The Invisible Enemy

[Fisherking]

If the sub is in range of the convoy it should be hunted.

If it is beyond line of sight and air cover has chased it under then we leave it and continue on course.

As you didn’t give a range then we have to consider the possibilities. At any rate we are still headed south on this leg, are we not?

[King Kurt]

I have posted my thoughts direct to Franc - but basically attack with escorts - we can't use the Martlets as it is night.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

I say lets go hunting!!

[Napoleon The Emperor Of Europe]

Yo.

[Franconicus]

Chapter 5 – 15. December

Walker hesitates a moment, but then he realizes the threat that hides there about three nautical miles on the right. If there is really a submarine, it located the convoy and will soon call the other submarines. There is no alternative, this submarine has to found and eliminated or the convoy will soon get into troubled waters.
The Stork, the destroyer Exmoor and the corvette Convulvulus turn right and hurry to reach the place where the Swodfish dropped its bombs. In the meantime the convoy turns southwest, to get away from the submarine.
Now the search begins. Walker’s Stork is front runner then slows down to listen while other ships approach on either side. In his mind Walker marks a circle around the assumed position of the submarine. The three ships are ploughing the waters with their ASDICs inside this circle. All the time the men have the strange feeling that the submarine is watching them, maybe just adjusting the launching tubes to send them to the deepness.
The search inside the circle takes almost an hour, but there is no contact. Walker feels pain in the stomach, maybe because of something the ate, maybe because he knows that the escort of the convoy is weak and the submarine could attack, right now, while he was wasting his time on the search. On the other hand, it could still be here. If so, he has to find it. He sends signals to the other ships and soon all three lay silently, just watching and listening. Maybe the commander of the submarine things that the search is over and comes to the surface. Then he will get a bad surprise. However, he could also try to attack the British ships, which are perfect targets now. Nothing happens at all. And maybe this is the worst thing for the nerves of the British sailors. Finally, Walker decides to give up the search and to return to the convoy. At four o’clock in the morning he arrives. Fortunately, everything is alright. The three escort ships take their positions. The convoy still sails course southwest, now leaving grid square CG97 and entering DJ21. Behind the ships the sun rises. Everything is quiet and peacefully. Maybe this damned Swordfish had had a false signal and there hadn’t been any submarine at all. If not, the waters around him will soon swarm with German submarines. Soon he will leave the area of the Gibraltar air patrols, and then he can only rely on himself.
Walker thinks about the course to Liverpool. The usual one would be westwards, until the middle of grid square CF, and then straight north to sail west of Ireland. The usual one. The convoy would be quite far away from the occupied coast of France, where the Germans have their bases. The course is still within the range of the German planes, but they would not have much time to cruise there. There are two drawbacks, though. First, the course is longer and therefore the submarines would have more chances to attack. Second, the course is well known to the Germans as well.
Walker is wondering about another course, closer to the Spanish coast, closer to the bases of the Germans. If the convoy would sail right between CF and CG, the journey would be significantly shorter. However, a risky plan!
And there is still a third option. He could stay on course southwest for a while. If his German attender sends this course to the other German boats, they may wait for the convoy further south. Then, when Walker changes to course to north, they may be far away and maybe loose the contact. And there is still the other convoy behind them, which destination is Freetown.

Which is the right course:

A) Take the usual one. It is a good compromise of distance to the German bases and length of the journey.
B) Take the short way home. It is closer to the German bases, but we will be sooner at home and the submarines may have less chances to attack.
C) Stay on the southwestern course for a while. Maybe this misleads the Germans.

P.S.: Welcome Napoleon!

[Fisherking]

C Stick it out for another day before turning West Northwest for a while, then take the Northern course.

[King Kurt]

Definately C and change course as night falls - quite early as it is December

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

C,I Agree.

[Franconicus]

I think it is time to end this game officially. I must declare the Germans as winners.
The game did not run as good as I hoped it would, but I learned a lot more about the sub warfare in WW2 and I hope you had some fun.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

You being bias !

Don't worry Fran, it is always pleasure playing in one of your IH's!

[King Kurt]

Fran

As you can imagine, I have enjoyed this immensely and am sad it has finished. I thought the idea was a good one, but it is difficult to manage an IH which involves submarine warfare I think. The mix of long periods of nothing happening mixed with short sharp periods of frantic action is difficult to simulate.

[Franconicus]

The game ended some time ago, but I guess I still owe you a kind of summery about the tactics from the other side.

Although the game was very bumpy, I have to say that I learned a lot about the warfare in the Atlantic.
One thing that really surprised me was, that the Germans in reality knew very little about the abilities on the other side, while the Brits had a rather clear picture. The reason for this is simple, the allies were able to take prisoners - even if there were only few - and later they were even able to capture subs. Germans did not have a chance to capture a corvette or to take prisoners.
Although the allies had a rather good knowledge about the subs, in the time of our game they underrated the ability of the German sound locater. It was able to detect the direction of an acoustic source over a long distance with high accuracy and could identify the source as a warship or merchant. In real life walker tried to simulate a battle behind the convoy to lure the subs from it. This had to fail, obviously, because the Germans could easily identify the movement of the warships. As a result, Audacity was sunk.
However, in reality, the German made some terrible tactical mistakes, cause by their ignorance of the other side. First of all, their common defensive maneuvre once they had been detected, was to dive as deep as possible, moove slowly and silently with surprising turns. If the crew on the Asdic was well trained and if the Escort ship had enough time, this tactic usually failed. In the beginning of the war, the ash cans were set on a maximum depth. The subs were able to dive even deeper so they could escape easily. However, the Brits changed the setting quickly and were then able to attack subs at any depth. Furthermore, the Asdic worked very well in the depth, so depth was no shelter for the Germans. However, the Asdic had a weak spot, which was right below the surface. Here refelxions disturbed the signal and the device had a minimum angle. Germans never learned about that during the whole war.
So now to our game. I tried to recruit a team of experienced submarine veterans and therefore looked at the German forum of Silent Hunter. In the beginning this worked rather good, although it seemed to be hard to explain the concept of the interactive. Nevertheless, there were some high skilled players, burning to change the way history went and to teach the Tommis a lesson abouzt naval warfare. Then things went out of control (I guess it was when the Gestapo interfered). The players blamed me to be someone from their forum, who tried to mess around with several identities and tried to fool the rest of the players. It ended when the mod attacked me and demanded me to lay open the link to the other team. At this point I decided to make a break. I stopped the game and asked the most motivated and engaged player if he wants to go on alone.
He did a rather good job. He set up his strategy on what is known about the technologies today.
In the beginning he set three ships to a line west of Gibraltar. They had to be under water all the time to listen for any allied ships. They only came up during night to load their batteries and to send messanges. During this, the Germans tried to get as many boats to the expected combat zone as possible.
The Germans detected the convoy - or rather said the two convoys which left Gib almost at the same time. They also decided to attack the bigger one, yours!
In the beginnig, they where still waiting for reinforcements, so they kept quiet in the distance, still under water all day long, coming to the surface only for some time at night.
Then they finally attacked. The subs had the order to follow the convoy under water during day with a rather big distance - no chance to detect them with planes. When night came, the submarines came up and got into the right position to start their attack. The boat where devided into two packs, so they could attack from both sides. The attack itself was done right below the surface of the sea. So the boats could not be seen nor detected by the Ascdic. It would have taken a lot of luck to get one of the boats into the range of the ASDIC. So the could penetrate the convoy, attack and disappear.
For me it was interesting to see that the countermeasures - using planes at night, more light etc. - where not appropriate for this tactic. It was obviously that the Allies had not noticed the way the Germans changed their tactics and therefore were not able to react. Maybe it would have been wise to rescue some of the German sailors from a sunk sub. Humanity always pays!

[King Kurt]

Thanks for the feedback Franc.

Like you, despite having a great interest in naval matters, I have learnt a lot about the warfare that made up the Battle of the Atlantic. As an aside, it is interesting that there is not a greater interest in the Battle of the Atlantic in the UK. The battle was arguebly as important, if not more so, than the Battle of Britain, but our interest in it - me included - is nothing like that shown for the air battles of 1940 or say El Alamein. I knew of Walker, but not much detail, so it was good to find out more about him.

As to the german tactics - they seem sound. However I wondered how they managed to keep such a good contact with the convoy when they spent so much time underwater? My thinking was always guided that the U boats needed to spend most of their time on the surface to have the speed to keep in contact with the convoy, especially as we changed directions a lot and used the storm to mask our movements as well.

However, overall, it was great fun and you did a great job of keeping the IH moving - especially after the german Silent Hunter forum had you down as some sort of Warman 8 clone!! i felt the only dissapointment was that only a few people - mainly me and Fischer - kept the faith with it. Your efforts deserved more.

So well done - perhaps we will have another one one day.

[Fisherking]

It is likely I know much more about the U-boats than the escorts.

I felt like a sitting duck during the whole game. However, I think KK is right. The subs had to stay on the surface during the day to keep up with the convoy. While they could locate them at long distance staying in contact and getting a shot was not quite so easy. Following on the surface or running a head and occasionally submerging to get bearings were the tactics.

Daylight attacks meant getting in the path of the oncoming convoy and waiting. Night attacks could be made on the surface, running in for some quick shots and back to safety.

Aircraft made shadowing the convoy much more difficult and kept the boats farther away from their targets. Planes at night and star shells would have been a real damper on their preferred hunting methods.

If there were aircraft they could usually be seen a periscope depth even in the North Atlantic. Other seas they could usually be seen at much greater depths. Walkers tag team approach with his escorts meant that they were more able to maintain a contact, as the ship attacking lost the ping as they passed over the sub.

One way or another we should have been able to detect something when they were in the area but this never seemed to happen. No radar or sonar contacts to speak of.

Also in rough seas sound contacts were lost because of the wave action and contacts needed to be maintained visually. The smoke of the convoy could be seen at about 25 miles in clear weather but in storms it was no easy task.

I am sure that Kurt was as disappointed as I was when it ended just as we were receiving some reinforcements.

[Franconicus]

Thanks for the feedback Franc.

Like you, despite having a great interest in naval matters, I have learnt a lot about the warfare that made up the Battle of the Atlantic. As an aside, it is interesting that there is not a greater interest in the Battle of the Atlantic in the UK. The battle was arguebly as important, if not more so, than the Battle of Britain, but our interest in it - me included - is nothing like that shown for the air battles of 1940 or say El Alamein. I knew of Walker, but not much detail, so it was good to find out more about him.

As to the german tactics - they seem sound. However I wondered how they managed to keep such a good contact with the convoy when they spent so much time underwater? My thinking was always guided that the U boats needed to spend most of their time on the surface to have the speed to keep in contact with the convoy, especially as we changed directions a lot and used the storm to mask our movements as well.

However, overall, it was great fun and you did a great job of keeping the IH moving - especially after the german Silent Hunter forum had you down as some sort of Warman 8 clone!! i felt the only dissapointment was that only a few people - mainly me and Fischer - kept the faith with it. Your efforts deserved more.

So well done - perhaps we will have another one one day.

About the importance of the Battle of the Atlantic: I guess it was the most important one of the British. The Battle of Britain was great, of course, but I never had the impression that the Germans had the slightest chance to win it. So, although the Brits fought bravely, in my eyes it wasn't that important. We also discussed El Alamein and I already made my resons that the Germans would not have won, if Rommel broke through. German lines were too stretched and most of the German troops were in the East. However, if the Germans had won in the Atlantic, Britain would have had to give in, maybe not surrendered, but a cease fire. Time enough for the Germans to invade Russia.

About the Germans keeping contact: the microphones were able to locate the convoy for hundreds of miles. So there was no chance to hide it. The subs followed the convoy out of the air patrols. Remember, that it was December, long nights, enough to get in front of the convoy and to attack.