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I sent them out, too. Some hits are better than none, they gain experience and sometimes they give valuable spotting info.
Before sending them out, I change skippers, trying to match their experience with crew experience and giving the higher-experienced crews to aggressive skippers and the mediocre ones to careful skippers. I'm not sure whether this improves chances of getting hits or survivability, but well - I want to believe.
O19, O20, Argonaut, Narwhale and Nautilus are only used for minelaying, and I group boats by endurance - 18000ers at Pearl for use against convoy lanes near the Home Islands, 16000ers at Darwin for use in the SRA, and the shorter-legged boats at Brisbane for use in the PNG/Solomons area. The lone 6000 stays at Pearl, used as 'tame' submarine for (imaginary) ASW training for escorts. I do not expect my subs to devastate the Japanese shipping lanes in 1942, so for the moment I'm quite satisfied. Even with sub doctrine on, I get attacks every day and a few sinkings every week. And once I had Shokaku in the sights - torps failed to detonate, of course... [:@]

This is almost exactly how I utilize my boats too LST. Except the Nautilus class gets put on regular deployment. It would be cool to see those 6" guns in action.[;)]

For the first months of war I use them for sub transport.
To evac as many units I can from PI and surrounding areas.
Also a bit for mine laying, in the British area.

Once I start getting MLE's I go on a 'mining rampage' [:D]
I mine everything I can reach. But I especially like to mine Japan Home Island ports [:D] [:D]

ORIGINAL: Halsey
This is almost exactly how I utilize my boats too LST. Except the Nautilus class gets put on regular deployment. It would be cool to see those 6" guns in action.[;)]

Hehe, in Germany we say 'Zwei Dumme, ein Gedanke' - rougly translates into 'two idiots - same idea'[;)].

[:D][:D][:D]

In the US we say "great minds think alike".[;)]

O19, O20, Argonaut, Narwhale and Nautilus are only used for minelaying, and I group boats by endurance - 18000ers at Pearl

Me to although I lost O19 on the first turn this time around [:@]

Didn't get a chance to move her far, but thats war i suppose. I use them in the DEI first then out of India ocean. to make the route to and from Rangoon that little bit more expensive.

ORIGINAL: Halsey
In the US we say "great minds think alike".[;)]

Well, then I suppose we have more idiots in Germany than great minds [:D].

LST

As the allies against the AI, i have sent all my subs to sea from the start. The Dutch,British, & S boats are quite useful. I also send the american fleet boats out,they can't hit a japanese ship from the inside with the hatches closed[:D],but they CAN gain experience which should be important later.




Joe D.

For those of you gnashing about how ineffective the US Subs are after playing six months of game time....gnaw on this for a while...



Notice that most Jap merchant shipping losses roughly double with each passing year....after all of 1942 roughly 1 million tons sunk...1943 an additional 2 million tons....1944 an additional 4 million tons what starts as a stream becomes a torrent by 1944.

I've used my subs from thenstart too. Knowing that the Jap CVs are in the S. China sea helping the Singapore, I have sent every Dutch, Brit and American sub in pursuit, changing their home base to Batavia. You can hardly see the blue on the map beneath the green sub icons![:D]

I am rather happy with their results this early on in my game. It is Jan/42 and I have sunk more Jap ships than I have lost. A significant portion due to sub swarms.

wow! must have had the Ron S button toggled on [:D]

ORIGINAL: LittleJoe

I send them out, of course that 1/5 chance is better than no chance sitting in port somewhere, my subs have scored me around 200 points in the first month of the war, and reguarlly attack his convoys around Japan, it makes my opponent have to use PG's and DDs looking for them that could be used to hurt me in other places.


And of course you get results like this on December 7th from time to time [:D][:D][:D][:D]

I have started my game with US Submarine Doctrin on because i could not believe some reports in the forums like one attack in a month and so on. But thats my reality even in July 1942. Standart: Torpedo misses, fails to detonate, could not move in a savely postion and so on. Subs have killed till now only two or three japanese ships (ca. 170 are sunk - 75% AU).

ORIGINAL: Halsey

This is almost exactly how I utilize my boats too LST. Except the Nautilus class gets put on regular deployment. It would be cool to see those 6" guns in action.[;)]

You can check with Herbie, my opponent, as to the veracity of this statement:

Twice now the Argonaut and Narwhal have engaged a Jap transport on the SURFACE while in Kwajalein Lagoon (ie, in the base hex) while on mining missions! Great fun, watching 6in rounds hitting a duck in a pond.....[:D] I try to imagine the Jap base commander jumping up and down in frustration at the sight of this, with all of his base artillery facing outwards from the lagoon....[:@]

12/42 and the Allied subs are getting a lot more attacks, now that they have radar.
The dud/miss ratio is the same though. We'll see what happens after the boys in Norfolk get that detonator problem worked out.[;)]

I think that untill 43 using the subs to lay mines is a great hindrance to the japs.. and after 43 split them up into miners and attackers....

exception would be the Ducthies.. great little ship killers.. liek them in the China sea area early, then I withdraw whats left and leave them on anti shipping
you will see much better attacks in 43