Thread: Convoy Behavior
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Old 02-21-14, 09:39 PM   #3
tat501
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I feel your pain. But I don't know historically how accurate their behaviour is. I know they had random changes of course factored in etc, but the behaviour of the escorts seems to me to be quite normal.

For example - I'm in position ahead of an approaching convoy - at a 90 deg. angle to their course. The position of the escorts means that its quite difficult for me to scoot inbetween their ASDIC cone whilst avoiding being heard by passive sonar.

If they do as you suggest, and one escort closest to me does a 180 and runs away for 500m at 15 knots - then it gives me an excellent and very fortunate opportunity to head at full speed into an attack position without having to worry about their Asdic.

eg;
E E E
E C C C C C E
E E E

This (above) is basically the position of the escorts of a convoy no?

Now imagine I am here;
E E E
E C C C E
E E E
S

In this model - the lead escort on the port side of the convoy has doubled back on itself. My sub- positioned at S now has a gilt-edged opportunity to get into an ideal attack position because of this random maneuverer.

It seems to me that the unpredictability that you state you desire the escorts to show could in the long term of a war of attrition be detrimental to their efforts because it allows attack opportunities like shown above. Of course -it would require a bit of luck for the U-boat to be in the right position at the right time - but I don't think such an approach would be the optimal one from an escort commanders point of view. Better surely to ensure that all the approaches to a convoy are covered by ASDIC and passive sonar so that it is very difficult for a U-boat to penetrate.

In addition - it seems like it would require much more fuel to execute the manoeuvres you describe, and again, over a long war it wouldn't seem to me to be a very good approach to use fuel in this way.

Just my opinion - and of course as I say, I am not that clued up on WWII ASW tactics (aside from having read of the usual procedures that were used once a U-boat was detected -i.e. Operation Pineapple, Operation Rasberry etc) and the classic "creeping approach" pioneered by Gentleman "Johnnie" Walker and his sloop HMS Black Swan.

-EDIT

Ok - basically the "diagram" I drew didn't appear correctly. Essentially I was saying that if that lead port escort doubled back - there would be a sonar gap that the sub at S could easily penetrate before the second escort reached it.
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