Statistics

[Sniper297]

Odd coincidence, this week I brought home several non fiction WWII books from the library including some submarine history. So when the recent discussions about how realistic the constant air attacks in the stock game were started, I just happened to have a couple of reference books on hand. I'm only up to 1943 in SILENT VICTORY, but there are several mentions of air attacks when cruising in the open ocean - all by "friendly" planes, mostly US Army Air Corps. All enemy air attacks in the book were while in contact with enemy surface ships, which would make sense - air patrols over task forces and convoys would obviously take priority over patrolling the empty sea.

Some stats on the 52 US subs lost from another book, FINAL PATROL, which was published in 2006. After the war was over and historians could examine Japanese records the number of unknowns was reduced, and later discovery of some wrecks helped with the mystery of the deep minefields in Japanese home waters.

Losses by cause;

Friendly aircraft - 1
Friendly destroyer - 1
Ran aground - 4
Collision with friendly ship - 1
Own torpedo (circular run) - 2
Enemy mines - 6
Enemy sub - 1
Enemy aircraft - 5
Enemy surface ships - 16
Combined enemy aircraft and surface ships - 7
Unknown - 8

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by Sniper297

Friendly aircraft - 1
Friendly destroyer - 1
Ran aground - 4
Collision with friendly ship - 1
Own torpedo (circular run) - 2
Enemy mines - 6
Enemy sub - 1
Enemy aircraft - 5
Enemy surface ships - 16
Combined enemy aircraft and surface ships - 7
Unknown - 8

When you look at the first five items on the list, about a fifth of all US losses are basically self-inflicted. Some of the unknowns may have been as well.

It's interesting to note that during the war, the Japanese Grand Escort Headquarters analysts calculated that the IJN was destroying about fifteen submarines a month, which was twenty times higher than the actual rate. American codebreakers soon learned that claims of submarines sinkings in intercepted Japanese radio traffic were wrong 90 per cent of the time.

[Pigboatcook]

The loss figures are interesting. Any idea how many weren't sunk but holed and had to RTB?

I agree the air is prolific and probably the designers could have been a bit more accurate but you could also say that about surface ships and our own boats. The modders can only work with the machine supplied to them by Ubi. I've yet to have to call off a patrol because of food poisoning or a burned out propeller shaft bearing.

[Pigboatcook]

Additionally none of us have HOR engines...

HOR engine problems

Moreover, the dubious reliability of the H.O.R. main-propulsion engines - apparent from the beginning of the war - became even more critical in May 1943 when the twelve boats of SUBRON TWELVE arrived at Pearl Harbor, all fitted with H.O.R. diesels. In both shakedown cruises and their European service with the Atlantic Fleet, all of the SUBRON TWELVE submarines revealed engine problems. These only became worse under combat conditions in the Pacific, where virtually all the H.O.R. boats were handicapped by catastrophic breakdowns that often required curtailing war patrols and returning to base for repairs. One by one, the H.O.R. submarines were shuttled back to Mare Island for new Winton engines, but it was nearly a year until all had been returned to duty and the H.O.R. maintenance problems eliminated.

The above figures don't take into account the 12 submarines already in service in the Pacific at the outbreak of the war that had HOR engines also.

So I guess my whole point is yes the air system isn't perfect but the modders have done what they could with what they had and we have the luxury to tweak the files ourselves to produce the air system to be as realistic as we see fit.

[Sniper297]

I have no criticism of the modders, the problem was in the original game. Possibly it was toned down a bit in one of the patches, but in the original it took many hours of game time just to get to and from the operating area. Got a job, got kids, got a limited amount of time per week to play computer games, who wants to spend all his spare time for an entire week jumping out of time compression to dive from an air attack over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?

"When you look at the first five items on the list, about a fifth of all US losses are basically self-inflicted. Some of the unknowns may have been as well."

And Lockwood estimated that 10 of the 16 sunk by surface ships were aided by the infamous congressman from Kentucky.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_J._May

"Any idea how many weren't sunk but holed and had to RTB?"

Or damaged badly enough to have to RTB, to actually hole a fleet sub required detonation within 10-20 feet of the pressure hull. What actually sunk most U-boats was cumulative internal damage rather than one lucky hit. No stats for that, but many stories of heavy damage to systems, electrical fires and battery explosions, wrecked motors and pumps, along with routine failures like the HOR engines. There's one account of a HOR boat that had all four gears fail at sea. One thing the game doesn't cover is the small auxiliary diesel engine in fleet boats normally used to top off a battery charge, that sub used the aux diesel to putt back to base at 3 knots. S-39 (in a different book PIGBOAT 39) started one patrol four times before actually making it to her patrol area, the previous three tries she had to RTB for assorted mechanical failures before going 100 miles.

The amazing part isn't how many had to RTB due to damage, what's really amazing is the really bad ones repaired by the crew and they decided to finish the patrol regardless. One HOR boat lost an engine on the way to the patrol area and went ahead to finish the patrol on three engines, cannibalizing parts from the disabled engine to keep the other three running.

[merc4ulfate]

I bet most of those unknowns were either circulars or those cruddy sticking dive planes plowing them to the deep.

[Torplexed]

A few more interesting statistics courtesy of the United States Submarine Data Book from the Submarine Force Library and Museum Association. Thought this would be a good thread to post them in.

US World War II Submarine Operational Summary

Maximum number of submarines in US fleet = 288
Number that made war patrols = 263
Number of war patrols made by U.S. submarines in the Pacific = 1,474
Number of days at sea by those submarines in the Pacific = 70,838
Number of Japanese ships attacked by submarines = 4,112
Total number of Japanese ships sunk by submarines = 1, 392
Average number of merchant vessels sunk per war patrol = 0.80
Average number of naval vessels sunk per war patrol = 0.145
Number of Japanese ships sunk per U.S. sub lost in action = 1,392 / 41 =33.95
Average number of all types of ships sunk per war patrol = 0.945
Number of airmen rescued by submarines = 504 by 86 submarines
Number of submarines lost on war patrol = 41, or 1 out of every 6.41 subs =15.59%
Number lost due to all causes = 52 out of the 288 in the fleet, or 1 out of every 5.54 subs = 18.06%
Duration of the Pacific War = 1,347 days

In addition, half of the 52 U.S. submarines lost during World War II, were built prior to the beginning of the war. Nine U.S. submarines were lost during their second patrols, more than on any other patrol period.

U.S. submarines made 1,588 patrols during World War II; 1,474 in the Pacific, 87 in the Atlantic, 22 in European waters, and 5 in North African waters.

Forty subs made at least 10 patrols. 39 made 11; 8 made 12; 12 made 13; 7 made 14; and 5 made 15. Stingray was the only U.S.sub to make 16 war patrols.

[CapnScurvy]

Good place to ask before I go checking on it myself. What statistics do we know regarding the German U-Boats in the Pacific?

I'd like to know why UbiSoft bastardized an American Fleet Boat Simulation with putting the Germans into the Pacific as it did with SH4? Besides looking to add weight to their pockets.

[CapnScurvy]

From a web site called "The Monsun U-Boats-WW2 German Submarines in Asia" I gleaned there were a total of 41 German U-Boats assigned to the Indian Ocean/Asia Theater.

32 were Attack U-Boats
7 Transport Subs / Fuelers
2 were gifts to the IJN

72 Ships were sunk, for a total of 426,000 GTR (Gross Register Tonnage)
16 U-Boats sunk at least one ship.
6 of the 16 successfully returned to Europe, the other 10 were sunk, or surrendered.

Of the remaining 25 U-Boats assigned to Asia without a kill:
17 were sunk en route.
3 sunk while on patrol, or making delivery.
1 aborted mission, returning to France.
4 surrendered at wars end

At any one time, only a handful of U-Boats were ever stationed in the Indian Ocean/Asia Theater

[Sniper297]

Interesting question, trying to find a list of which U-boats were sunk by US subs and where - apparently the total is 24 sunk by British or American subs.

http://uboat.net/fates/sub-sunk.htm

Last one was sunk by a US sub in the Java sea.

"I'd like to know why UbiSoft bastardized an American Fleet Boat Simulation with putting the Germans into the Pacific as it did with SH4? Besides looking to add weight to their pockets"

I'm still chugging along with 1.4, haven't bought the Payware Patch yet, so I never saw a German ship of any kind in SH4. I enjoyed playing Das Boot with SH3, but StarForce screwed up my DVD drive so badly I had to format the drive and reinstall the operating system since uninstalling SH3 wouldn't get rid of StarForce completely whatever I tried. I wouldn't have bought SH4 if it hadn't been available on Direct2Drive. I might buy the SH4 gold disk this summer, to try out the Atlantic U-Boat careers - from what I've heard there's no need for a key disk with the gold version. Paranoia will annoy ya, if there actually WAS such a thing as software pirates I would buy from them instead of the distributor even if I had to pay double, simply so I wouldn't have to fight with copy protection problems.

[CapnScurvy]

It's hard to get some of these statistics without reading every patrol account. I found an interesting map showing the approximate sinking of several U-Boats during 1944-1945:



Due to what cause? I don't know. I know the Allies were many times waiting just outside Penang for their U-Boats to pass by. I wonder why there aren't missions to do just that in SH4?? A little bias perhaps?!?

Also, I read where there was just one U-Boat that ever made it into the Pacific Ocean proper. Yet we have to have the German side added to the game?

=======

What gripes me is UbiSoft planed to add the German side to SH4 from the very start........spending resources on their plan, that would have been better served on completing the American Pacific Campaign.

Sniper, you've no doubt noticed the files already in place that were in the original release of SH4. It wasn't a question of would they.....but rather when? The American side of play was "short-sheeted" from the very beginning. The fact that the original 1.0 version didn't use anything but the metric system to measure with was foretelling the true intentions of UbiSoft. I'm surprised we had English spoken in-game. It must had been a real effort on their part to do that much!

I don't blame you at all for balking at having to pay for their last patch. I didn't make the move to v1.5 for quit a while myself for your same reasons.

But, if you do, try this site.....iNetVideo. $14.99 plus shipping isn't too bad for the Gold Edition Disk. Do what I do.....hold your nose, take the medicine, and blast them every time you get.

[Sniper297]

If you examine the files, you'll find that Das Boot data wasn't ADDED to SH4 for future use - all those files were left over from SH3. In other words they didn't program SH4 from scratch, they took SH3 and reprogrammed it to "create" SH4. So what we actually got was an SH3 super mod called Silent Hunter IV.

As for the stats, in this link;

http://uboat.net/fates/sub-sunk.htm

You have to click on each U-Boat individually, what I see is some Dutch, Norwegian, but mostly British subs sinking all these U-Boats, only two - both in the Java Sea - sunk by American subs. The actual number should be 23 rather than 24, because U-18 was damaged in a Russian air raid then scuttled in the Black Sea:

"on 20 August 1944.

The wreck was raised by the Soviets in late 1944 and declared a total loss. Sunk on 26 May 1947 by a torpedo from the Soviet submarine M-120 off Sevastopol."

To my mind that doesn't count as a WWII sinking by another submarine, in reality it was a cold war test of what would later become the fast attack submarines designed specifically to hunt and kill enemy subs.