Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Heeward

Send another submarine to meet it set the TF to Merge. The newly arriving submarine will refuel the other submarine.

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ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

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ORIGINAL: Heeward

Send another submarine to meet it set the TF to Merge. The newly arriving submarine will refuel the other submarine.

Are you sure this works? I don't know. I seem to remember in another thread that subs can not refuel at sea, no matter what you try. It has to be at a port. I think there was some logic to this. Or it was too hard to code. I don't remember the reason.

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

Subs can't refuel at sea. As a reason why not, only explanation I have seen was "Possibility of a cheat", but I never have heard what kind of cheat it would have created.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

Subs can't refuel at sea. As a reason why not, only explanation I have seen was "Possibility of a cheat", but I never have heard what kind of cheat it would have created.

The reason, I suspect, is that USN subs didn't refuel at sea. I don't think they even carried hoses.

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

Subs can't refuel at sea. As a reason why not, only explanation I have seen was "Possibility of a cheat", but I never have heard what kind of cheat it would have created.

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

Subs can't refuel at sea. As a reason why not, only explanation I have seen was "Possibility of a cheat", but I never have heard what kind of cheat it would have created.

The reason, I suspect, is that USN subs didn't refuel at sea. I don't think they even carried hoses.

There was no designated "hose" on German U-boats either. This didn't prevent them from refueling on ad-hoc equipment from one U-boat to another. They even transferred torpedoes from boats forced to leave the patrol areas to boats still remaining there in mid-ocean, with equipment built from carpenter's locker, so obviously all it takes is will and need to do this, not specific 'equipment'.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

Subs can't refuel at sea. As a reason why not, only explanation I have seen was "Possibility of a cheat", but I never have heard what kind of cheat it would have created.

The reason, I suspect, is that USN subs didn't refuel at sea. I don't think they even carried hoses.

There was no designated "hose" on German U-boats either. This didn't prevent them from refueling on ad-hoc equipment from one U-boat to another. They even transferred torpedoes from boats forced to leave the patrol areas to boats still remaining there in mid-ocean, with equipment built from carpenter's locker, so obviously all it takes is will and need to do this, not specific 'equipment'.

There was a hose on the milch cows. Refueling from non-milch cows was not done to my knowledge.

USN subs don't have a "carpenter's locker." Then or now. No wood except DC plugs and a tiny bit of decorative gingerbread. Wood burns. They didn't carry paint either. It burns and you can't breath the fumes. No boatswain's locker. No boatswains for that matter. Subs were and are in a differnet navy than skimmers.

USN subs load with torpedo loading skids that were stored in the superstructure in peacetime, and not taken on patrol in wartime. Or anchors. Or, often, any mooring lines. Subs were stripped to fight and be quiet, nothing else. They had no deck crane or derrick to handle weapons regardless of the skid.

Comparing U-boat design trade-offs in a different ocean is a non-starter. The Pacific is vastly larger that the Atlantic, and the patrol areas were 5000 miles from base, not 500 miles from the French coast. USN subs didn't refuel each other. Just the way it was.

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ORIGINAL: Ametysth

Germans did do refuelling operations before milk-cows, which become operational only later half of 1942. They usually topped the tanks of VII type subs arriving to patrol areas from larger, longer range type IX subs. U-194 did two such operations I'm aware of and U-547 received fuel from non-milk cow at least once. All of these were needed to allow Type VII operate in US East Coast.

A Type IX was a milch cow in function, if not in name. Same idea. The USN didn't have the disparity in design sizes to allow this. Nor were we stupid enough to employ the baby-sitting radio comms needed for mid-ocean meet-ups when using manual star-sights to navigate. Again, Pacific=big. And we trusted our COs to be lone hunters. They didn't need to phone home every day so SubPac could wipe their noses.

Carpenter's Locker is another name for DC locker. So US boats do have one (name doesn't mean there is only wood inside).

The USN calls DC lockers "DC lockers." Subs don't have them. DC equipment is stored in the operating spaces. I qualified in subs in 1982; my father qualified in 1960 on a WWII Guppy-modded boat that is in AE. I spent time aboard as a child. I think I know a bit about submairne DC.

Germans were perhaps better equipped to handle the torpedoes (they had deck canisters),

Yes, EXTERNAL stowage of reloads demonstrates the German lack of respect for the lives of their crews, as well as air power changing ASW. Lunacy.

but they most certainly weren't designed to transfer them on mid-ocean either. Claiming that USN couldn't have jury-rigged similar system if truly wanted/needed to do so is just silly. Especially if one remembers US armed forces reputation of ad-hoc equipment and improvisation when needed.

You can't s**t a crane in mid-ocean. A MK14 weighs about 3000 pounds, and is pretty sinkable. Not to mention wave action and the HUGE diameter of a torpedo-loading hatch, and the reserve-buoyance-killing volume of the forward TR. Flooding it was a non-recoverable event, and fleet boats had no free-board. In perfectly calm seas, maybe. In any sort of sea-state, no. Not to mention, again, the exposure to airborne ASW.

The conundrum for the USN was that doing torpedo transfer far enough forward to matter exposed two boats to unacceptable risks of a multi-hour surfaced operation. We had no torpedo shortage after the first months. We had tenders. We had Seabees. We built our subs to be fast and long-range (the Type VII was used far against its design parameters range-wise.) We didn't need to do risky torpedo transfers--or carry the gear to do them 12,000 miles out and back--because we had mobile submarine support, and set up new bases as we went forward. The Germans didn't and couldn't.

Oh, and about ranges; 500 nm from France? Think again. We are talking about type VII subs operating in Gulf of Mexico, Lesser Antilles and on entrances of Galveston. 70 days patrols in boats originally designed to operate around British Isles. Ranges are about the same as US fleet boats faced, if not more.

Snort. Yeah, for a few months. For the majority of the U-boats' short, exciting career, they operated in mid-Atlantic. Then they died, by the hundreds. When the German navy conducts a SUCCESSFUL submarine campaign, get back to me. They've had two tries, and failed miserably both times.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Snort. Yeah, for a few months. For the majority of the U-boats' short, exciting career, they operated in mid-Atlantic. Then they died, by the hundreds. When the German navy conducts a SUCCESSFUL submarine campaign, get back to me. They've had two tries, and failed miserably both times.

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ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Snort. Yeah, for a few months. For the majority of the U-boats' short, exciting career, they operated in mid-Atlantic. Then they died, by the hundreds. When the German navy conducts a SUCCESSFUL submarine campaign, get back to me. They've had two tries, and failed miserably both times.

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Bullwinkle, you definitely know your stuff when it comes to subs. I agree that the Germans didn't win the battle of the Atlantic. But, when you can say you sank around 10 ships for every sub lost, I wouldn't call that failing miserably. If USA didn't join the fight, Germany probably would have starved England.

I would say they barely failed to win. If Japan was half as good as the Allies were in regards to ASW, then our submarine campaign might not have succeeded either. A submarine campaign is a tough one to win. US won in the Pacific, I think, because Japan failed to react and couldn't build replacements in any meaningful manner. Germany failed in the Atlantic because they just couldn't compete with the production of the US (and the fact that the Allies ASW grew exponentially after the US joined.) Germany made some awesome achievements that were just too little, too late.

So what? This is a game of War in the Pacific. the tactical and strategic requirements there were as differnt from the Atlantic as apples and crawfish. Who cares if Germany could have won the war? Is this a WITP thread or just another vehicle for the "we would all be speaking german if we didn't have to face reality" folks?

< Message edited by Whisper -- 7/26/2010 8:35:00 PM >

(in reply to Bradley7735)

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ORIGINAL: Whisper

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ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Snort. Yeah, for a few months. For the majority of the U-boats' short, exciting career, they operated in mid-Atlantic. Then they died, by the hundreds. When the German navy conducts a SUCCESSFUL submarine campaign, get back to me. They've had two tries, and failed miserably both times.

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Bullwinkle, you definitely know your stuff when it comes to subs. I agree that the Germans didn't win the battle of the Atlantic. But, when you can say you sank around 10 ships for every sub lost, I wouldn't call that failing miserably. If USA didn't join the fight, Germany probably would have starved England.

I would say they barely failed to win. If Japan was half as good as the Allies were in regards to ASW, then our submarine campaign might not have succeeded either. A submarine campaign is a tough one to win. US won in the Pacific, I think, because Japan failed to react and couldn't build replacements in any meaningful manner. Germany failed in the Atlantic because they just couldn't compete with the production of the US (and the fact that the Allies ASW grew exponentially after the US joined.) Germany made some awesome achievements that were just too little, too late.

So what? This is a game of War in the Pacific. the tactical and strategic requirements there were as differnt from the Atlantic as apples and crawfish. Who cares if Germany could have won the war? Is this a WITP thread or just another vehicle for the "we would all be speaking german if we didn't have to face reality" folks?

The op had his question answered, so I guess there's a few of us engaging in another friendly WWII thread.

(in reply to Whisper)

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ORIGINAL: Whisper

It is very hard to argue fact with with the "every German weapon is perfect" crowd but here is my attempt anyway. Look at 2 submarines commissioned in 1936. A type VIIC and a Perch. The Perch was 1/3 longer, had twice the tonnage, had twice the bunker capacity, had 160% of the range, more torpedoes and all stored internally, infinitely better habitability for long patrols and 3 times the crappers and they weren't stuffed full of cheese, bannanas and sausages.

US fleet boats were designed for long range patrols. There is no option for submarines to refuel or rearm at sea. We designed this game to be War in the Pacific.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735


Bullwinkle, you definitely know your stuff when it comes to subs. I agree that the Germans didn't win the battle of the Atlantic. But, when you can say you sank around 10 ships for every sub lost, I wouldn't call that failing miserably. If USA didn't join the fight, Germany probably would have starved England.

N.B. that Germany declared war on us, not the other way. Hitler volunteered for the ash-kicking applied. U-boats sank a lot of ships because there were a lot of ships to be sunk. QED. However, the distribution of sinkings was not a normal curve over time.

I would say they barely failed to win.

I don't think the tonnages arriving bear this out. It's been years since I read Clay Blair's books (and yes, I know some disgreee with his conclusion. I found the math compelling.) If we had been delayed three months in ramping up tonnages it wouldn't have mattered. Overlord might have slipped into fall 1944, but in early 1942 GB was geographically safe from invasion. The USSR side of things might have been significantly different, but there was no way the Germans were going to hold the USSR by 1942. They'd already lost the eastern war; the head just hadn't gotten the message.

If Japan was half as good as the Allies were in regards to ASW, then our submarine campaign might not have succeeded either.

To be half as good would have crippled other produciton efforts. And we would have put a whole lot more effort into the sub war. We weren't even breathing hard by 1944 putting out boats.

A submarine campaign is a tough one to win. US won in the Pacific, I think, because Japan failed to react and couldn't build replacements in any meaningful manner. Germany failed in the Atlantic because they just couldn't compete with the production of the US (and the fact that the Allies ASW grew exponentially after the US joined.) Germany made some awesome achievements that were just too little, too late.

WWII submarine tech was all about base location, which allowed short cycle times, and more time on targets. We did that in a variety of ways, mostly by moving the front closer to the action. The Germans never did, because they didn't plan before the war to win the submarine war. Why? They had an idiot leading them. If the German navy had owned mid-Atlantic and northern bases they could have stopped us cold in 1942 and early 1943 due to sheer numbers of hulls, and by denying US use of the Azores and Iceland. Torch would not have succeeded for sure on the historic timeline. They tried to do cutsie work-arounds like milch cows instead of, pre-war, building the hardware they needed, and that WWI should have told them they needed. Instead, they built subs designed to stop the convoy 100 miles from the Irish coast, and when air power made that locale untenable, they were screwed. They scrambled, but they were screwed.