Where are the Japanese Patrol Boats?
 

Since I started playing SH4 a few months ago, I have been reading several memoirs of the American officers who served in the subs like Calvert, Ruhe, Gallantin, etc.

One thing that is encountered again and again in the memoirs are patrol boats. Smaller than a destroyer, variable in size and type, equipped with depth charges, machineguns, torpedoes or small guns, these craft very often escorted single merchants (especially along coastal hugging routes), supplemented the escorts of larger convoys, and patrolled strategic areas like harbors and straits. Finding a lone merchant or two without at least one of these small craft as an escort seems to have been fairly rare.

These craft are totally missing from the game, both vanilla and the mods I have played so far. Adding them in large numbers would go a long way towards making the campaign more difficult and more historical.

What are Gunboats, Subchasers and Torpedo Boats?

I've seen them

Checking the hardcopy recognition poster, I do see Hira and Atami gunboats and a medium subchaser. Okay, so they are in the DB.

I've never seen one in a campaign, as far as I can recall. They seem to be rare as hen's teeth. They are vastly underrepresented in the campaign, in my opinion. There should be as many or more of these small craft than there are destroyers in the campaign, and they should be encountered most of the time that a maru is spotted, at least say from 1943 on. From historical memoirs, these craft were encountered with great frequency.

It shouldn't be "I've seen them", it should be "I see 5 or 6 on every patrol."

Of course, not entirely in the same capacity as you suggested.

I've seen them all over, they'll respond if you start blowing up stuff inside a harbor. Along coasts if you stay in the same area enough you'll get attacked by pairs of the Atami or whatever, (the ones with a couple deck guns). They're really fun to take down, cuz you can duel with two or three of them and win, as long as you put a few HE shots into the waterline amidships (the explode real nice). I've also run into H-K groups in the open ocean with one real destroyer and one Atami. The Patrol boats will also work with pairs of medium and small gunboats close to the coasts. Once again, really fun to emergency surface right in the middle of them and take them all out.

Do you frequently see them acting as an escort?

Nah, generally see the flush deck destroyers making up the bulk of convoy escorts.

Nothing wrong with that, but the patrol boats should commonly escort marus which are currently traveling singly or in pairs. I don't see that.

Yeah, neither do I. Mostly see the PBs in HK groups, the single marus fall prey pretty easily to my deck guns ( I save the torpedoes for big warships and the heavy destroyers)

Get RSRDC, you find usually one DD and fifteen minelayers per convoy, in 1942. They're much more common then.

That sounds a little odd.

mostly i find torpedo boats are quite common near shore in shallow waters mostly near ports or narrow inlets but not much in open areas.

i would like to see the small shallow water patrol boats you see portrayed often in movies where they look like small torpedo boats armed only with mortars and guns for shoreline patroling.

not sure if its purely movie fiction or if they were real but i think these are not in the game

midget subs
 

They also had midget subs patrolling the shores f.i. at Guadalcanal. could anyone make a navigating AI one out of the stock's one ?

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/s...p-ss/mdg-a.htm

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/i...000/h74772.jpg

It'd be fun to have one of these as a playable unit. Sure would be a lot of work for what would basically be single mission stuff though. Sneaking into Pearl and other ports in one these would be interesting.

I think there was one on Gilligan's Island too :hmm:.

Cheers!

I have a ko hyoteki halfway ready.... :)