RuB 1.45 - Why are single ship contacts back?

[runyan99]

When I was playing under 1.43, I never got any single ship contacts. I had to luck into them, or I had to hunt for convoys. This was as it should be.

I just started my new patrol under 1.45 and I'm getting single ship contact information. Why?

Please take it out. U-boats didn't get single ship contact reports. They got convoy reports. Other U-boats didn't report single ship contacts to other boats, they sunk them. Condors didn't regularly report much of anything to u-boats. Where exactly is this information coming from? It's garbage.

Take these single contacts out. It isn't historical.

Merchant ships transmitted their positions and all sorts of information uncoded well into the war. This could be picked up by the raidooperator on the uboats so the singel contacts are not unhistorical.

[Krupp]

There is a DF (Direction Finding) aerial in the conning tower of the U-Boat. The round one that you can see or the top of it since it's inside it's housing. And why shouldn't U-Boats receive locations of single merchants? Can you imagine how much supplies can be fitted inside of a 5000 tons ships for exaple. Change it to truck loads or train box cars and you can see the importance to sink all of them...

Finding targets via this system ain't magig (or garbage). By listening the right frequensies (wavelengths) you can receive (hear) a transmission from a ship and the bearing for that transmission can be seen too. One thing that makes it too easy is that you get the range and speed and course in the game when you should only get the direction of it and approximate range perhaps too. If the ship sends another messages later on then you could have an idea of its course and speed.

But this is how I would explain it to myself:Another possibility is that the position message is from BdU. They have been able to calculate the position of the transmission because it has been received by other units (U-Boats, surface vessels,airplanes) too and who then have sended the info (bearing of the received message from their location) to BdU. When you have 2 or 3 bearings from different locations you can "easily" spot the sender by crossing these bearings. Then the BdU sends the exact location of the target to nearby U-Boats.



The "Bismarck" was eventually located by this method because she sended a long message on her way to France. Royal Navy wasn't aware of her exact location at that moment and were searching from a wrong direction. This message helped them to point the searchs into right area. And we know the result for that.

Well, this is how I have figured out. Correct me if I'm wrong.

And like Jotte said, if the ship sends a message that is not coded and it says like blah blah...49°39.00 N, 15°5.00 W... now that is not difficult to pinpoint.

[CWorth]

Early in the war there were ships that travelled on their own.

Only when the convoy system kicked in big did the numbers seriously decrease.Heck even during Drumbeat the Uboats would routinely find single merchants off the USA and hit them within sight of shore.So your comment of single ships not being historical is wrong.

And to top it off RUB has never removed the single ships..they have always been there since the very first release of RUB.

Beery has only decreased the numbers of them to about 20% of the stock setting and lowered the reporting chance of them..just cause you did not find any dont mean they are not there.Just have to know how and where to look for them.

[coronas]

Sometime ago I read a book about IIWW naval warfare, a great source of intelligence was the newspapers!! In neutral countries (Spain, Portugal, USA) information about entries, sorties, cargo and name of the ships were of public domain . A good agent send to Bdu, next Uboot captain and ship sunk!

[runyan99]

Can anyone site a real example of a U-boat detecting a single merchant ship via DF, and then sinking that merchant, or of a u-boat being informed by BdU of the presence of a single merchant ship in the u-boat's patrol grid?

They didn't even have to use DF at times like I posted above, the merchant ships were sending out their positions in their communications uncoded. This surprised and astonished the uboat commanders as it was happening well into the war.
This is mentioned in Hitler's U-Boat War by Clay Blair.

[runyan99]

Then please, find me an example of a U-boat using this information to sink a lone merchant. It should be easy.

I don't think you'll find many.

The single ship contact information in SHIII is a game invention by the designers to increase the action for the player, and to avoid long fruitless patrols.

You're twisting historical reality to conform to SHIII.

U-boats were not able to use radio intercepts to reliably locate and sink merchant vessels. Far and away most of the single ship contacts were chance encounters detected by the eyeball of the watchmen.

P.S. What pages are you referring to in Clay Blair? I'll re-read it.

I'm not twisting history to suit SH3, just pointing out that calling the singel merchant map contact unhistoric is not correct. The level of frequency is up to debate, as is much else. I could just turn around the question and say that you provide evidence of the oposit.

I've not found the page and it might be on a diffrent page in my version since its an extended swedish language edition I have. It's 5 books instead of 2 and lots of info about swedish ships hit by uboats, extra drawings, maps and pictures etc.
I'll keep looking though when I get time away from the political geography books I have to read.

[Krupp]

Personally, I don't use single ship contacts nor have ever used them. During the weeks in patrol, you usually find enough targets anyway. Whether or not this D/F method was used and in what quantities, I don't know. But the method and how it generally works was the point in my reply. In my "BdU" example I was merely "reasoning" the game feature how it could have happened, for the single ship contacts if one uses it. Call it twisting of history if you like, how else would you explain it IF you use it?

It surely would be interesting to know how effecient or uneffecient this method was for the U-Boats. Can you point out that it wasn't used at all? And if you use it or not, I don't care. And certainly I don't have any interest to begin any arguing with you. All I know the method existed and the devices were installed in U-Boats.

[coronas]

It´s easy. A game with ALL traffic at sea in IIWW following the real routes.
Whithout ship contacts finally can encounter some ship to sunk....or not.

[Hartmann]

I´t difficult to know if condors repport only convoys or single ships too.

Probably their crews see ships at sea and report it to command when they land. and some times the planes attack the ships with bombs.

Also the "girls" in the departure port or inteligence could repport the traffic to germany. The same of the french u-boat bases to british

I use the single contacts when they are near or if i can do a interception course using the nomograph. :|\

I pay bribes to the bdu and luftwaffe for single ships repports. :rotfl:

[Stiebler]

To remove the single-ship contacts, go to data\cfg\contacts and change the line:
Display Range to Opportunity Contacts=300
to another suitable value (eg, =10, ship will be nearly visible anyway, to =50 allows simulated accurate DF-ing).

I agree with Runyan99 that these contacts occur unrealistically often in the stock game (with or without RUb). However, I keep them on anyway, to observe the pattern of ship movements thus simulating agents' reports. But for realism one should only rarely choose to intercept single-ship contacts.

[irish1958]

Does anyone know any WWII u-boat captains? If you do, call them and ask about single ship contacts. How often, how many, what did you do if you obtained one? Another way to get the answer would be to get the records of ship sinking and check the ratio of single ships to convoy ships. I suspect that early in the war most of the sinkings were, in fact, single ships.
i don't know any uboat captains. Very few retired to Indiana.
irish1958

[Krupp]

Stiebler wrote:

to =50 allows simulated accurate DF-ing)

This sounds like a good idea. The original 300 is too much because of the uber accuracy in the game, But then you don't have D/F at all. Now this 50 km might work. Just finished patrol (42 days and 3 ships...) and going to try this setting for the next one.