Question about escorts

[Baumann]

Hi all,

Quick question about the realism of escorts:

In historical accounts of u-boats confrontations with escorts it is often the case that they outran their pursuers on the surface. This doesn't seem possible in SH3. All the escorts, including the corvettes, are quicker than the sub. I understand that destroyers were much quicker but I am sure there is something not quite right here...

[Jimbuna]

In RL the only way a U-boat outran an escort was if said escort was capable of a surface speed of less than 17 knots.

It also helped if there was a patch of fog or a rain squall nearby and darkness also played a major factor.

If a U-boat was only 100 yards or so ahead of an escort capable of less than 17 knots it was an almost foregone conclusion that the escorts guns would soon destroy the U-boat or damage it to such an extent it wouldn't be able to dive.

The Kaleun then had few choices.....fight to the death or scuttle the sub.

[Baumann]

Thanks for the reply - sorry i didn't get back sooner.

I am sure I have read accounts of submarines escaping on the surface but you are probably right when you say darkness played a factor.

Thanks again.

"Outrunning" an escort/warship on the surface was generaly more a matter of Evasion than Escape. Range and visibility factors playing a large part.

[piri_reis]

There are quite a few accounts of this in the "Iron Coffins."
All of them done in heavy seas, where the smaller escorts would be slower cutting through the waves, and the Uboat would slip away into a fog bank or rain squall.
I myself have tried to shake my persuers and succeeded, they were obviously small ships, armed trawlers and such. Can be done because they do give up the chase after a while..

[Jimbuna]

Otto Kretschmer was a great believer in evading ones pursuer on the surface using the dark, fog, rain etc. to your advantage rather than diving below the surface where he believed the Kaleun was more restricted in his options.

U-99 passed Lousy Bank late, running ahead, surging forward, sliding through the satiny waves, leaving the miles behind. Kretschmer went below to talk, to count tonnage, to debrief. A watch officer and two lookouts remained on the bridge. Then it was night, and the enormous frame of the surrounding darkness, and the sub sliding through the sea with nothing else around her. She was clipping through the waves and had much to report back to BdU in Lorient when she arrived. Then later, the watch officer spotted a destroyer, suddenly, unexpectedly; and here, at this sighting, the watch officer made a mistake. Ignoring Kretschmer's standing orders to remain surfaced in the event of a possible attack, he dove. Half a minute, and U-99 was gone from the surface. She reached a comfortable depth, and then she evened up, crawling through the dark fathoms of the sea, invisible, deadly, creeping through the gloom below the surface.

The rest is history, shortly afterwards U-99 was forced to the surface and Kretschmer was a POW:

http://davidfairbankwhite.com/excerpt_bitter.html

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Otto Kretschmer was a great believer in evading ones pursuer on the surface using the dark, fog, rain etc. to your advantage rather than diving below the surface where he believed the Kaleun was more restricted in his options.

Ah, but was he always a great believer, or did he become so after the fact?

I've always wondered about that one.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Ah, but was he always a great believer, or did he become so after the fact?

I've always wondered about that one.

Well, taking his standard orders into consideration I would like to think it was before.

Ignoring Kretschmer's standing orders to remain surfaced in the event of a possible attack

[FIREWALL]

The next book I buy will be about "Silent Otto."

He is prominant in all my other books.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

The next book I buy will be about "Silent Otto."

He is prominant in all my other books.

He maintained his naval links/connection right up to 1970....quite a character by all accounts.

Like several other surviving German naval veterans, Kretschmer joined the post-WWII German Navy, the Bundesmarine. He joined the newly-formed service in 1955 and two years later was appointed commanding officer of the 1. Geleitgeschwader (1st Escort Squadron). The next year he was transferred to the position of commander of the Bundesmarine's Amphibische Streitkräfte (Amphibious Forces). From 1962 onward he served as a staff officer in NATO before becoming Chief of Staff of the NATO command COMNAVBALTAP at Kiel in May 1965. He retired in September 1970 as a Flotilla Admiral.
In later years Kretschmer was often interviewed for television and radio programmes about the Second World War, and appeared in the 1974 documentary series The World at War.

In the mid-1990s he was interviewed for the computer simulation game Aces of the Deep, as one of several U-boat skippers whose interviews were excerpted specially for the CD-Rom version of the game.