Quote:
Originally Posted by Dread Knot
No problem. 
I guess the question I'm trying to resolve is whether Japanese destroyers historically were not as effective as smaller craft at ASW. Or were you as a US skipper more likely to have an encounter with these smaller craft because there were more of them and the Japanese were somewhat loathe to use their dwindling numbers of elite fleet destroyers to protect merchantmen? I'm thinking the latter. |
US subs were more likely to encounter "escorts" with convoys, esp as war went on and DD losses mounted, the fleet destroyers were tied up spending most of their time with task forces and important warships.After the fleet was gone in later war, many were back on convoy duty, or what was left of them anyways.Those listed are the ones we know for sure were lost to destroyers, others could have been.Many more were damaged and suffered severe, accurate, prolonged, and persistent counter attacks at the hands of destroyers.Read about many of them in various books, articles etc. The Tang's encounter in Feb 1944 with a destroyer. The Barb in June 45 encountered an Akizuki class that gave her a lot of troubles.The USS Jack encountered quite a few of them. Many destroyers received top of the line sonar gear before the smaller escorts etc.Japanese destroyers were no pushovers in later war.Of course, all depends on captain and crew.Point is, at this late in war, with three top of the line destroyers set to ELITE, they should not have been push over.If this was an anomaly of some sorts, i would say okay, but this seems to be a common thing now and it takes away from the game. Makes task forces way too easy to attack sometimes as they are escorted by DD's.Then you have the encounter I posted about, 3 Yagumo DD's, set to elite, in ideal conditions against a shallow diving boat at 250 feet.Yet I know if the escorts had been the Type AB or C/D escorts or subchasers, i would have had a hell of a time getting away. I was asking if this was a universal experience as I plan to fix this if possible when released my mod.