Genuine Question, Hoping For Non Bias Genuine Answer Or Points Of View

[tm63au]

USN early class Battleships

Set up to the question

Just played 3 USN low Tier BB's  there slow as however for the record I love The Texas its painfully slow but I've chased DD's , hunted Subs, tormented Cruisers and gave higher Tier BB's black eyes that wished they never ran into me ( not saying I'm the greatest either )

USN BB's escorted convoys in the Atlantic between 41 and 45 not a lot of times  but enough to be prime targets, they had auxiliary Anti sub ships, DD's and cruiser's in convoys and for some convoys had escort Carrier's, but not always.

Axis submarines were first class as were most of there Commanders,history tells us that the Axis were leading in Naval technology between 39 to late 41 ( some may dispute here and I have been trying to find my reference books to prove the issue ) once the USN joined the war things started changing but even through 41 /42 it was close and 43 there might have been a bit of a jump in tech quality for the Allies but where still talking about elite U - boat Commanders and lets not forget there were a number of Great Italian Sub Commanders operating in The Atlantic.

Axis Submarine doctrine was commerce raiding I get it and a convoy screen was hard but not impossible to crack.

So my question as I'm playing those three low Tier USN Battleships whose speeds are very close to historical in game and in life, and thinking why the hell were Axis Submarines not sinking USN BB's escorting Atlantic convoys which at 21 knots they had to be lame ducks waiting to be sunk. 

These Italian / German  commanders were some of the best, this is not amateur night if they cant get the transports there going for the next best ship ?

regards  

 

      

 

 

Edited January 2 by tm63au

[Captain Slattery]

Battleships were not alone.  Cruiser or destroyer escorts go a long way to dissuade commerce raiding u-boats.  

[Admiral_Karasu]

Also, I would say, it would have done very little for their war effort to sink some slow US battleships in the Atlantic. The supply convoys, on the other hand, were a priority target.

[Yedwy]

IIRC while the max speed of “US standards” was 21kt the crusing speed was much less maybe in thr line of 15kt or so (dont remember the exact numbers) however the crusing speed of freighters such as “liberties” (and like) was lower still maybee in the 10-12kt range, hitting a 20kt ship thats actively manouvering is no trifle either since despite our in game implementation guided fish were not quite a thing back then IRL much less as reliable as to guarantee a hit even for those that had guidance systems, I mean US for instance had issues with magnetic exploders early in the war so even direct hits with standard torps used to have a chance for a dud and they were not alone axis powers had issues with their fish as well ranging from gyro issues, depth maintananace problems etc etc. 
 

Also sinking a warship esp a big one while good for morale and putting a feather in ones cap wasnt really a priority as a goal in atlantic war as expending several torps for such a target (lets not forget they had a rather limited onboard supply of those and not endless torp factory we have in game) and with an uncertain outcome was a rather poor cost/benefit if bunch of freighters full of war materials sailed by in the meanwhile on their merry way compared to surfacing in the middle of the convoy or just beside it, lanching bunch of fish on soft targets and hightailing it before the nearby escort comes along and dumpsters you with depthcharges ruining your day…

 

Long story shor - it wasnt their mission and it was perilous, ergo best avoided

[Itwastuesday]

Something about enigma being cracked maybe. 

Submarines did sink some warships. Even a carrier iirc. 

[Dareios]

where there any USN BBs doing atlantic escort duties?

wasnt it mostly DDs and UK cruisers?

I think by the time they got some BBs over to participate in DDay the kriegsmarine had pretty much stopped being an active threat.

[HogHammer]

23 minutes ago, Itwastuesday said:

Submarines did sink some warships. Even a carrier iirc. 

Totally correct.  Two of the better known BBs were the HMS Royal Oak and Barham.  The carrier, of course, was the HMS Courageous.  German subs in the Atlantic had a primary mission of disrupting the supply chain or targeting troop transports.

[Admiral_Karasu]

34 minutes ago, HogHammer said:

Totally correct.  Two of the better known BBs were the HMS Royal Oak and Barham.  The carrier, of course, was the HMS Courageous.  German subs in the Atlantic had a primary mission of disrupting the supply chain or targeting troop transports.

Here's a clip about Barham, be warned, it gets very violent. I have a distant cousin, pretty distant one, 14th cousin twice removed, a Canadian carpenter who was there to witness it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YC8SOvq2TQ

[Nevermore135]

1 hour ago, Dareios said:

where there any USN BBs doing atlantic escort duties?

Yes. Similar to how slower British battleships like the Revenge-class (and to a lesser degree the Nelson-class) were utilized for escort duties, older US dreadnoughts (such as USS Texas) were utilized for the escort of large/important Atlantic convoys. At least during the earlier years of the war, there was a tangible threat of German surface raiders, and a 14-15” gunned proper battleship was enough to deter even the Scharnhorsts acting in tandem. In fact, one of the reasons the British were so determined to prevent Bismarck from breaking out into the Atlantic was because she was much better equipped to engage these types of escorts, and deterring her would have required the commitment of more modern and capable ships that were desperately needed elsewhere.

1 hour ago, Dareios said:

wasnt it mostly DDs and UK cruisers?

By the latter half of the war, the escorts were also largely composed of DDEs/corvettes and CVEs (both US and British). In fact, eventually it got to the point where CVE hunter-killer groups were a thing.

[Ensign Cthulhu]

David K Brown's Atlantic Escorts is one of the better books out there on fighting the U-boat threat. Suffice to say that the U-boats did not always have it their own way and were by no means unstoppable. This video on losses and loss rates of German forces in World War 2 gives an approximate death rate of all German submariners across the entire Second World War of SEVENTY FIVE PERCENT.

Wikipedia's article on U-boats states that Allied ASW was becoming effective by early 1941, with the three leading U-boat aces dying in March and Enigma decoding starting to bite by May. There was a brief resurgence in North American waters in early 1942, with a climax in North Atlantic operations in 1943. 

Ultimately: "The Battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies in two months. There was no single reason for this; what had changed was a sudden convergence of technologies, combined with an increase in Allied resources. "

US slow battleships didn't join Atlantic escort patrols until the absolute worst was over. Given the number of major warships that German submarines DID sink (or near-miss; Ark Royal failed on one occasion to be hit by a salvo that detonated prematurely), it's quite possible that they simply weren't in the wrong place at the wrong time (Royal Oak doesn't count, since she was hunted in her port). 

[ShasoDan]

1. It was much safer for a sub to attack a merchant vessel instead of a warship.
2. Convoy escort was the duty of smaller ships, so meeting a battleship that guards a convy was quite unlikely.
   
    

[Wolfswetpaws]

7 hours ago, tm63au said:

So my question as I'm playing those three low Tier USN Battleships whose speeds are very close to historical in game and in life, and thinking why the hell were Axis Submarines not sinking USN BB's escorting Atlantic convoys which at 21 knots they had to be lame ducks waiting to be sunk. 

A Submarine carries a limited number of torpedoes.
Battleships are more armored than a cargo-ship.
Battleships may carry cargo, but they're not as efficient for doing so when compared to a cargo ship.
Probability of one torpedo hit sinking a battleship is not as high as the probability of one torpedo sinking a cargo-ship.

Answer = the more efficient use of a Submarine's torpedoes was attacking cargo-ships.

Sink enough cargo-ships and starve the nation of its ability to operate the battleship, too.

[tocqueville8]

3 hours ago, Yedwy said:

the crusing speed of freighters such as “liberties” (and like) was lower still maybee in the 10-12kt range

From https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2020/august/key-role-convoys:

Quote

Any given convoy was limited in speed to the slowest ship, so care was taken to build convoys around ships of similar speeds. Convoys were grouped according to the speeds of the merchants and were designated as fast, medium, and slow. Fast convoys typically ran at 13 knots and were used to transport troops, often 20,000 to 30,000 at a time. The medium (9–10 knots) and slow (4–7 knots) convoys generally carried only cargo.

Basically, 10-12 knots was already quite fast for a convoy.

[Estaca_de_Bares]

Submarines as mainly anti-warship weapons were tried by British and Germans -and all the other navies, to be fair- during WW1, even acting as forward scouts/screens for fleet outings, but it didn't work well unless in confined areas where the presence of warships was more or less guaranteed (Bosphorus, Otranto, English Channel, surroundings of Scapa Flow). The Germans basically switched in full to commerce raiding by 1917 (final unrestricted submarine warfare campaign -there were one or two more earlier IIRC, but they backed off in fear of provoking the American intervention-, the Hochseeflotte freeing towards the effort the bunch of U-boats previously assigned to it) with warships becoming targets of opportunity. The doctrinal focus of submarines against warships was, among the major powers, only really kept by Japanese and Italians by the beginning of WW2.

Using slow BBs for escort duties, as @Nevermore135 pointed out, served in the initial stages of the war as a deterrence against surface raiders (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau encountered convoys protected by HMS Ramillies and Malaya during their Atlantic trip, didn't engage but called for U-boats hoping they would get rid of their presence) while freeing modern capital ships for actual offensive and interdiction. Sinking one of them, although it would've been nice for propaganda and morale purposes, would've done little when it came to the Materialschlacht (battle of resources/production).

1 hour ago, Itwastuesday said:

Submarines did sink some warships. Even a carrier iirc. 

44 minutes ago, HogHammer said:

Totally correct.  Two of the better known BBs were the HMS Royal Oak and Barham.  The carrier, of course, was the HMS Courageous.  German subs in the Atlantic had a primary mission of disrupting the supply chain or targeting troop transports.

Add HMS Eagle to the list. Notice where and why each of them were sunk: Royal Oak in Scapa Flow (at night inside an "impregnable" -there was the precedent of another U-boat sneaking in during WW1- military base), Barham and Eagle in the Mediterranean (confined theatre of operations where merchant ships weren't expected that much), Courageous while on ASW duty (hence forced to get close to the submarines).

Salute.

[mashed68]

They never got the chance is really the answer. 

[22 cm]

Because submarines in this game are not historical WW2 subs.

A late WW2 sub could maybe reach 18-20 knots surfaced at full speed but only on a calm sea (to save fuel the cruise speed was 12-15 knots) and only 8-10 knots submerged.

A slow ass BB could also reach 20 knots at full speed (cruise speed was also lower), but because it was bigger, heavier and more seaworthy, it would lose less speed on a rough sea.

So if a sub was not ideally positioned in the way of a BB that would come straight at him, the sub was not fast enough to chase it either on surface or submerged.

And this is without considering the usual escort DDs that a big warship would normally have.

 

[AdmiralThunder]

10 hours ago, Captain Slattery said:

Battleships were not alone.  Cruiser or destroyer escorts go a long way to dissuade commerce raiding u-boats.  

This - the convoys as a rule had Destroyer escorts or "Escort Groups" of various smallish ships and Subs had to be very cautious of that. Battleships as a rule were not used as anti-sub convoy escorts.

Battleships at times did in fact take part in convoy escort duty though. However, when that happened they weren't there to defend against Subs they were there to make sure enemy surface ships didn't attack the convoys when it was thought to be a possibility (like the Germans attacking allied convoys to Russia - those saw a lot of BB escort or had BB's in the general area that could arrive quickly).

Battleships also were part of escort groups when they in fact needed to be escorted. If a BB or BB's were going from say the US to England many times it/they would be placed in a convoy already bound for England so those escorts could escort the Bb(s) at the same time thus eliminating the need for a separate escort group.

Edited January 2 by AdmiralThunder