Question on historic priorities

[richardphat]

Uboot priority was to sink merchant ship or sometime capital warship. And about the manual recognition , im not sure

[Commander Gizmo]

Thanks for the quick answers. Why were destroyers not seen as worthy targets?

I actually meant recognition as in reknown, fame, congrats.

[U-46 Commander]

Becuase the transports were carrying the badly needed war supplies for Britian. These were top priority to be sunk. Destroyers were to be left alone unless detected and then you could sink them.

[richardphat]

Hmm let me say this and it might asnwer to your question. The only way UK to survive during german threat was convoy coming from america or from other countries. So the more merchant ship you sink, the weaker UK is...... so sinking dd wont help the german winning the war but sinking the merchant convoy for UK.........
And in game simulation i would recomment merchant too since they are slow, their tonnage is more important than a simple DD with 1k of tons. While DD is too risky and you might bring the end to your crew and sub

[kylania]

The entire point of the Battle of the Atlantic was to stop material shipping. Every ship destroyed equaled far more than it's tonnage in supplies used for the war. A lost destroyer did nothing to stop the tide of war, since it was easily replaced. A lost merchant ship filled to the mast with war supplies was worth far more.

Here's a quote from an "Instructional Handbook" the American's had during the war as quoted in Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (page 423) which can help explain how much each merchant ship was "worth" beyond just it's tonnage.

If a U-boat sinks two 6,000 ton ships and one 3,000 ton tanker, here is a typical list of the sort of losses we should incur: 42 tanks, 8 6-inch howitzers, 88 25-pounder guns, 40 40-mm guns, 24 armored patrol vehicles, 50 Bren guns or self-propelled gun mountains, 5,210 tons of munitions, 600 rifles, 428 tons of tank accessories, 2,000 tons of rations and 1,000 drums of petrol. Just think what we could have done with that lot, if the three ships had reached port safely! To inflict similar losses by air-raid the enemy would have to fly 3,000 sorties!

As some commanders showed, sinking the really big targets (HMS Hood, HMS Royal Oak, HMS Barham) did get them recognition, but a destroyer wouldn't gain them much notoriety.