Sink more tonnage with the same amount of ammunition

[Nemo66]

Hi folks!

You want to make more tonnage with the same amount of amo?

Here i describe what you can do to save deckgun amo and torpedos for further tonnage war by using AA-Guns, ramming techniques and pure patience:

1. There are several ship types that you can easily sink with AA-guns:

Of course all the minor units like fishing-boats, coastal boats, torpedo boats asf. But a big mouth full of tonnage with 1000tons (!) is the tug-ship ("Schlepper" in german version), although this ship looks more like a coastal tanker to me.

2. You can add overall damage to already torpedoed/gunned ships that not sink yet with AAGs:

Lots of things at the deck are destroyable/burnable and add to overall damage, like deck cargo, lifeboats asf. The explosions add to overall damage and the fire helps you find back to a stopped ship at night that you left because you had to hunt down another one first.
Also shots slightly above waterline seem to help sometimes, but keep them concentrated in one area/ship compartment. If the victim is very close to total destruction this can be the final punch. (instead of spending 1 or 2 additional deckgun shells)

3. You can take out the merchant's weapons with AAGs in order to gun it down later from short distance and not a single shell missing the target.

You have to navigate very good for this procedure because you have to get very close to the target ship.
Get close at peri depth and surface exactly at the right position and weapon angle, especially if it has more than just 1 weapon aboard!
If the weapons are exposed openly and not inside a turret, you can use 2cm AA for this. You kill it's guncrew and make the amo explode, so the weapons get fully destroyed by amo explosions. If the guns are in turrets your 3,7 cm AA will just blow them off the decks, no matter what side or angle. If you have only 2cm you can shoot into the turrets from the open backside and do the same. (This is not easy because the turrets start to turn towards you from the moment you are spotted)
After taking out all weapons you go to 500 meters distance and shoot under the waterline with your deckgun. From there you never fail and every single shot is a severe hit, which saves a lot of gun amo in comparison to a long distance duell.

4. If a ship is very close to sinking you can ram the ship in order to cause additional damage.

If you do it at speeds too high, your boat will take severe damage too though. Try slower speeds at first and slowly accelerate the speed until the ship takes enough damage and you don't get any damage yet. If you are out of amo and desperately in need of sinking this ship, you even can push it to the limits of your hull capacity. If you "crawl" aboard the ship you can crash dive with engines stopped and your additional weight can tow the target ship down with you. (beware of the target ship falling on your submerged boat this can be deadly)

5. Be patient and give damage a chance to spread

If you wait some time after your attack, the target ship will take additional damage by fire and/or flooding. Sometimes this goes the wrong way, because giving it a brake gives the crew time to repair which will diminuish damage again after a while, and maybe the ship that had laid there stopped before gets its engines running again and speeds off while you wait.


These techniques are prooved for vanilla SH3 which has also "armour penetrating" amo fo the AAGs, which is highly recommended for fighting ships. Keep in mind that some or all Supermods change shell effectivity and amo loadouts. Also this procedures were prooven only for stock merchants. Maybe there is even more out there to sink with AAGs trying this at ships of the additional merchant fleets...

I hope this may help at least some of you to the Vets it maybe only yesteryear's news

[sublynx]

Ramming with a U-boat feels very counter-intuitive to me, but a Finnish submarine "Vetehinen" actually sank a Soviet submarine in 1942 by ramming: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramming

[UKönig]

Force equals mass times acceleration. Just make sure the ramming target weighs less than your U-boat, or is so badly damaged that a good shove would be enough to break it in half. Otherwise, I try to avoid deliberately colliding with ships. One of the sounds I really hate is that grinding of metal on metal when I introduce the conning tower to the keel of my victims.
However, I did take out 2 elco torpedo boats with one T1 of my own. They were sitting in harbour, one crossing the T with the other, so I aimed at the one in back and the explosion blew them both out of the water in opposite directions. Sweet. I always wondered if that would work...

[Scarredclown]

Is there really repairs being done on a ship that you attack ? And does the game account for flooding, fire damage and multiple hull hit in the same area ?

[sik1977]

Thanks. Some good tips that I haven't tried so far. I didn't know 2cm flak was effective against open gun crews on merchants.