SH4 missing convoys

[PAHKaptain]

Convoys keep disappearing before they reach me. I learnt about convoys changing courses, so I went where they go through a narrow passage 40 km wide. I waited dead centre of the passage. Convoy after convoy, merchant or task force, disappeared. They had no other place to go but through me. They get about 40 km away and then vanish. When I am not in the passage way the convoys go through it.

When they get that close (about 40 km) I tried chasing them down head-on at surface flank speed to no avail. I have been chasing, trapping, waiting, for weeks and can't get a chance to fire a torpedo.

Restarted the American career three times and every time in patrol four I can no longer sink a ship. What's going on?

[propbeanie]

Are you following those "reports" and then the little box with a tail on it on the Navigation Chart? Look at the time of the reported location, versus the time that you get it. Where do you like to have your sub base at? Pearl Harbor or Manila / Fremantle or Brisbane?

[PAHKaptain]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

Are you following those "reports" and then the little box with a tail on it on the Navigation Chart? Look at the time of the reported location, versus the time that you get it...

Yes I have been. Yet I have stayed in the narrow passage for several days with convoys heading straight for it nearly every second day. Yet no encounters.

Originally Posted by propbeanie

...Where do you like to have your sub base at? Pearl Harbor or Manila / Fremantle or Brisbane?

At first, with the Asiatic Fleet, it is Manila. Then shortly afterwards it gets captured and the base is transferred to Surabaya. But I do prefer Fremantle, during 1942. Have not been able to get passed 1942.

Has anybody experienced ghost convoys?

[Rockin Robbins]

Those aren't convoys, they're REPORTED convoys. Chasing them is next to useless and shouldn't be done unless the message expressly tells you it's an ULTRA report. Then there's at least a 50% chance of finding something.

[propbeanie]

SH1 had a system that the convoys pretty much "stayed the course" that was initially reported. SH4 is not like that. If you're looking for something to sink, you're better off finding a "shipping lane" and staying there. Somewhere between Formosa and the Philippines, in the Luzon Strait, is usually pretty active. Think of Japan after raw resources in the Dutch East Indies, and draw a line from there to Japan.

[PAHKaptain]

Originally Posted by propbeanie

SH1 had a system that the convoys pretty much "stayed the course" that was initially reported. SH4 is not like that. If you're looking for something to sink, you're better off finding a "shipping lane" and staying there. Somewhere between Formosa and the Philippines, in the Luzon Strait, is usually pretty active. Think of Japan after raw resources in the Dutch East Indies, and draw a line from there to Japan.

Thanks propbeanie. I have done what you have suggested but to no avail during patrol four. I am there for weeks see reported convoys heading my way, but nothing turns up. Even as I mentioned in the original post, I stayed in a narrow approach and non of them went through or even reported farther down the shipping lane. They simply vanished. Never to be reported again.

[PAHKaptain]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Those aren't convoys, they're REPORTED convoys. Chasing them is next to useless and shouldn't be done unless the message expressly tells you it's an ULTRA report. Then there's at least a 50% chance of finding something.

Thank you Rockin Robbins for the info.
However, most of those reported convoys, during the first three patrols, do appear when I put myself in their path. But in patrol four, none of them materialize, or even 'reported' again farther down the route, while others on different routes do. It is only when I am in their way do they vanish.