaze techniques like manned torpedos or such, especially late in the war. Q ships were a concept during WWI, there is even a sub simulation where they play an important role: Shells of Fury, a WWI submarine game.


XS

I found another and sank it. thanks prop for that link, but its not the same one, I dont think. Both were in convoys

They were used individually as "commerce raiders", like the Germans did, but also as convoy escorts. Most were rather later in the war, some too late to participate. In that link are the individual ships, which have ship movements, some rather detailed. of what they did, and when and where they were. Some records are not as complete as others, and most of those are as complete as say for a carrier...

The dates I sank both were June 1943 N and NE of Borneo. The first one shelled me as soon as I spotted it 10k yards away. I ran like hell then came back around to where I anticipated it would be, and there it was.

Auxiliary cruisers/commerce raiders and Q-ships are not the same. The former were for surprise attacks on unwary merchants; the latter were designed to lure subs into an ambush.

The first - and perhaps only - Japanese Q-ship was the Delhi Maru, sunk on its maiden voyage by, appropriately enough, a submarine. Its tragicomic demise was emblematic of Japanese ASW efforts as a whole.

I keep with my opinion above, the examples presented here are not Q-ships, and I agree with Mios' definition for Q-Ships.

Like in the example above, the English navy also used elaborated camouflages on some of their ships to make them more difficult for submarines to be aimed for, a lot of personel and facilities in England were used for that purpose to make new ship paintings. The results of these efforts were all mediocre and didn't help to avoid the many losses at sea. But were these Q-Ships? Definitly not.
I dare to say that the ordered 'Unrestricted' hunt for enemy shipping in the Pacific after the Pearl Harbor attack would have made it a very short life for any Q-Ship had it really existed. American skippers didn't lose much time to look at flags or ship details, units that were not clearly reported as US units were to be attacked, that's what US skippers did and it was not a mystery for the Japonese. Therefore using Q-Ship tactics would have been stupid and even more catastrophic for them.


XS

Q ships was my description on a spur of moment - I could also have called the DEMS; but these are too heavily armed and we already have almost all jap ships now with weapons (dems). Thanks ya' all for the input, very interesting, especially that great link from Prop; I never knew about these ships.