Approaching A Convoy

[GreyBeard]

It's late in the day, but not dark yet. You're at 1/3 speed in your VIIB and suddenly you hear "Ship Spotted!" It's a large convoy with escorts about 6/8K directly ahead. You take the boat down to periscope depth and ahead slow. Would going deeper help prevent the escorts from hearing your boat the closer you get? Or is it better to just stay near the surface?

[Hitman]

Which year? (Asume early war since you are in a VIIB?)

Which mod or stock SH3?

In real life (Works also well in SH3/GWX/NYGM as far as I can tell):

1939-1942: Kaleuns would stay ON the surface at the visibility limit and follow the convoy gathering data through plotting and radioing BDU. Then at night, once BDU gives the signal and other U-Boats are closeby, they would run on the surface on a dogleg curve approach to go in for the kill.

1943-1945: Stay near the surface, varying between periscope depth and 30-40 metres (For effective sonar listening) to gather target data (Speed/course) from the convoy, while making a right-angles approach (Bring the enemy to your 270º or 90º relative bearing and turn towards/against the convoy until the bearing is constant) till maximum effective shooting range (~3000 metres), then fire a salvo with FATs whenever available.

Hope that helps

[GreyBeard]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Which year? (Asume early war since you are in a VIIB?)

Which mod or stock SH3?

Currently November 1940, GWX 1.03.

So if running at 30/40 meters depth helps me with sonar, then it must help the enemy hear me better too, right? So maybe just staying at, or 1/2 meters, below periscope depth is better to assist in avoiding detection while I sneak into the middle of the convoy?

[U49]

One way to make it more realistic is to move in a position a little of the side of the estimated convoy course at the edge of the visibility.
When it is dark enough , then make a turn towards the convoy and start your attack run.
Real tactics advised the so called "dog-curve " for a surface attack.

As GWX makes it very difficult to start the attack unseen, I ususally dive at half the visibility and make my final run submerged against the outer lanes of a convoy.
....But sometimes I am bold enough to stay on the surface ... and then it gets realy exciting

[Brag]

Originally Posted by GreyBeard

It's late in the day, but not dark yet. You're at 1/3 speed in your VIIB and suddenly you hear "Ship Spotted!" It's a large convoy with escorts about 6/8K directly ahead. You take the boat down to periscope depth and ahead slow. Would going deeper help prevent the escorts from hearing your boat the closer you get? Or is it better to just stay near the surface?

You may be interested in reading convoy attack articles on my webbie

[GreyBeard]

Originally Posted by Brag

You may be interested in reading convoy attack articles on my webbie

An interesting and informative read. Thank you for that!

[Hitman]

Currently November 1940, GWX 1.03.

So if running at 30/40 meters depth helps me with sonar, then it must help the enemy hear me better too, right? So maybe just staying at, or 1/2 meters, below periscope depth is better to assist in avoiding detection while I sneak into the middle of the convoy?

I'm not much familiar with that situation in GWX since I play only Black Sea careers with it, but you shouldn't have problems in being detected until you get closer (Some 3000 metres of an escort). There is a post from Ducimus explaining the AI and how to approach the convoy in early war (Basically submerging very deep, below the sonar cone of the escortsand coming up again once past the screen), and I suppose it will work. However I never do that because it wasn't done either in real life due to exactly the same reason I don't: You can't make observations on the convoy to gather speed and course, and therefore you climb from the deep among the merchants with absolutely no idea where they are going and how fast, i.e. with no firing solution ready. I suppose the tactic from Ducims was developed having auto targeting in mind, but obviously it won't work for my personal way of playing the game.:hmm:

[U-96]

One way I do it, it works very often for me. But the downside is that you might be too close to the fat valuble ships. Is that I go right in the path of the convoy dive to 25 meters, and order silent running and just wait. Usually they'll pass right over you without even knowing you're there. Once you're amoung the columns, you can move pretty freely as Escorts will have a hard time picking you up with all the propeller noise from the convoy itself. And it takes a while for an escort to wade through the columns when you're detected. Though like I said you risk being too close to use your fish with this method.