Quote:
Originally Posted by John Channing
Then you had better read some more.
During the Norwegian campaign Sub commanders were specifically ordered to concentrate on Naval vessels and, if necessary, to ignore merchant shipping.
As I said in aother thread, given the Doenitz knew exactly how much tonnage he had to sink on a monthly basis to bring England to surrender, and given that he had around 40 operational U-Boats, do you really think he told the commanders just to go out to Grid X and see what you can find? Do you think his orders to Prien was to drop by Scapa Flow and have a quick look see?
Of course they had mission requirements.
JCC
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John, with all due respect, you and others keep bringing up this "Norwegian Campaign" as justification for SH5's myopic attention towards capitol ships...but in reality the 'campaign' was barely a footnote in the overall u-boat war both because of it's utter failure as a strategic doctrine and moreso because it was far, far from what most uboats were tasked to do. (quite frankly because of it's very failure to be of any use in helping the war effort)
Uboats were in virtually every other case specifically ordered to
avoid any and all warships unless circumstances prevented otherwise. It was just too dangerous, and the uboats were too valuable to waste on such strategicall useless targets. Doenitz was trying to strangle England by cutting off it's supplies...not by attrition of it's warships. The fact that he was forced to do so with so few submarines (fewer than 15 on station at any one time when the war broke out) meant that he could not risk any unnecessary encounters with warships...he needed to stop the flow of goods into the UK. Doenitz did not have to sink
ship tonnage to win the war...he had to sink
supply tonnage. The ships that carried those supplies were just a means to an end.
The raid at Scapa Flow was not so that Prien could sink The Royal Oak...but was rather designed to be a
psycological blow to both the people of Britain and it's navy. It would have been just as successful and probably just as historically significant if Prein had only sunk a few destroyers or barges...because the key was not what he sunk, but the mere idea that he was able to penetrate the defenses of the port that was the pride and the core of the Royal Navy.
There just is no intellectually honest way to defend SH5 on it's historical merits. It has none.
What SH5 does have is the finest graphics ever to grace a submarine game. It has beautiful water and gorgeous 3D modeling. It is gorgeously ambient, stunningly immersive, and captivating to the imagination. It portrays in ways never before acheived a sense of being there on the high seas in a tiny metal tube with the wind and the spray in your hair and purpose in your heart to return to base victorious!
In those ways, SH5 does what it does best.
But please don't kid yourself in thinking that there is anything historical about it. The dates are wrong, the targets are incorrect, the missions and the goals are nothing but pure fantasy. SH5 is to history what Star Trek is to science...it is exciting and inspiring, but eventually you have to come home from the convention, take off the pointy ears, and come to the realization that it was all just pretend and make-believe. There is no magic soup, and submarines never 'raced' to save the Bismark...One-eyed first officers stayed in port, and submarines were sent to destroy supplies, not taskforces.
I have learned to accept SH5 for what it is...not for what I wished it was. I had wished it would be a historical simulator. I accept that it is a very beautiful game.
It is easier to accept that simple truth than it is to re-write history.
