Has anyone tried a Wolf Pack game.
- Thread starter big-gazza
- Start date
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
Better with surface raiders, I'd guess. A couple of German cruisers driving through Royal Navy destroyers to get at the freighters would be fun, I reckon...
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
It just seems to me that surface raiders would A, provide easier targets for the escorts, and B, have more guns to point at the freighters, making for a generally more entertaining game.
Destroyers racing to head off a pair of cruisers they can barely scratch with their puny 5" guns, trusting their single torpedo salvo to see the enemy off sounds like the stuff exciting games are made of.
Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!
Destroyers racing to head off a pair of cruisers they can barely scratch with their puny 5" guns, trusting their single torpedo salvo to see the enemy off sounds like the stuff exciting games are made of.
Full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes!
Its also why there were battleship covering forces in the North Atlantic, plus some convoys with BBs as part of their escort
One reason why subs make (IMHO) much better vessels to go against convoys is that of damage potential. Sinking merchies by gunfire was surprisingly difficult, whereas one or two half-decently placed fish would send most to the bottom.
Submarines were intrinsically weak. Slow, vulnerable. The assets are speed (relative) and stealth at night. Hence they could be successful when using massed attacks at night against weakly defended convoys.
Convoy's are the best way to deal with the threat, reducing the total area covered by the merchant ships while increasing the defensive potential of the escorts. This plays into the hands of any potential surface raider which will be faster and more heavily armed than the average escort. Hence the successful attack on shipping is a combination of at least 2 different systems (the 3rd and 4th being mines and aircraft), eg. PQ17.
Right down to 1943 the RN still felt surface raiders to have the greatest potential threat. The submarine could be dealt with with relative ease.
Convoy's are the best way to deal with the threat, reducing the total area covered by the merchant ships while increasing the defensive potential of the escorts. This plays into the hands of any potential surface raider which will be faster and more heavily armed than the average escort. Hence the successful attack on shipping is a combination of at least 2 different systems (the 3rd and 4th being mines and aircraft), eg. PQ17.
Right down to 1943 the RN still felt surface raiders to have the greatest potential threat. The submarine could be dealt with with relative ease.
DM said:So Churchill was kept awake by the wrong spectre then?
Historically German surface raiders were fairly inefefctive against convoys. JW51B was the final nail in the coffin.
The Churchill quote dates from the 1950s, and there is absolutely no record of him having said anything like that in 1942/43. He certainly did not act in that way. I am not saying that submarines were hopeless, but that the U-Boat threat must be seen in proportion to everything else. Yes they sank lots of shipping, but not enough to ever come really close to being a serious threat. The best chance that the Kriegsmarine had to defeat Britain was in the winter-spring 1940/41 - when ASW defences were at their weakest and surface raiders were still around.
Yes the German surface raiders were least effective of the 4 systems, with a mere 800000t accredited but actual impact (with the benefit of hindsight) should not be confused with perceived threat at the time. The Germans had enough machinery and political problems to take them out of the equation.
By 1942/3 the long term trends in the ASW campaign were in favour of the Allies. Look at where most of the merchant ships are sunk, by U-Boats its always in areas not covered by ASW defences as well. They attack where there is an opportunity. When then had to fight in areas even halfway defended - eg. mid Atlantic late 42 into May 43 their losses go up considerably. Where convoys were badly hit it tends to be the result of everything going wrong for the convoy and a bit of luck for the U-Boats. When a convoy is located, and attacked and has a weak escort then disasters happen. Normally that was not the case.
One of the reasons why the sub threat was hyped up in the 1950s was the Cold War context. And the Soviet Navy had 300+ subs which looked similar on paper to the ones the Germans had employed. And funnily enough Doenitz was talking about all he could have done with 300 subs from the beginning ....
Ups I have gone on a bit here, do excuse.
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
There weren't enough surface raiders, though, were there? We sent the Bismarck and the pocket battleships to the bottom quite quickly, as I recall, but the U-Boats were cheaper and faster to build. We were killing them in droves by the end of the war, but there so damn many they still sunk masses of merchant ships...
Lord David the Denied said:
Not only weren't there enough, they kept breaking down and sailed pretty badly. And because there weren't enough they could cover enough sea space. But that is partly benefit of hindsight thinking. The point is perceived threat by the Admiralty and the surface raiders were seen as a greater threat than is often appreciated today. With capital ship losses, Medi commitments and the Far East looming the RN was hard pushed to deal with only a few modern raiders.
Hence the reason for sinking the French in 1940. When Bismarck sorties the RN throws everything there is in the Atlantic against it because it has a far greater potential to do damage.
They did sink masses, but not nearly enough. The Type VII and IXs could easily be dealt with once enough ASW kit was around and Allied crews were trained. Next generation Type XXIs etc.. were a different matter. But then they were of such awful quality it would have taken a little longer to get them in service in numbers. That is also benefit thinking because Cunningham was very anxious for the war to end in the Spring of 45 as a result of intel on the XXIs.
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
1940 and '41 were hard years for the Atlantic fleet, though. Between the subs and surface raiders the Navy had a lot of threats to deal with and a vast ocean to cover. The convoys crawled along at as little as 6 knots, at times, too, and there was a lot of water where they were out of range of friendly air cover.
Not a nice time to be on the deck of a King's ship. My grandmother lost her brother on a destroyer in the Arctic Circle to a German sub...
Not a nice time to be on the deck of a King's ship. My grandmother lost her brother on a destroyer in the Arctic Circle to a German sub...
I'd agree that today the general balance of perception of the threat as seen by the Admiralty may be more heavily on the side of the U boat than it was in the 1940s but there's no denying that submarine warfare proved conclusively to be the far greater threat to translatlantic communications, and that the performance of surface raiders in the face of the convoy system was extremely poor.
juggler69uk
Mongoose
Cant help wondering how a force made up entirely of submarines would fare in competition, especially if the opponent only went for "power" ships
I mean a 5 point raid for IJN could give you 15 Kadai-7 subs with target 6 and capable of over 7 inch move, and which never has to present a large target to shoot torps (which are reloadable)
I mean a 5 point raid for IJN could give you 15 Kadai-7 subs with target 6 and capable of over 7 inch move, and which never has to present a large target to shoot torps (which are reloadable)
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
As I understand it nothing bigger than a light cruiser can attack subs in the game unless they're on the surface, but the boats are so slow submerged that you could just leg it and force them to surface to chase you. Then pulverise them...
juggler69uk
Mongoose
was editing as you replied so second para was not there
juggler69uk
Mongoose
Lord David the Denied said:
With so many subs and such a small table there may not be enough room to "leg it" from all of them, thats assuming they are all revealed and not waiting for you to "leg it" towards some of them
Plus you can always dive
