Total convoy wipeout
 

Hi all

Have you ever managed to totally wipeout convoy? I mean no ships afloat left: no merchants, no escorts… And what is the best tactics of doing that: is it from far side of convoy or maybe by sneaking into middle of it or even head-on-surfaced-high-speed-charge ?

I did that in the Convoy Attack mission. I sunk both escorts (don't remember how) and then spent whatever torpedoes I had left on the remaining merchants. Then I surfaced and deck gunned the rest of them to the Hot Place. I have the screen shot of the sea of green Sunken Ship icons on my other computer:arrgh!:.

I had no mods installed... I don't think I even had patches:p.

IXB early war overcast thunderstorm Gale force winds WaWII Patrol

By the orders of FDU I had to let Transport ship go but all of the boats were sunk...1/3 by me 2/3 by the rough weather... ;)

ive been close to it, but always run out of eels

Gentlemen what were the size of those convoys? ;)

Small, Medium or large

I`ve never done it, and it is for sure impossible with say Grey Wolves or any other mod who uses that damage-system.


(Unless Luftwaffe, Darth Wader and God shows up at the same time)

Tactics?
 

what about atack tactics?

Probably lots of different tactics, but this is what I do:

*set a paralell course with the convoy at flank speed, but clearly out of their field of view.
*make a 90 degree turn towards the path of the convoy some way ahead of it
*submerge approx 3000 meters away from the interception point
*wait for them to get really close
*fire all tubes rapidly at several targets, make a u-turn, and fire rear (if I have)
*leave without saying goodbye
*flank speed again, and once again overtake the convoy
(at this point it is zig-zagging anyway)
*reapeat all above

Well that depends. Are you playing realistic and with mods like GW or NYGM? Or are you playing stock game or lightly modded and auto TDC? In real life it was actually impossible for one sub to sink an entire convoy. In fact entire wolf packs were unable to kill at the very most more than half of the merchants and those are exceptional cases. If things were getting very bad a signal would have been sent out and any available help would have been sent and even the convoy could be dispersed to give the u-boat too many targets to follow.

If you are playing realistic no tactic works. Just aim at sinking merchants as you would normally in convoy attacks.

However if you aren't playing realistic and want to sink an entire convoy try to take the escorts out first. Easiest in early war when they were fewest and weakest. Then use yourtorps carefully and on the biggest targets. Finally finish the rest off with your deck gun. If you do all that then you are lucky and maybe even good.:up:

I did
 

Was early 1939, first mission with my VII, have to check grid BE 14, the weather was calm(so i can use my deckgun), but first i took out the DD(was leading the convoy) than the escort( on the back) both hitted by torpedo's, than surface, and use the deckgun and shoot all the merchants that was there....

It was a mid-size convoy, 3 tankers, 3 T3, 2 T2, and 2 coastals, 2 small merchant...
Cant remember how many tonnage i make, but it was 1 big spot nothing but sinked ships on the map, when i zoomed out...

I played before i patched the game with GW....

Now i have doubed about whiping out the whole convoy with the deckgun, because it's hard to sink them now with deckgun...

But it was fun...

and i survived, went through the channel heading home to Wilhelmshaven

Yeah, that's the usual case. Wiping out an entire convoy would take perfect torp hits with every single one, and incredible luck with duds. Even after all those, you'd probably still have to do some mopping up with the deck gun.

I figure as long as I prioritized my targets and expend every single one of my torps, that's the best I could do. That's about the best that submariners could do.

Yes i have. But the convoy was only 6 ships and one escort. I took out the escort and sent my fury onto the convoy without any mercy whatsoever!, i used up all my load torpdeos then surfaced used the deckgun till torpedos were reload then finished em off. This was when playing in the stock game with RUB mod. I doubt it very much if i could repeat it with GW.

Yep playing GW report of a convoy in AM53 doing 6 knts 7 merchants +1 escort total wipe out.
It was in 1939 though

23/11/1940. AM33
First torpedoed 3 destroyers...the rest was easy; like shooting ducks :arrgh!:
4 tankers
22 cargoships
3 warships
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/2...6181793kd5.jpg

Since I use realistic tactics (no deck-gunning of escorts, deck gun only to finish off single merchants, etc...) and (lately) the NYGM mod I've never completely annihilated a convoy.

This is actually one of my biggest beefs with SHIII: back in AoD the greatest achievment was shadowing a convoy until the wolfpack was assembled. One of my favourite moments in gaming is still a concentrated attack by 5 U-Boats at night against a well-escorted convoy in September 1942.

The lack of wolfpacks pretty much killed SH3 for me as far as "classic games" go.

To this day I can't understand why the devs implemented Luftwaffe attacks but didn't manage to include wolfpacks...

:nope: