ORIGINAL: crsutton
TBF avenger could carry four DC. Late war they might have two 500 pound DC and a homing torpedo. The PBY liberator carried more but doctrine generally called for DC to be dropped in a four charge pattern so it did not matter too much. Basically the aircraft was only going to get one chance to attack. Once CVEs were in number the Avengers were more effective due to numbers and time over target. Avengers are credited with sinking "35" U boats. I could not locate numbers for Japanese subs but you can see that they were very effective. An effective aerial sub attack required the element of surprise to be effective. The sub had to be on the surface or just beginning to submerge. Once the sub was underwater the success rate dropped off dramatically. (Homing torpedoes boosted that a bit but you won't see them in the game either). DC attack from the air eventually became highly refined (credit the Brits) and were based on very good statistical analysis.
I see no reason to fool with the game as it works now. Consider the bombing to be an abstracting that reflects the multifaceted aspect of attacking subs. You can read this report about wildcats and avengers attacking subs from the USS Card. It was usually a bit more complex than just a bombing run. In this case the subs were suppressed with strafing, then bombed and then depth charged-a complexity that just cannot be modeled in the game.
https://books.google.com/books?id=-ivBo ... er&f=false
See the link I posted above, it has the cause of every Japanese sub sinking listed by date. Aircraft accounted for fewer subs in the Pacific, but I think it was due to the nature of the types of TFs. The Atlantic was mostly Allied merchant TFs with the occasional warship TF. In the Pacific, the Allied TFs were a higher percentage warships. Warships TFs can have more escorts, especially carrier TFs, and warships are usually faster than merchant ships. If a sub was detected, the escorts would work it over while the other ships got out of there at high speed.
Japanese sub doctrine was also very different from German sub doctrine. The u-boats were hunting merchant ships from the start. The Japanese doctrine was to deploy their subs ahead of the warships to thin out enemy warships before a big battle. Later when the warships were not going to sea much, a lot of their subs were tied up moving supplies to bypassed bases. The Japanese did some ship hunting without the main fleet coming, but it was nowhere near as common as it was with US and German sub doctrine.
Bill
