Luftwaffe is useless - 1944

[czwij]

May 1944, U-1001 (type VIIC) off of Norway in the north sea (Bergen), first few hours into my patrol.

task force has been sighted, moving fast NNE, right into my line of travel. They are more than likely going to intercept a friendly convoy some 100 miles north of my position.

I figure i can move into position to take out that task force before it gets in sight of our convoy. after an hour, ships are sighted and i radio in the contact and submerge. i track them and after about a half hour i have friendly aircraft flying in. looks like three heinkel 111's. they begin their bombing run on five destroyers and miss every time. one corvette sees my periscope from 2000m off (yeah, right...) so he comes in at 16knots, no zigzag. i put an eel into his bow, but he doesn't sink (a real corvette would sink in 60 seconds as they have very few compartments, so again, yeah, right...) the heinkels circle and harass but do little significant damage. the corvette lost speed and manueverability, so at least something worked out. three more destroyers come after me at speed and zigzagging. i let out three more torps from bow, all miss and one falke from stern, then crash dive to 180m. in the end, i knock out one destroyer with the falke, but the other three get me after about three actual hours of cat and mouse. we sink to the bottom some 220m with a great big hole in the pressure hull near the engine room.

what bugs me;
why wasn't the luftwaffe effective at all through all this? why are allied planes, during late war patrols, so on the mark when bombing a sub already crashed to 30m and they kill me? why is the luftwaffe deadly on their attacks in the beginning of the war and the latter part they fly blind. i should have gotten away as the destroyers would have had their hands full with the bombers. they pretty much ingnored them and drove straight in to hunt me down.

not fair.

[Dread Knot]

Originally Posted by czwij

what bugs me;
why wasn't the luftwaffe effective at all through all this? why are allied planes, during late war patrols, so on the mark when bombing a sub already crashed to 30m and they kill me? why is the luftwaffe deadly on their attacks in the beginning of the war and the latter part they fly blind. i should have gotten away as the destroyers would have had their hands full with the bombers. they pretty much ingnored them and drove straight in to hunt me down.

not fair.

Well historically at this point in the war, the best German pilots were in fighters defending the airspace over the Reich from streams of Allied bombers which were reducing German cities to rubble. Sounds like you got the greenhorn recruits deployed to a secondary theater, training in their Heinkels to try and get some flying hours in.

[krashkart]

I was about to say that by 1944 the air war over Europe was shifting in favor of the Allies. The land war wasn't much farther behind. By the latter half of 1945 the Third Reich would collapse completely and the war effort shifted to the Pacific theater.

[Dread Knot]

You can also blame Göring.

Unlike other contemporary navies, the German Kriegsmarine had no own naval aviation of it's own. All Aircraft - coastal based and ship based - were under command of the Luftwaffe and flown by Luftwaffe officers, following Göring's order that "everything that flies belongs to me". The result of this conflict was not very surprising, the naval arm of the Luftwaffe was never as effective as those of the allied forces, caused by the fact that the operational planing belonged to the Luftwaffe instead of the Kriegsmarine, and Göring wasn't much interested in helping rivals for resources, power and influence like Admirals Raeder or Donitz.

Despite the very low number of aircraft available for naval operations - less then 200 (5% of the total Luftwaffe strength), those aircraft were burdened with multiple tasks. From coastal patrols over submarine hunting and Search-and-Rescue missions to reconnaissance for submarines in the North Atlantic.

Frankly, with these handicaps it's surprising German aircraft did as well as they did at sea with so little to work with.

[krashkart]

Now that's interesting, Dread Knot. It's been ages since I picked up a WWII history book... I just might again after reading that. Did all my reading years ago in the school library.


Only five more years to go before I must surrender the boat (if I survive that long).

[Jimbuna]

Sounds to me like your gaming experience reflected what the saituation was like in RL.

Welcome to U-Boat warfare in 1944. It will get much worse before it gets any better. In fact, don't expect any improvement until after VE day.

Good Hunting

[BillCar]

Considering that actual U-boat commanders were instructed to keep their periscopes up for only a short time inside of 4000m, and to keep them pretty much on the level with the water (i.e., the waves should always be washing over it), I don't see why a late-war crew should have any difficulty spotting a periscope at 2000m, especially if you were leaving it up for any appreciable length of time, or putting it up above the wave level.

In real life, escorts could and did spot periscopes at distances greater than that. If you're standing watch on a ship, and your only job as watchman is to scan for a few hours with extremely powerful binoculars, you get pretty good at that job.

i put an eel into his bow, but he doesn't sink (a real corvette would sink in 60 seconds as they have very few compartments, so again, yeah, right...)

some went straight down , some sank after a while, some foundered after being taken in tow, some survived.
"yeah right" a tanker could take 4 torpedos and make port, it could go down after one...it could juat sink because...well it happens.

[czwij]

pretty simple close to all this, after 4 patrols. ende; i.e DiD