Getting Inside a Convoy

[RustySubmarine]

Thank you all for posting your comments on Convoy Attacking. Some very interesting tactics have been described. But as already has been said, it all depends on the circumstances regarding, distance, speeds, time and weather.

I find that night attacks can be more advantageous than day time attacks, but this is not always the case.

However, each situation can not always have the same outcome and this is where careful planning needs to be taken into consideration.

Any more comments on this topic will be appreciated, it's great to hear how different sub commanders deal with the situation, when confronted with close contact convoys.

[Zosimus]

Here's how I work out how to get around a convoy to the front.

First I locate the convoy and determine the convoy's speed and direction. Once that's done, I want to get far enough away from the convoy to surface and move to the front.

I draw a line parallel to the convoy showing its course. In this case the convoy is moving at 81ºP or Heading: 279º

Next I pick a point where the line crosses a gridline and consider that ground zero. From there I measure along the line proportional to the speed of the convoy. In this case the convoy is moving at 8 knots, therefore I measure 2.4, which is 3x the speed of the convoy.

After that I draw a circle at 3 times my surface speed. In this weather I can easily make 11 knots on the surface, so I draw 3.3 radius circle.



Next I measure a 90º angle from the point on the line that represents the speed of the convoy and draw a line until it crosses the circle that represents my surface speed. A line passing through ground zero and the point where the circle and the perpendicular line cross represents a good course to take. It is a course that will keep me from falling farther behind the convoy while getting me farther from the convoy as quickly as possible. In this case the number is 38ºP or Heading: 322º although I actually set my course for 320º so I would catch up slightly.



Once I'm a bit away from the convoy I can surface and try to move around the convoy. I simply parallel the convoy until I spot a ship, like this corvette.



To make my way around the corvette, I draw a line in the direction of the convoy through the ship I've spotted and I draw a circle from a point slightly ahead of the ship. I set my course tangent to the circle formed. Ideally this should keep me far enough away from the ship to keep from being spotted. The right radius for the circle depends on factors such as weather, your speed, the ship's speed. In this case 9.0 was too aggressive. I was spotted.

I guess next time I'll try 9.5.

[Gallimundo]

Invaluable info, have been a bit perplexed as a newb trying the convoy missions.

[Aktungbby]

Gallimundo!

[Jimbuna]

Welcome to SubSim Gallimundo

[Foggy]

I just finished reading Grey Wolf, Grey Sea, the account of submarine U-124 on my Kindle. Johann Mohr liked to get inside the convoy and take the ships down from within at night (he said that even with star shells and a flaming ship lighting up the night it was hard for other ships to locate him because they didn't expect him to be within the group).

[sublynx]

Originally Posted by Foggy

I just finished reading Grey Wolf, Grey Sea, the account of submarine U-124 on my Kindle. Johann Mohr liked to get inside the convoy and take the ships down from within at night (he said that even with star shells and a flaming ship lighting up the night it was hard for other ships to locate him because they didn't expect him to be within the group).

There is no greater pleasure in SH3 than a surface attack at close range followed by an undetected escape on the surface. Unfortunately the restrictions of the game mechanics does not really allow the kind of attack you described, except in zero visibility conditions pre-radar. At least to my knowledge. Different megamods of SH3 have different visibility settings.

For those of you players who'd like to try the techniques Zosimus described, but without the contacts showing on the map, this manual might be of help:

https://archive.org/details/maneuveringboard00unit


Oh, and I found this site with video lectures on vectors and maneuvering board work. In the first clip showing how to use a mobo for getting the true course of the target and its relative motion takes about 30 seconds, the rest is repetition and basics:

http://vimeo.com/navigationtraining/videos