Should I ever attack a task force with 14 warships?

[XenonSurf]

Apart their invisibility, submarines are not very well designed for defense. I have contacted a warship group with 2 capital ships, a Glourious-class CV carrier, and a cruiser, all other ships were escorts, 12 in total.
I was in very good firing position, 3000m away in perpendicular path of the carrier and plenty of time to wait for it to pass that point. I decided to attack at 1000m by going submerged into the group.



Long story short: I got the carrier, several escorts have collided with each other during their attack run, 9 escorts were left with me in the middle
I have resisted for 4 hours real-time, then I was finally depth-charged and died.

Normally I don't have so much time to spend playing in a row with SH5, is it safe to save the game and reload in the middle of such a fight?

How would you have handled this situation? Was it wise to attack at all with this big number of escorts? My calculation was: attacking at a bigger distance and trying to escape on surface would have wasted my torpedos, or they would have hit one of the external escorts, that's why I did break inside the TF's formidable escort shield.



Thanks,

[bstanko6]

While a wonderful target... warships were not the focus of the U-Boat war.

I would go after the carrier, but nothing more.

[Mowgli]

Glad to see this thread. On the way from Narvik I came across the Task Force steaming at speed and was in a good attack position off to their port side.
It was early morning and there was no way I could shadow them for a night attack so decided to give it a go. Steam Torpedoes would be useless and I was fortunate to have two electric torpedoes in my tubes.

I launched from 90 degrees at a range of 3500 meters and immediately started a slow dive to starboard and away from the task force before the torps hit or missed.

Well both fish hit and the world went mad. The escorts were dropping cans everywhere and I thought it with all the noise I could increase speed to 1 or 2 knots. Mistake, somehow they heard me and and 15 yes 15 of them came in my direction. Cut the story short, I sank the carrier, but took a LOT of damage and only survived because I was playing with external view on.
I honestly would not repeat the experience again.

I am going to hunt today for evasion tips when using the WOS mod.

[XenonSurf]

Originally Posted by bstanko6

While a wonderful target... warships were not the focus of the U-Boat war.

I would go after the carrier, but nothing more.

Humm...You are right of course, the overall objective in the German sub war was chasing merchand convoys, barring any supplies to Great Britain (and later the Gap route to Russia).



But survival questions apart, do you really think that a U-Boot Captain would have gone away with an intact sub full of torpedos and a so good firing position? Also he would have been court-martialled at his return to port I think for not at least trying to sink the carrier

Originally Posted by bstanko6

... but nothing more.

You are kidding, are you
I think you did misread my post, I never try to sink escorts, a too meager and difficult target, and it gets me detected. I was indeed lucky that several escorts have busted because they have collided each other, but still 9 were remaining...too many for me...


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XS

[XenonSurf]

Originally Posted by Mowgli

Glad to see this thread. On the way from Narvik I came across the Task Force steaming at speed and was in a good attack position off to their port side.
It was early morning and there was no way I could shadow them for a night attack so decided to give it a go. Steam Torpedoes would be useless and I was fortunate to have two electric torpedoes in my tubes.

I launched from 90 degrees at a range of 3500 meters and immediately started a slow dive to starboard and away from the task force before the torps hit or missed.

Well both fish hit and the world went mad. The escorts were dropping cans everywhere and I thought it with all the noise I could increase speed to 1 or 2 knots. Mistake, somehow they heard me and and 15 yes 15 of them came in my direction. Cut the story short, I sank the carrier, but took a LOT of damage and only survived because I was playing with external view on.
I honestly would not repeat the experience again.

I am going to hunt today for evasion tips when using the WOS mod.

It's true that in real-life, more than 80% of the German torpedos missed their target during the Norway invasion, a total disaster for the submarines. But I think that in SH5 if you chose the right torpedo depth and set on impact instead of magnetic, Steam torpedos have the same fair chance to hit like an electric one, at least when playing Coastal Waters several times, i got plenty of duds, but they were distributed equally for electric and steam ones with the impact setting.
Steam torpedos have a very big range, you can set to run them at 2 speeds, I think it's best to chose slow speed for over 2000m to reduce the bubble trail visibility, if the target sees the bubble (which is easy, and this was the major flaw of this torpedo model) he will change course and you miss 100%...IMO, Steam torpedos are good only for short distances for that reason, but electric ones have a far less maximal range, only max. 3000m in SH5, and run at almost half the Steam speed (28 knots).

I still have the savegame just before my attack, I will replay it and this time I chose the long range attack, let's see what happens
BTW: It plays during 'Weserübung', NE of Trondheim. I start with immediately sending a Convoy Report, with my mod setting I should get air support but I didn't see planes coming in after 2 hours, probably because it's 21.00 GMT when I start the attack and the next German airport is near Wilhelmshaven, I have seen planes attacking and supporting me in the Mediterranean Sea in such situations, but the airfields were much closer... Also I will check if aircrafts will launch from the carrier if I get detected, this should happen when I set it in the Generic Patcher together with Aircraft support from bases.

AI flaws...
Oh yes, there is the flaw in SH5 that destroyes still hear you with all the depth charges exploding in the water, highly unrealistic IMO, and probably no way to change it. The right tactic is to have as little aspect angle as possible against sonar, but with 9 escorts around you this is not possible, so I have tried a lot of speed changes from flank to low speed to 'lure' the escorts in one direction while I was escaping in the other direction, at some point I feel I could succeed with this, but you have to pass below them several times which can be fatal - and it was for me.


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XS

[bstanko6]

No you wouldn’t be courtmarshalled...

You would have a disgruntled crew that hates you.

[Mowgli]

I experimented trying to hit a battleship at 3k with fast steam torpedoes in daylight. Literally within seconds the escorts were sounding their klaxons and all over me like a rash. The BS turned away and the two torps missed.

What about these conflicting messages from BDU - First I get one saying set to magnetic. Now I get another saying I should fire 2 torps at targets with one set to impact and the other magnetic. I have not had a dud now in last 3 patrols out of 7 so will ignore that directive.

I have watched all of bstank06 vids and they are really useful.
Out of curiosity, is there any other way besides using the cook, bosun and sinking ships to improve moral and how serious is low moral in the game?

[XenonSurf]

Originally Posted by Mowgli

I experimented trying to hit a battleship at 3k with fast steam torpedoes in daylight. Literally within seconds the escorts were sounding their klaxons and all over me like a rash. The BS turned away and the two torps missed.

What about these conflicting messages from BDU - First I get one saying set to magnetic. Now I get another saying I should fire 2 torps at targets with one set to impact and the other magnetic. I have not had a dud now in last 3 patrols out of 7 so will ignore that directive.

I have watched all of bstank06 vids and they are really useful.
Out of curiosity, is there any other way besides using the cook, bosun and sinking ships to improve moral and how serious is low moral in the game?

I have taken out all this moral crap from my personal modlist, the modders have modded this to death IMO, it hampers submarine effectiveness with long patrols and you have no chance to order faster repairs or impede flooding with low morale, actually if you do the Artic Convoys campaign, you arrive at your patrol zone with the crew at almost zero morale, a sign that the modders have not tested their work well, I have wiped-out all this stuff, it distracts from gameplay. The stockgame morale setting is OK and doesn't need any mods. And no need to look for the cook, hey this is not an adventure game


Messages from BDU are only important if sent to your submarine or U021. Else you can ignore, it's for game immersion only. This is also a distracting feature, although it gives some indication about what targets can be expected in your zone.

[Tonci87]

In my opinion you engaged from a too short distance.

When I engaged an aircraft carrier, I fired from about 6 to 7km. The target is big enough

The trick is to fire a full spread of torpedoes that almost covers the length of the target. That way even if you miss by a little, still 3 torps should hit the target. Usually enough to seal its fate.
as soon as you fire, you get the hell away from where you were, because the escorts will go down the bubble trail. If you are far away you can dive at a fast speed. That helps.

[XenonSurf]

Originally Posted by Tonci87

In my opinion you engaged from a too short distance.

When I engaged an aircraft carrier, I fired from about 6 to 7km. The target is big enough

The trick is to fire a full spread of torpedoes that almost covers the length of the target. That way even if you miss by a little, still 3 torps should hit the target. Usually enough to seal its fate.
as soon as you fire, you get the hell away from where you were, because the escorts will go down the bubble trail. If you are far away you can dive at a fast speed. That helps.

Thanks for this advice Toni! Yes, I will attack from long range next time, going in the convoy with so many escorts was asking for trouble.

[XenonSurf]

I have replayed the scenario, this time attacking from my maximal torpedo range which is 3000m for my early GE electric torpedo, this doesn't make a difference to find me surrounded by all escorts afterwards, because my distance to the closest destroyer at the moment of torpedo launch was about 1100m. I fired all my 4 forward tubes, 2 electric+2 steam, and immediately headed away 120m, 5knots.

All my torpedos have missed, but I noticed that the CV didn't leave the scene, he was just circling together with the other escorts a little apart, so I got it later after making a persiscope survey, very stupid AI, I thought the carrier was miles away already which he was not, I got in a 1500m good solution to sink it this time. After this, same scenario as before I'm surrounded by all escorts, but this time they seem a lot weaker to find me...
The circling carrier, although a crazy tactic was ok, because this was 'Easy' difficulty in my modding list, meaning a competence level set in the IRAI 0.41 between 0.60-0.88 (1.0 is maximum). With high difficulty I expect the carrier to leave the scene immediately at max. speed.

I will repeat the scenario with various IRAI difficulty settings to see how my 'difficulty levels' work, I can see up to now that they do what they are supposed. Also the carrier has launched planes after my first attack run, it was 23.00 GMT, a bit off, but it's also ok because I set this in the Generic Patcher.


@Bstanko6,
The proximity alert sirene is still there, even with the improved TWoS OHII ship compositions. But I prefer this sirene to the game CTD I would get otherwise because of the infamous 'capital ship damaged only CTD'.


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XS