Operation Drumbeat Tips

[danoh]

I am looking for advice about how to exploit the advantage uboats had over U.S. shipping in early 1942. In Jan. 1942 my type XIC was sent to Freetown. I completed the patrol and made a bee-line for the U.S. East Coast. Any tips on where to hunt the tankers?

And on a linguistic note, is drumbeat Paukenschlag in German?

[NipplesTheCat]

Cant tell you where to look for tankers, but yes it is german for drumbeat.

[panthercules]

Check out the US coastal parts of the map below, showing where I got my victories on my Drumbeat patrols - your results may vary, but I found a variety of juicy targets (including a few tankers) in the area around grid squares EC and ED during early-mid 1942.




Good luck, and good hunting!

[Ducimus]

Places i tend to camp out at:

DB98
DN76
ED98

The acutal US east coast, along the coast i tend to avoid because the shelf is very shallow (30 meters in most places), and the patrols are fairly consistant.

The thing about drumbeat in general, particuarlly the caribean, is traffic is bottlenecked in certain areas, due to the land masses in the local area. The grids i mentioned are such bottlenecks. DB98 however is off the us coast, but the shipping comes off the shelf into deeper water there and their routes are fairly consistant. Pin point the actual route and the rest is just a waiting game. The map panthercules gives, will give you a good idea of shipping in the EC and ED grids.

Generally speaking the traffic going from North to south orginates from the new york Area, and stays up on the shelf, but crosses into deeper water at DB98, past the east coast of florida which is heavily patroled, and then starts heading east once it gets to cuba. The traffic generally doesnt go south of cuba, but stays in the straights to the north of it, and then crosses south at DN76, once they clear the islands they head SE to Port of spain.

Traffic orginating from Port of spain tends to head either north to NY area, or it crosses the atlantic. The area off port of spain is also heavily patroled, the water i shallow, but its workable with depths ranging from 120 to 160 meters. Patroling off those waters can be VERY lucrative, but also VERY dangerous if your caught by a deterimined destoryer.. The water is just deep enough to make it worth a try.

of course, then theres always curracco harbor, which also has some traffic coming out of it. Lighly guarded, its like shooting fish in a barrel.

[mookiemookie]

I love the NY to Norfolk/Baltimore shipping lane. Tons of tankers. Another good one is the NY to Halifax lane. These places have a TON of unescorted tankers and other assorted goodies poking along.

Basically anything off the New Jersey coastline is a good place to stay, in my experience. NY harbor is a very busy port, but there are a few DDs patrolling off the SW corner of Long Island that you have to watch out for. I haven't made it down to FLA or the Caribbean in any of my Drumbeat patrols as of yet.

You're right in worrying about the mud shelf off the coast of these areas though. But if it makes you feel any better, real U-boat captains did too. Adds to the realism. I tend to stay far enough out that I can still patrol the shipping lane, but I can also submerge with no problems. Just mind your crash dives!

[kylania]

Can someone rehost that map somewhere else, it's already out of bandwidth.

[MarshalLaw]

Best place is "Tanker ally" which is the straight between Cuba and Hati/ Dominican Republic At least every 24 hours a tanker of some type will pass thru there, you will see other merchants as well, but 80% of the time it will be a tanker. Good hunting......

[panthercules]

Originally Posted by kylania

Can someone rehost that map somewhere else, it's already out of bandwidth.

Ooops - sorry - didn't realize that place had such small limits - try this link for a copy of the map:

http://files.filefront.com//;6200312;;/

[andy_311]

Try Port of Spain or Carico