Passing of the Torch

[CybrSlydr]

Putting out to sea for the first time with my IX-C and ended up passing my old mount.

[Ducimus]

Grats.

Word of the wise. Aircraft are your primary threat since you dive slower.

If the aircraft is detected at long range, go ahead and crash dive.

If the aircraft is detected close by, or mid range, and you even THINK you might not get under in time. Go to flank speed, and then pull a hard rudder left or right before he makes his pass. Once he passes you, straigten your rudder and crash dive.

[CybrSlydr]

So you don't suggest duking it out with the AA guns?

Would I be better served getting the X/1 conning tower and scrapping the guns for better underwater performance?

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by CybrSlydr

So you don't suggest duking it out with the AA guns?

Would I be better served getting the X/1 conning tower and scrapping the guns for better underwater performance?

Stock game, aircraft are relativly weak, although a few of them will crash into you if you shoot them down. Primarly due to the angle of their attack, and they go out of control. But generally you want to avoid duking it out with aircraft, but if your caught at close range, diving, and having the ass end of your boat sticking out of the water, with no real ablity to manuver except down, is a bad situation. Kinda like this:



which resulted in this:


had i judged my distances better, and stayed on the surface, at flank speed with hard rudder, and dived after his first pass, odds are i would have survived.


and no, towers design do not effect underwater speed at all.

[CybrSlydr]

OUCH! That hurts.

Pity different towers don't affect your speed underwater.

I noticed in the Academy training, I could hit the aircraft with the flak gun, but they didn't take any damage.... This is in GW 1.1 + Campaign

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by CybrSlydr

OUCH! That hurts.

Pity different towers don't affect your speed underwater.

I noticed in the Academy training, I could hit the aircraft with the flak gun, but they didn't take any damage.... This is in GW 1.1 + Campaign

Hi CybrSlydr,

With respect you are mistaken sir.

The aircraft in GW do take damage from your flak guns. Its just that they are much tougher than stock SH3... therefore making AC in GW much more dangerous.

In stock SH3 you could swat them all out of the sky with little effort.

Ducimus is right. A crash dive should be your reaction to enemy aircraft generally speaking.

[Keelbuster]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

Hi CybrSlydr,

With respect you are mistaken sir.

The aircraft in GW do take damage from your flak guns. Its just that they are much tougher than stock SH3... therefore making AC in GW much more dangerous.

In stock SH3 you could swat them all out of the sky with little effort.

Ducimus is right. A crash dive should be your reaction to enemy aircraft generally speaking.

Sometimes aircraft can be _extremely_ tough. I burned off all the ammo for the front and back turrets on an XXI, firing at a bomber (liberator i think) and wasn't able to even make it smoke.

Kb

[CybrSlydr]

Originally Posted by Keelbuster

Sometimes aircraft can be _extremely_ tough. I burned off all the ammo for the front and back turrets on an XXI, firing at a bomber (liberator i think) and wasn't able to even make it smoke.

Kb

Ok - that's absurd!

[Seminole]

OOOOOH...I thought when I read your title you had discovered the juicy Operation Torch convoy headed for North Africa....my mistake....

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by CybrSlydr

Ok - that's absurd!

Well you have to understand the basis on where some of these modifications come from.


Stock, vanilla SH3, you can shoot down as many aircraft as you have ammo for. Im not kidding, one time i shot down 35 aircraft on my way back to lorient. That is absurd.

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 )

[CybrSlydr]

I understand the reasoning behind it, but holy crap... I'd much rather the accuracy be off than having flying tanks!

Win some, ya lose some.

[Yahoshua]

cyberslyder, is it just me or is it that you have the headless u-boot crew depicted in your first pic?

[CybrSlydr]

Originally Posted by Yahoshua

cyberslyder, is it just me or is it that you have the headless u-boot crew depicted in your first pic?

LMFAO!

I didn't even notice - that's not why I took the screen.

Good eye!!

[VonHelsching]

Originally Posted by CybrSlydr

OUCH! That hurts.

Pity different towers don't affect your speed underwater.

They can affect your speed (making it worse), but you need a mod:

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=52124

If you need some more speed and agility, you must spare your deck gun (with SH3Cdr). No pain, no gain. (again, with another mod):

http://www.subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=51707

[Eichenlaub]

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 )

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