How much danger would we get in sh-4

oscar19681 · 12-13-06, 05:53 PM

As i understand it the japanese did not have a very good asw capabilaty . What was the biggest threat to us-subs in the pacific ? I liked sh-3 because just about the whole world was after your sub . Arent the japanese destroyers a laught to sneak away from? I know everything about the u-boat war . But i no very little about the situations the us subs had to face can someone fill me in?

CCIP · 12-13-06, 06:40 PM

Well I'm sure it won't be a cakewalk. If anything, it was the fact that enemy escorts had poor tactics, less so poor equipment. Besides, I fully expect it to be a bit more dangerous than reality was for most purposes. SHIII (stock), especially late in war, certainly was.

Schatten · 12-13-06, 06:52 PM

I reckon CCIP could very well be right there. The fact that the IJN didn't have any real doctrine from ASW means that the danger could actually be increased a bit over what you see in SHIII, I mean the Allied ASW was very advanced in the later years of the war but once you started to watch their tactics and guage their capabilities then you'd be able to develop tactics against them.

Whereas with the IJN every escort had different equipment sets and with no real doctrine so you wouldn't know exactly what sort of skipper you were up against until he started to press an attack. Some would obviously be better than others and without standarized doctrine you'd be guessing how they'd deploy. Pair a good skipper with one of the escorts that had radar, didn't give his position away with constant sonar pings while in transit, etc and you could wind up getting caught with the proverbial pants down. Add to that the fact that later in the war you could very well run into a Japanese convoy that had more escorts than merchants and things could be very interesting (in a Chinese curse way) for you.

The unpredictability factor makes me think that the Japanese escorts will from time to time really surprise the hell out of us. Also they'll use the sensors they have a little more effectively than in reality I'd guess since individual crew skill at each station isn't modelled I don't think, so you'll have blanket green, veteran, elite, etc. categories which'll use all of their sensors and all of their weapons at that skill level.

At least that's how I can see it happening.

EDIT: Oh and the biggest threat? Depends on the year, early in the war you'll really have to watch out for being in areas with land based air cover, I know I for one really would get a sinking feeling in the pit of my tummy if I saw a gaggle of Zekes meader over my course. Also carrier based air would be a big threat if you were anywhere near the Combined Fleet's operational area. A Mavis flying boat could also spoil your day. Later in the war I'd be more concerned with having to go in tight with the Japanese coastline; hazards such as shallow water, minefields, shore batteries if you had to run into the inland sea and a faster response time to allow ASW ships to converge on you if you get spotted would be my main concerns.

stabiz · 12-13-06, 08:29 PM

How can bad Japanese ASW make the game more difficult?:hmm: Just go deep and you are in the clear?

Pants · 12-14-06, 12:20 AM

Depends on how you play..If you play like the guy who made the vid for SH4 then i would imagine you will get into alot of trouble.......I don't know fancy surfacing next to a BB to engage it with your DG

TheSatyr · 12-14-06, 03:56 AM

Japanese escorts were much better than you give them credit for. Alot of US subs only made it home because of how well built their subs were,plus the IJN made up for their poorer quality sonar,(Later in the war,in the beginning their sonar was as good as everybody elses),by developing 600lb DCs. They didn't need to be quite as accurate with those.

I really don't understand why people seem to think the japanese stunk at anti-sub warfare...must be a European bias thing. After all they did manage to take down over 40 US subs out of around 200+ that saw action so they couldn't have been THAT bad.(Out of a total of 52 losses,2 were training accidents,2 were friendly fire incidents, at least 2 were killed by their own torps and a couple ran aground).

TheSatyr · 12-19-06, 12:51 AM

Japanese A/C weren't all that effective at sub killing. What they were good at was pinning the sub down until DDs/DEs could arrive. Which I guess is how they nailed the Wahoo.

Supposedly the Japanese used an early form of MAD on some of their aircraft later in the war...not sure how well that worked out for them.

Pants · 12-19-06, 04:15 AM

It all comes down to tactics really..Japanese AC and subs were quite capable of inflicting serious damage to Allied subs and merchants, however the high command wanted them to concentrate on warships due to the japanese Doctrine that they wanted the one decisive battle, to bring the US to settle for piece talks.
When used correctly..look what happened in the indian ocean from march 31st to april 10th 1942
Combatants
Allied Forces
United Kingdom
Austalia
NetherLand

Axis Forces
Japan

Allied Strength 3 carriers, 5 battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, 100+ planes, 30 small warships, 50+ merchants
Japanses Strength 6 carriers, 4 battleships, 7 cruisers, 19 destroyers, 5 submarines, 350 planes

Allied Casualties 1 carrier, 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 1 AMC, 1 corvette, 1 sloop, 23 merchant ships sunk, 40+ planes destroyed

Japanese Casualties 20+ planes destroyed

AVGWarhawk · 12-20-06, 09:37 AM

I do not believe we will be in too much danger. Many of our subs were running in shallow water because the convoys were hugging the coastlines. This made it dangerous but from what I read, especially towards the end of the war, our subs ran the surface with impunity. Heck, one sub submerged only once on a 49 day patrol. I'm not saying the Japanese did not sink some of subs but I would say that their equipment to locate submarines was not quite as good as what the Allies had on the Atlantic.

LeafsFan · 12-20-06, 10:17 AM

I am far from sure that the game will model this but a critical problem that the IJN had in ASW was that their depth charges were constantly set far too shallow. Thier own boats were not deep divers, and they assumed that the USN boats had the same properties. Early on the USN noted this fact and they made an extreme effort to ensure that the IJN never discovered this. Essentially, if the US boat had time to get deep it was safe. I remeber reading this a long time ago in "Take her Down", or maybe "Take her Deep", by Dick O'Kane.

HB

JSF · 12-21-06, 07:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pants

It all comes down to tactics really..Japanese AC and subs were quite capable of inflicting serious damage to Allied subs and merchants, however the high command wanted them to concentrate on warships due to the japanese Doctrine that they wanted the one decisive battle, to bring the US to settle for piece talks.
When used correctly..look what happened in the indian ocean from march 31st to april 10th 1942
Combatants
Allied Forces
United Kingdom
Austalia
NetherLand

Axis Forces
Japan

Allied Strength 3 carriers, 5 battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, 100+ planes, 30 small warships, 50+ merchants
Japanses Strength 6 carriers, 4 battleships, 7 cruisers, 19 destroyers, 5 submarines, 350 planes

Allied Casualties 1 carrier, 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 1 AMC, 1 corvette, 1 sloop, 23 merchant ships sunk, 40+ planes destroyed

Japanese Casualties 20+ planes destroyed

WOW!...I never knew that.

LeafsFan · 12-22-06, 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pants

It all comes down to tactics really..Japanese AC and subs were quite capable of inflicting serious damage to Allied subs and merchants, however the high command wanted them to concentrate on warships due to the japanese Doctrine that they wanted the one decisive battle, to bring the US to settle for piece talks.
When used correctly..look what happened in the indian ocean from march 31st to april 10th 1942
Combatants
Allied Forces
United Kingdom
Austalia
NetherLand

Axis Forces
Japan

Allied Strength 3 carriers, 5 battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, 100+ planes, 30 small warships, 50+ merchants
Japanses Strength 6 carriers, 4 battleships, 7 cruisers, 19 destroyers, 5 submarines, 350 planes

Allied Casualties 1 carrier, 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 1 AMC, 1 corvette, 1 sloop, 23 merchant ships sunk, 40+ planes destroyed

Japanese Casualties 20+ planes destroyed

Yes but none of that is relavent to the discussion at hand, i.e. IJN ASW. The Japanese felt that ASW work was beneath the best officers, and in many respects was a waste of time, remember they were planning on a war that was to be very short and followed by a peace settlement. They felt that efforts directed towards ASW could be better expended on offensive efforts which could bring the war to a swifter conclusion.

HB

bookworm_020 · 12-20-06, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheSatyr

Japanese A/C weren't all that effective at sub killing. What they were good at was pinning the sub down until DDs/DEs could arrive. Which I guess is how they nailed the Wahoo.

Supposedly the Japanese used an early form of MAD on some of their aircraft later in the war...not sure how well that worked out for them.

IT gave one US sub as absolute thrashing, The aircraft got a fix a droped depth charges on the sub, which caused a lot of damage, the escorts of the convoy the sub was attacking joined in, causing more damage and keeping the sub under attack for over a day and a half. The hull of sub was buckled in from the force of the deth charging. When it did surface almost two days after last seeing the sun, it was a floating wreck, it managed to limp home, but it was never repaired.

MRV · 12-20-06, 06:11 PM

130 operational DD's?

well, this means shooting a DD in campaign would really be worth something.

About that comparison to u-boats:

US subs couldn't co as deep as a U-boat, this is primarily caused by their construction:
In technics, you calculate the thickness of the material e.g. the pressure hull by dividing the maximum pressure a material can handle by a safety value. For example: if you want 2 times the safety against destruction, you play as if the material you are using is only half as durable as it is and therefore use double the material.

.....this safety value was 1,8 for US subs and 2,5 for the u-boats, so a u-boat could take more pressure and dive deeper.

However, US-Subs weren't required to dive deeper, because this was mostly impossible in their areas of operation. And well, if you have seen what shallow water can do to you in GWX, you will notice that this can make SH4 really dangerous.

12-13-06, 05:53 PM	#1
oscar19681 Admiral Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: netherlands Posts: 2,020 Downloads: 119 Uploads: 0	How much danger would we get in sh-4 As i understand it the japanese did not have a very good asw capabilaty . What was the biggest threat to us-subs in the pacific ? I liked sh-3 because just about the whole world was after your sub . Arent the japanese destroyers a laught to sneak away from? I know everything about the u-boat war . But i no very little about the situations the us subs had to face can someone fill me in? __________________ we live we die but death does not ends it. Jim Morrison 1943-1971

12-13-06, 06:40 PM	#2
CCIP Navy Seal Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Waterloo, Canada Posts: 8,700 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 2	Well I'm sure it won't be a cakewalk. If anything, it was the fact that enemy escorts had poor tactics, less so poor equipment. Besides, I fully expect it to be a bit more dangerous than reality was for most purposes. SHIII (stock), especially late in war, certainly was. __________________ There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers. -Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)

12-13-06, 08:29 PM	#4
stabiz Silent Hunter Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Norway Posts: 4,224 Downloads: 14 Uploads: 0	How can bad Japanese ASW make the game more difficult?:hmm: Just go deep and you are in the clear? __________________

12-14-06, 12:20 AM	#5
Pants Grey Wolf Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Somewhere in the Atlantic Posts: 849 Downloads: 25 Uploads: 0	Depends on how you play..If you play like the guy who made the vid for SH4 then i would imagine you will get into alot of trouble.......I don't know fancy surfacing next to a BB to engage it with your DG __________________ Ex GWX Dev Team member and proud GWX user

12-19-06, 04:15 AM	#8
Pants Grey Wolf Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Somewhere in the Atlantic Posts: 849 Downloads: 25 Uploads: 0	It all comes down to tactics really..Japanese AC and subs were quite capable of inflicting serious damage to Allied subs and merchants, however the high command wanted them to concentrate on warships due to the japanese Doctrine that they wanted the one decisive battle, to bring the US to settle for piece talks. When used correctly..look what happened in the indian ocean from march 31st to april 10th 1942 Combatants Allied Forces United Kingdom Austalia NetherLand Axis Forces Japan Allied Strength 3 carriers, 5 battleships, 7 cruisers, 15 destroyers, 100+ planes, 30 small warships, 50+ merchants Japanses Strength 6 carriers, 4 battleships, 7 cruisers, 19 destroyers, 5 submarines, 350 planes Allied Casualties 1 carrier, 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, 1 AMC, 1 corvette, 1 sloop, 23 merchant ships sunk, 40+ planes destroyed Japanese Casualties 20+ planes destroyed __________________ Ex GWX Dev Team member and proud GWX user

12-13-06, 06:52 PM	#3
Schatten Engineer Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 212 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	I reckon CCIP could very well be right there. The fact that the IJN didn't have any real doctrine from ASW means that the danger could actually be increased a bit over what you see in SHIII, I mean the Allied ASW was very advanced in the later years of the war but once you started to watch their tactics and guage their capabilities then you'd be able to develop tactics against them. Whereas with the IJN every escort had different equipment sets and with no real doctrine so you wouldn't know exactly what sort of skipper you were up against until he started to press an attack. Some would obviously be better than others and without standarized doctrine you'd be guessing how they'd deploy. Pair a good skipper with one of the escorts that had radar, didn't give his position away with constant sonar pings while in transit, etc and you could wind up getting caught with the proverbial pants down. Add to that the fact that later in the war you could very well run into a Japanese convoy that had more escorts than merchants and things could be very interesting (in a Chinese curse way) for you. The unpredictability factor makes me think that the Japanese escorts will from time to time really surprise the hell out of us. Also they'll use the sensors they have a little more effectively than in reality I'd guess since individual crew skill at each station isn't modelled I don't think, so you'll have blanket green, veteran, elite, etc. categories which'll use all of their sensors and all of their weapons at that skill level. At least that's how I can see it happening. EDIT: Oh and the biggest threat? Depends on the year, early in the war you'll really have to watch out for being in areas with land based air cover, I know I for one really would get a sinking feeling in the pit of my tummy if I saw a gaggle of Zekes meader over my course. Also carrier based air would be a big threat if you were anywhere near the Combined Fleet's operational area. A Mavis flying boat could also spoil your day. Later in the war I'd be more concerned with having to go in tight with the Japanese coastline; hazards such as shallow water, minefields, shore batteries if you had to run into the inland sea and a faster response time to allow ASW ships to converge on you if you get spotted would be my main concerns.

12-14-06, 03:56 AM	#6
TheSatyr Captain Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 545 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Japanese escorts were much better than you give them credit for. Alot of US subs only made it home because of how well built their subs were,plus the IJN made up for their poorer quality sonar,(Later in the war,in the beginning their sonar was as good as everybody elses),by developing 600lb DCs. They didn't need to be quite as accurate with those. I really don't understand why people seem to think the japanese stunk at anti-sub warfare...must be a European bias thing. After all they did manage to take down over 40 US subs out of around 200+ that saw action so they couldn't have been THAT bad.(Out of a total of 52 losses,2 were training accidents,2 were friendly fire incidents, at least 2 were killed by their own torps and a couple ran aground).

12-19-06, 12:51 AM	#7
TheSatyr Captain Join Date: Apr 2002 Posts: 545 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Japanese A/C weren't all that effective at sub killing. What they were good at was pinning the sub down until DDs/DEs could arrive. Which I guess is how they nailed the Wahoo. Supposedly the Japanese used an early form of MAD on some of their aircraft later in the war...not sure how well that worked out for them.

12-20-06, 09:37 AM	#9
AVGWarhawk Lucky Jack Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: In a 1954 Buick. Posts: 28,287 Downloads: 90 Uploads: 0	I do not believe we will be in too much danger. Many of our subs were running in shallow water because the convoys were hugging the coastlines. This made it dangerous but from what I read, especially towards the end of the war, our subs ran the surface with impunity. Heck, one sub submerged only once on a 49 day patrol. I'm not saying the Japanese did not sink some of subs but I would say that their equipment to locate submarines was not quite as good as what the Allies had on the Atlantic. __________________ “You're painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture.” ― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

12-20-06, 10:17 AM	#10
LeafsFan Watch Officer Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada Posts: 332 Downloads: 6 Uploads: 0	I am far from sure that the game will model this but a critical problem that the IJN had in ASW was that their depth charges were constantly set far too shallow. Thier own boats were not deep divers, and they assumed that the USN boats had the same properties. Early on the USN noted this fact and they made an extreme effort to ensure that the IJN never discovered this. Essentially, if the US boat had time to get deep it was safe. I remeber reading this a long time ago in "Take her Down", or maybe "Take her Deep", by Dick O'Kane. HB

12-20-06, 06:11 PM	#14
MRV Frogman Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 296 Downloads: 89 Uploads: 0	130 operational DD's? well, this means shooting a DD in campaign would really be worth something. About that comparison to u-boats: US subs couldn't co as deep as a U-boat, this is primarily caused by their construction: In technics, you calculate the thickness of the material e.g. the pressure hull by dividing the maximum pressure a material can handle by a safety value. For example: if you want 2 times the safety against destruction, you play as if the material you are using is only half as durable as it is and therefore use double the material. .....this safety value was 1,8 for US subs and 2,5 for the u-boats, so a u-boat could take more pressure and dive deeper. However, US-Subs weren't required to dive deeper, because this was mostly impossible in their areas of operation. And well, if you have seen what shallow water can do to you in GWX, you will notice that this can make SH4 really dangerous.