Prize rules

[rudewarrior]

Originally Posted by John Pancoast

Rudewarrior, by 1942 were u-boat crews even bothering with boarding attempts ?
I was under the impression that stopping/boarding was strictly a very early war only scenario due to various reasons.

I do not know if there are any documented attempts; however, here are the conditions under which it would happen in late 1942:

1. The surface ship would have to be outside the blockade zone, which essentially encompassed the British Isles and Iceland.
2. It could not be a British merchant ship (exception: if it was an unarmed/unescorted passenger ship it could not engaged at will).
3. It could not be an armed French/Norwegian/Dutch/Belgian ship.
4. It could not be darkened.

This was the directive, as of 16 May 1941. Part of the Prize Rules said that you could engage any armed merchant as well.

I would assume any American merchant ship would be eligible for attack once war had been declared as well. No source to officially declare this change of stance, but seems reasonable given the political situation by that point. By late '42 the vast majority of American ships carried some sort of armament. Most merchants were armed as well.

So you can see the conditions for that happening would be pretty rare. However, I got the impression that convoys would form at certain staging areas, then go to Britain or points in the Med. Prior to that ships would be coming in small escorted convoys, like the 3 merchant + 1 escort convoys you would see in the game. Then at lower security you would see an armed merchant paired with an unarmed merchant. Then you might see the single ship who went with "the big ocean theory" hoping to not get spotted. I suspect you might see things like this off the coast of southern Africa as they were coming up to assemble at Freetown.

Removing the deck gun ramped up toward that time as well, with it really becoming a serious thing in the beginning of '43.

Also, german uboat doctrine seemed to be forced into operating further out to try and get these ships. The closer the ships got to England, the bigger and more heavily protected (including air cover) the convoys got. So command seemed to think that uboats had to get out further than that to be truly effective, especially with the Type IXs.

So, as you can see, the conditions exist, but they would be pretty rare. However, I do think a uboat Kaleun would prefer to use the deck gun in order to spare torpedoes, but, by that time, I figure they would be pretty cautious (or dead).