Retirement of UBoat Commanders

[Shelton]

Hi Guys

In real life is it true that Uboat commanders retired after about 4 or 5 patrols?

regards
Shelton.

[Schöneboom]

Hi Shelton,

"Retirement" is not the term I'd use -- it was commonplace for skippers to be transferred away from the front after several patrols, for ex., to train new crews, or for administrative posts. And those were not permanent, either -- an officer could later return to the front, to command a different boat.

Mach's gut!

[GoldenRivet]

Yeah, as Schöneboom said... after several patrols, they would usually be assigned as instructors at training flotillas. this would give up and coming new commanders and crews the inside scoop on the latest tactics and enemy advancments in ASW.

If they were not assigned training duties they might actually be placed in command of a flotilla, or assigned as an officer in command under a flotilla chief.

[JScones]

Beery spent a bit of time researching this when we added the realistic career length feature to SH3Cmdr.

IIRC his results showed that most Captains "retired" (reassigned is a better word) around six patrols, or more broadly between 3 and 16 patrols. There were no Captains with more than 16 patrols under their belt.

As others mentioned above, most either went to training units or they took a staff position in BdU.

[Shelton]

thanks for your replies - yea for anyone interested to play this out here is a concept from the RuB team:

After patrols 4-7, a roll of 1 results in retirement from front line duty.
After patrols 8-13, a roll of 1 or 2 results in retirement from front line duty.
After patrols 14-15, a roll of 1, 2 or 3 results in retirement from front line duty.
After patrol 16, only on a roll of 6 can a career be continued.

Sounds interesting.

[JScones]

Originally Posted by Shelton

thanks for your replies - yea for anyone interested to play this out here is a concept from the RuB team:

After patrols 4-7, a roll of 1 results in retirement from front line duty.
After patrols 8-13, a roll of 1 or 2 results in retirement from front line duty.
After patrols 14-15, a roll of 1, 2 or 3 results in retirement from front line duty.
After patrol 16, only on a roll of 6 can a career be continued.

Sounds interesting.

Or if you use SH3Cmdr simply select the "Realistic career length" option and it will automate it all for you.

SH3Cmdr originally incorporated Beery's "roll of the dice" approach (as posted above), but in a subsequent release I added an extra dimension to reflect the differing average days spent at sea for each u-boat type. It wasn't quite right to apply the same logic to an IIA captain who spent about ~20 days at sea per patrol and an IXD2 captain who spent ~80 days at sea per patrol, for example. Now, an IIA captain is less likely to be retired after, say, four patrols than an IXD2 captain would be.

[U49]

Most times I stick to the decision, when Sh3commander is sending my character to shore...

But sometimes that notorious Kretschmer is coming through and I override it !!!

The longest lasted throughout the whole war