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Why? Because the reality is, there were very few aircraft shot down by uboats. The kill to death ratio uboats have on aircraft would probably be something on the order of (im pulling a number out of thin air) maybe like 100 or 200 boats lost to every 1 aircraft shot down. So to get a more historical play, the usual response is to beef up aircraft and/or lower the players AA gun range and accuracy. Personnaly i really enjoy the settings the improved airpower mod has. It makes aircraft dangerous enough to were i really dont want to tangle with them if i can avoid it, but when i am forced to, i will shoot one of those buzzards down before i dive. (that is.. assuming i have a heavy flak gun )
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Despite being new here, I have to respectfully disagree with Ducimus. I checked out the information concerning U-boot successes against aircraft on
www.uboat.net, an incredibly reliable website. This link is what you'll need:
http://www.uboat.net/history/aircraft_losses.htm.
It's a rundown of encounters between U-boote and Allied air units. The most interesting feature of that page is the total numbers.
I'll summarise here:
97 different U-boote succesfully downed one or more planes, for a total of 125 Allied aircraft shot down. 31 U-boote were lost in the same attack or shortly afterwards (by other forces directed to the U-boot through the plane's crew). The total losses of U-boote to airpower amounted to 220 U-boote. Note that uboat.net gives RAF Coastal Command successes, not all Allied successes. According to Vincent Tarrant's "The U-Boat offensive 1914-1945", total U-boot losses to Allied air units amounted to 382. The ratio of planes lost per U-boot destroyed by airpower is 0,32 or you could say that 3,05 U-boote were destroyed by air units for every airplane destroyed by Unterseeboote. Hardly the 100 or 200 U-boote lost per Allied aircraft as you claim. I realise you were just hazarding a guess (I saw your disclaimer), but as you can see, it was nowhere near as bad as you thought it was in terms of numbers. Furthermore, up until somewhere in 1941 only 2 U-boote were lost to airplanes, so not being afraid of air units until late 1941 is quite reasonable.
Of the 97 succesful U-boote, most claimed a single success, but quite a few (185, 228, 262, 270, 311, 333, 343, 415, 441, 453, 459, 534, 566, 618, 676, 771) achieved two. U-763 either has 2 or 3, U-333 has 3 or 4 and the real champion is -hardly surprising since it was a U-Flakboot- U-256 with 4.
The light nature of the AA weapons of the U-boote ensured that many planes became wrecks some time
after the attack and the Kapitän might not have known of his success. Some of the aircraft that fell in combat with Unterseeboote were lost due to their own fault, ie because of their own bombs' explosions or diving down too steeply and failing to pull up. Still, they can be claimed to have been downed under duress of gunfire!
Kind regards,
Eichenlaub
05-24-06, 05:12 PM
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