Q about Japanese convoys
 

I'm playing with the GFO 1.1 and it's now Jul 1942. En route to my assigned patrol area, radar has picked up a large convoy consisting of 3 DDs as escorts and about 8-10 merchants.
From what I recall reading about the war in the Pacific, the Japanese did not institute convoys for their merchant shipping on a regular basis until late in the war.
Yet in game, I've been seeing these large merchant convoys since the start of the war. So my question is, is this a reasonable approximation of what transpired during that time frame?
Thanks.

I'll go out on a limb here and say "no."

As far as I'm aware, long-legged ASW ships were in short supply throughout the war for Japan.

Lets put it this way: I've played War in the Pacific, and War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition a good bit (both published by Matrix Games) and one thing I always note as a Japanese player is how I do not have enough ASW capable escorts to keep me happy even for my military taskforces, much less for merchant resource carriers.

I am fairly confident that the Order of Battle for the Grand Campaign in WiTPAE is just about as close to accurate as humanly possible (well, it does leave out a lot of small to tiny japanese vessels that are included in the "Da Babes" mod). If you like I can open up the Japanese OOB for the stock grand campaign and pull out the list of all the ASW capable ships.

That won't exactly answer the question; to really get a 'feel' for it, I believe would require loading up the game and looking at just how many merchant assets are represented for Japan, to see how thinly those ASW assets would need to be spread to get the sort of coverage we encounter in Silent Hunter 4.

Thank you. So the stock campaign is, in this way, ahistorical.