[WIP] Japanese Merchant Marine

[sergei]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

Japanese hospital ships were marked according to international regulations- white hull and superstructure, green band round hull, red crosses on hull and funnel(s), lit at night etc

Early war hospital ship.


Late war hospital/POW ship

[tater]

The POW paint was later in the war. We have RL examples that sergei used as a model (green paint measure, with crosses).

Some US subs reported hospital ships that were NOT lit, I seem to recall this from my reading of books by skippers.

[GerritJ9]

There is a photo of "Hikawa Maru No. 2" on:
http://www.netherlandsnavy.nl/Noort.htm
The ship is clearly painted in the white hull etc scheme but the date when the photo was taken is unknown.
Re the second scheme you posted, I think this is the scheme used by Japanese repatriation ships post-war. I have seen several b&w photos of Japanese merchant and naval ships with white crosses on the hull, these were all taken post-war when the vessels were used to repatriate Japanese citizens.

[Jan Kyster]

Originally Posted by Mescator

...I do recall an instance where a American sub sunk a POW ship and killed hundreds of prisoners though.

That could be the Growler...

"For the tenth war patrol Growler was lead submarine in a wolf-pack with Sealion and Pampanito in Formosa Strait. On 12 September the group attacked a convoy and Growler sank the 870 ton frigate Hirado and the 1950-ton destroyer Shikinami. Three days later the subs passed the area of the attack again and they found men clinging to rafts and floating debris, but the voices they heard were english. They were prisoners of war onboard the sunken convoy ships, other subs were called in to assist and 159 allied prisoners were rescued."

Source: The Last Patrol by Harry Holmes. ISBN-1-85310-414-0

@Tater:

[tater]

That could be true, gerrit. Now that you say that, a square with a cross was used for japanese aircraft for repatriation as well.

We'll double check this.

[tater]

Awa Maru at the time of her sinking by USS Queenfish:



This scheme is RARE right now, though. I set the hospital and POW clones to be "Rare Troop Ship" types, then built traffic for them. There are only 3 ships that are that type, Conte Verde, and our 2 clones. Right now, we have 2 white schemes (one each for 2 ships), and one POW (1 for 1 ship). This means my incredibly rare traffic will only have a 1/3 chance of spawning a ship with a POW scheme (only after late '43 for the green), then only a 50% chance of the green. I can also add a gray scheme tot he list to dilute it further, or make 5 identical entries for white skins, and 1 POW, and you'll almost never see it.

Or, when I get the time I can TROM script Awa M. RSRDC style.

tater

[GerritJ9]

Not sure how reliable one can consider Wikipedia, but......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awa_Maru_%281943%29
According to this she was acting as "Red Cross relief ship, carrying vital supplies to American and Allied POWs in Japanese custody." My guess is that this scheme was used by ships carrying such supplies, but not for ships transporting POWs.

[Mescator]

Originally Posted by Jan Kyster

That could be the Growler...

Nah, the one i remember distinctly mentions Australian POW's and all of them died.

[sergei]

Originally Posted by GerritJ9

My guess is that this scheme was used by ships carrying such supplies, but not for ships transporting POWs.

Entirely possible.
I could have sworn I saw multiple examples of this scheme on Motoyuki Iwashige's site, but looking at it again today the Awa Maru is the only example of this paint scheme I can find.

[tater]

They are listed at combinedfleet as Prisoner of War Relief Supply Ships.

Functionally it doesn't matter even a little if they carried POWs or not. They carried supplies for POWs at the very least, and were not to be sunk. What matters is that the paint measure existed. "POW" exists as nothing more than the name attached to the skin. That's it we called them POW because naming the skin "Prisoner of War Relief Supply Ship" is rather long. They appear in late '43, and if you see one in every 50 campaigns I'll be surprised, frankly.

From the player perspective, it's the fact that they are not legitimate targets that matters. If they carry POWs or just supplies for POWs... doesn't matter, player should still get a renown hit if he sinks 'em, no? The way the skins are set up, they could be white (hospital) and take a renown hit. They could be green with crosses, and then they are these pow supply ships, again, should not hit them. Since they are so incredibly rare anyway, we could have some in grey paint, and you'd STILL get a renown hit if you sank one. Tough luck—that would be a good sinking, then presumably after you RTB ONI figures out via sigint, diplomatic complaints, whatever, that it was filled with your own guys.

I added "supply" between "POW" and "ship" in the first post for ya

I realized some of these posts might seem pointed, if they do I apologize, I appreciate the feedback and research a great deal, gerritj9. <S>

[tater]

Originally Posted by sergei

That's what I was thinking Tater, in case you didn't have enough real photos to use.

I like this idea, but it has one flaw... in the case of ONI entries for "similar" ships that are in fact different looking we don't have a SH4 ship to take a shot of. Your PS skills might well be such that you could make them indistinguishable, but obviously if the player sees a SH4 shot they'd be certain it was a "real" ship.

Again, part of the rationale behind the real ONI pages is that it will create confusion. SH4 ships are roughly designed after the ships that they are named for (some considerably more roughly than others ). That said, they need to also function as "generic" ships. As such, when a ship is an analog for many RL ships of similar configuration (5k tons, MKFM Split, say), we can clone her, make some slight variation, then give her the ONI page for one of the "similar" ships that none the less look different enough that no one would probably mistake them in SH4.

It's a compromise, I realize, but the rec manual paradigm in SH stinks, frankly. The only way to really reorganize it is to make many fake countries, then assign copies of all the ships as clones that are warships for the new countries. the new countries would have names like " Composite Superstructure" or "Engines Aft."

It's rather complicated, however.

[tater]

BTW, regarding the rec manual, right now, my images are roughly scaled to each other as they are in ONI. In other words I have my PDF viewer to full screen, then take a SS of the page. If the ship is "little" in the ONI drawing, it's little in this one. That could change I suppose, but most are already done (though I have yet to alpha channel all, so many are not in my WIP version right now).

I'm open to suggestions.

[GerritJ9]

Mescator, the ship you are referring to is most probably the "Montevideo Maru", see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montevideo_Maru

Sadly, this was by no means the only instance of Allied subs sinking Japanese merchies which were transporting Allied POWs and/or Asian slave labourers (the latter victims almost completely forgotten today). To name but a few:
Kachidoki Maru
Rakuyo Maru
Junyo Maru
Lisbon Maru

None of the hell ships had any distinguishing markings to indicate they were transporting POWs as far as I know.

Tater, no need to apologize- we are all learning from each other as far as i'm concerned .

[tater]

I just read Fortress Rabaul, and there was quite a bit about hellships taking POWs away. I think he said that of all the POWs taken in the SWPA ibn '42 that went through Rabaul, only 2 survived the war.

[tater]

OK, Awa M. was painted green the beginning of February, 1945. She ran with lights on, and COMSUBPAC sent messages giving her free passage as a POW relief supply ship.

None the less, her TROM shows her unloading Red Cross, AND military cargoes during the entire period she was supposed to be a POW RS ship. LOL. She was sunk April 1st, and cruised all along the South China Sea.

The skipper of queenfish attacked her by radar alone, and was ordered to face court marshal. Sad, really, considering that the ship was cheating on the rules in the first place, and he never even saw her.