Military Tuesday : WWII Anti-Submarine Warfare Tactical Lessons from BBC
Another BBC History game, this time focusing on the anti-submarine tactics of the Allied convoy escorts against the U-boat raiders of the German Kriegsmarine.
© BBC
The game first explains how submarines are detected by surface vessels with a combination of ASDIC/sonar, searchlights and visual sightings before their approximate positions are calculated by HF/DF (High Frequency Direction Finding) readings from multiple escorts and finally destroyed with depth charges or guns.
© BBC
The most interesting part of the tutorial is the clear explanation of the different tactics used by the convoy escorts to trap and destroy the submarine or at least deter it from approaching the defenseless merchant ships within the convoy. The animations that accompany the text are nicely done and help a lot in illustrating the actual manuevers.
© BBC
With names like Raspberry and Pineapple, you’ll wonder whether the Allied seamen of WWII were so fruit-deprived onboard their ships as to name these manuevers (akin to plays in American football) after their fruity namesakes. The Creeping Attack whereby a ‘blind’ attacking ship is directed by another ship actively tracking the submarine with ASDIC/sonar at standoff range was probably a precursor to the post WWII tactics of using specialized AWACS aircraft to dispatch and coordinate fighters to counter any threats detected using their powerful radars.
After going thorough the tutorial, the game will randomly select a scenario and let you decide the best manuever to undertake for that particular situation before playing out the actual encounter. Choosing the appropriate tactics will allow you to turn the hunter into the hunted and save the precious lives of the sailors onboard the vulnerable merchantmen.
© BBC
Play The Battle of the Atlantic at BBC History Channel.
MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Renders of WWII Battleships from Navyfield MMORPG
Kyoshi Harada’s 3D Render of a IJN I-400 Submarine
DIA Military Art – Russian Delta Class Submarine
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Hi ,
I was searching for some material on ASW tactics and came across this site. I would like to analyse the tactics in form of probability of hit and its worth. what is teh way to do so?
Hi Vidhyadhar, frankly I’m not an expert in ASW tactics.
If you’re referring to the BBC simulation as mentioned above, the tactics used depends more on the scenario and how the fleet commander expects the U-boat to approach for an attack on the fleet. Most of the manuevers listed are only good for a very specific scenario and quite useless for anything that does not fit that particular scenario.
Yes/no, I suggest. To suggest that there were no agreed tactics and that all U-boat defences weer simply random and arbitrary whenever a U-bozt was hunted does grants little credit to the surface forces. In fact there were tremendous amounts of intellectual effkrt put into devising ASW strategies and tactics by British forces.
Hi Bruce, thanks for the comment.
Of course, I’m not belittling the Allied effort to containing the U-boat threat. My interpretation was that each manuever was almost always specifically designed for a set-piece encounter and using the wrong manuever would move the destroyers to the wrong positions where they would be helpless to stop the U-boat from destroying the merchantmen in their convoy.