SH4 like backwards

Besides the complete mess of the US sub force planning and command that did not begin to clear up until late 43 when Charlie Lockwood was made vice admiral of SubPac, (to become known as Uncle Charlie Lockwood, and he could begin to correct some of the problems I point out in my posting about bases) the choice of picking the American sub force to create a fun but also REALISTIC war scenario seems an unlikely choice.



I am afraid the SH4 is going to be largely make-believe for the first part of the war. Every bit as make believe as my own Victory-Mod (where Germans win the war). To chose to build a WWII Pacific sub game around American subs and Japanese ASW (anti-submarine-warfare) is like making a game around school yard nerds having a pillow fight. Of course Americans and Europeans want to play US subs, but SH4 SHOULD have been built around Japanese subs and American ASW. Americans had learned a lot about ASW from WWI and WWII in the Atlantic. The Japanese subs used good torpedoes, powerful ones and they had a good sub force.

Up until 43 US subs didn’t do much because of torpedoes that not only had bad magnetic detonators but their impact detonators only worked when making a glancing angled hit!!! Tests done in the summer of 43 showed that when 10 Mark 14 torpedoes were dropped from a height to equal their normal water impact speed, onto hard surfaces that equaled ship hulls that only 3 detonated!!! Only when torpedoes were dropped so as to hit at an angle would they work. Wahoo’s skipper, Mush Morton launched 10 perfect hit torpedoes (all using impact detonators) during one mission and all 10 failed to detonate. Where as Donitz moved quickly to discover why his magnetic torpedoes were not working, and he even court-martialed 4 ordinance officers and had them jailed for the goof ups, the American navy swept the problem under the carpet and hid it for almost 2 years!

As for the Japanese ASW, it was so terrible for the first half of the war as to count as little better than WWI in nature. They built only a few dedicated anti-sub ships. They did not use the convoy system much and did not use big convoys until late 43. They depended mainly on zig-zag (and as American submariners would say: “For every ship saved by a fortuitous zig, another is lost by an unfortunate zag.” That Japanese did not get enough radar units until late and even then they were afraid to use them in ASW because they were afraid Americans would too easily locate them (Japanese were experts in detecting radio signals and just assumed that the Americans were too). The Japanese “ash-cans” (DCs) were as a rule set to detonate above 150 feet, as the Americans had been able to keep secret the deeper abilities of their sub force. Thus most American subs dodged depth charges simply by going to 200 to 250 feet. This was true until very late 43 when a big mouth congressman named May, revealed to reporters that the Japanese were missing our subs because they set their depth charges to explode too shallow.

Also American sub skippers reported that Japanese DDs would only unload a few depth charges and then rush back to the ships they were protecting. The Japanese actually thought that their few shots had sunk the sub and were reporting these as kills. THUS to mod this into a game one would have to set all Japanese DDs to novice or worse.

But wait it gets worse: the Japanese always considered ASW unworthy because it was defensive and not offensive! Thus they gave it almost no consideration until late 43 and early 44. Their depth charges in the early war were only 200 to 300 pounds! I am surprised the US didn’t buy some from the Japan to use in our training exercises!!!!

I doubt SH4 will take much of this into consideration, and so what we will get is a make-believe game fun for Americans and Europeans to play – but that’s about all. Japanese subs and American ASW would have made a lot more realism sense.

One more thing I doubt I see, but I should: American subs in friendly waters were often attacked by American ASW planes unless they were under DD escort. Actually several were lost this way. Something tells me I'll not see anything like this in SH4.

The upshot is I will likely make my own mod where the game does not start until early 44.