Naval Transport Losses

[sfbaytf]

Playing the Italy Campaign and seeing my transport ships suffering losses to what I presume UBoats. While not overly excessive-a ship here and there-sometimes 2 units from same port get hit. Losses anywhere from a few hundred men to 1000.

Is there anyway to prevent this? I was thinking of setting my Coastal AF to run Naval patrols.

I'm not too versed in historical UBoat operations in the Med. How effective was the German and Italian navy historically?

Has anyone lost a leader to a transport being hit while in Naval Transport mode? I'm guessing losing men reduces morale and experience.

[Denniss]

You may always lose soem to enemy subs somewhere. Just ensure you have proper naval patrols set up around your ports as this will reduce losses

[Zenra]

Turn on the interdiction overlay and route your naval transport along the safest path available. Make the path safer by assigning Naval Patrol air missions to swing the interdiction balance and sea lane control your way, and assign Air Superiority missions to prevent enemy naval patrols.

[sfbaytf]

Thanks for the replies. Useful to know. On another note the morale of my units in Italy is in the high 50's and low 60's. I pulled them back and put on refit to try and boost morale. I'm also wondering if having their HQ's next or on top of said units will help raise the morale faster.

[cfulbright]

There are two things you can do:

1. Set up size 4 or 5 Naval Patrols off Naples or Salerno and also the ports on the East coast of Italy.
2. Have some PA and TB units unassigned to air directives and based at airbases in your most important ports. As long as you leave their status to Day/Night, they're fly auto Naval Patrol without using up an air directive slot.

Cary

[cfulbright]

Also, don't leave ground units at sea. For an invasion, the best practice is to naval load the follow-up waves but leave them in home ports. If you move them off the invasion beaches, they suffer significant attrition.

Cary

[cfulbright]

The closer you keep your corps HQ's to their ground units the better, and also the artillery support units assigned to corps HQ provide better support the closer the corps HQ is to the ground units. Also make the ground units Supply Priority 4.

For refit, move the ground units to the largest city within range, and have an army HQ in that hex also.

For weakened support units, transfer them back to AFHQ, and ideally keep AFHQ in Oran, which is a National Supply Source.

[Zenra]

Just remembered this thread, too. Decent advice on how and when to set up Naval Patrol missions to clear sea lanes you intend to use.

[sfbaytf]

ORIGINAL: Zenra

Just remembered this thread, too. Decent advice on how and when to set up Naval Patrol missions to clear sea lanes you intend to use.

Thanks. Very useful to know.