Stricken/Burning ships encountered.

[Raticon]

Questions and debate concerning SH3 with GWX-supermod!

Allright, so i was reading This thread about AI subs when the thought came to me. These burning/damaged ships you encounter sometimes, more often in a convoy or not, is something i encounter from time to time as others do and that made me remember some observations i hope someone wise will help me interpret.

These are the occasions i have met them:

Case 1. Fiji-class warship burning and running low in the water, escorting one undamaged and one lightly damaged troopship in the company of some 2-ish DD's outside Dunkerque.

German artillery was present at the coast and duking it out with these ships, theory is that there are more artillery to the west from where they approached that has allready damaged these ships. This is a plausible scenario but i'm not entirely sure.

Case 2. A very stormy day with heavy rain and waves higher than hills. I encounter a small convoy outside the British east-coast defended by a lone DD. Some of the ships (mainly smaller ones) are burning or runnig a bit low. One even has the cargo-boxes on the deck blown away from an earlier occasion.

Does storms really cause this heavy damage? I mean, it was damage equal to several hits from a deck-gun on some of the merchants. If so, what's the formula and conditions for damage to take place on these ships? Is it a constant of small damage to all ships in storms or is it random in occurrance and/or level of damage?

Case 3. Approaching towards the western channel approach. Large convoy with some ships showing heavy damage and even one of the escorts straggling behind with many fires aboard. One of the tankers even had a rather nasty oil-slick leaving behind.

Is this also a case of randomized damage or evidence of an earlier storm? Weather was fine so Luftwaffe is plausible, but unlikely. Year was 1940 and i had gotten the radio message that some german cruisers was lurking around in the high seas looking for convoys... Could they be the culprits in this?

General questions:
How rare/regular is Luftwaffe strikes on ships and convoys?
How rare/regular are german warships engaging convoys or ships?
How much damage can ships take from storms and is the damage always there as a constant or is it a randomized chance for any ship in a storm to take damage from the storm itself?
Can storms sink a previously undamaged ship?

I have already learned from the thread mentioned above that AI-subs only use their deck gun and no torpedoes, so sadly, they are excluded from this scenario.

I'm very thankful for any contributions to this, even if it's another question or just thoughts on the matter from wise old skippers .