[UNCOVERED] SH5 officially left for dead!

[SteelViking]

Originally Posted by John Channing

Then you had better read some more.

During the Norwegian campaign Sub commanders were specifically ordered to concentrate on Naval vessels and, if necessary, to ignore merchant shipping.

As I said in aother thread, given the Doenitz knew exactly how much tonnage he had to sink on a monthly basis to bring England to surrender, and given that he had around 40 operational U-Boats, do you really think he told the commanders just to go out to Grid X and see what you can find? Do you think his orders to Prien was to drop by Scapa Flow and have a quick look see?

Of course they had mission requirements.

JCC

I have to side with jdkbph on this one John. My research/reading does not point to specific missions being assigned very often if at all. Mostly it was assignments to a specific patrol grid. Of course, those patrol areas were not just random, they would be in major shipping lanes. And, as you stated sometimes they were assigned to combat warships.

So, I suppose what would be the most realistic would be a sort of mix of the two systems. Perhaps they(bdu) could give you a strategically placed patrol grid, and give you instructions on whether you are to concentrate on merchants or warships(and it could get a bit more specific).

However, the idea of being assigned to sink 2 battle ships here, sink 1 aircraft carrier there, now sink 100,000 of shipping in this other place, is not realistic by any means.

Originally Posted by Kapitanleutnant

You're not wrong. The subsim staff just have battered wife syndrome and will defend SH5 to the hilt, including making excuses for its failure with disingenuous and intellectually dishonest arguments.

Statements like this are absolutely not called for. This does not help anyone's case. John, who puts his time and effort into making this a better place for all of us to communicate especially does not deserve to be insulted like this. His research could very well support exactly what he is saying, mine does not, but that does not make either of us disingenuous.