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I have been reading about U-boat operations and seen mentions of armed guards, who operated US Merchant Marine vessel's guns. They are always listed along the crew as losses or mentioned as they fought off enemies.

Which service these Armed Guard - gunners belonged? Were they regular Navy, Merchant Marines or Marines (as ship board troops)?

One the related issue, any chance of getting the "Monsoon Boats", German U-boats operating out of Batavia, to the game? Any mods out there? Four of them were taken over by IJN in early 1945 and they even had I-numbers (I-501, -502, -505 and -506)

iirc ive seen U-501 under combined fleet
edit: its u532

The Armed Guard were US Navy personnel who manned the guns on most of the Merchant Marine Fleet through out the War. Here is the NHHC's page on the Armed Guard

Thank you AirRat. Very helpful.

Lolz, that is a IX/C boat. Such boat was indeed in IJN inventory as one was sold to them in 1943, but its number was RO-500. I-501 was originally U-181, a IXD2 type boat (add 9000 miles to range and 6 torpedoes on deck storage).

To make the "Monsoon" boats work, they have to be attached to the IJN.  I believe DaBabes included all of these.

See this for a history:  http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany ... index.html

We briefly debated including the transferred and seized Italian and German boats in the IJN OOB, but the Japs never used them.

ORIGINAL: Terminus

We briefly debated including the transferred and seized Italian and German boats in the IJN OOB, but the Japs never used them.

But the Germans did operate them independently under the authority of Wenneker in Tokyo.

Ineresting. So the Germans went to the trouble of operating subs out of Batavia ? I wonder if they sank much shipping.

ORIGINAL: stuman

Ineresting. So the Germans went to the trouble of operating subs out of Batavia ? I wonder if they sank much shipping.

Read the Hyperwar link. They were quite effective during the periods they were able to operate.

ORIGINAL: Pascal

ORIGINAL: stuman

Ineresting. So the Germans went to the trouble of operating subs out of Batavia ? I wonder if they sank much shipping.

Read the Hyperwar link. They were quite effective during the periods they were able to operate.

Interesting read. Thx for the link.

Very interesting read. Thanks for the link.

In WITP terms, it does not look like they were much of a factor. The average turn around time in Batavia was about 70 days and the report talks at length about the lack fo skill maintenance crews and such to keep the boats operational. It appears that they were used to some extent, in Batavia and Singapore, as blockade runners with the intent of pulling raw materials back to Germany.

In terms of combat effectiveness, the claim of 1760 vessels sunk does not distinuguish between early operations in the Southern Ocean, and later operations. As reported the average vessel size for these 1760 was less than 600 tons. This would imply that they mostly sunk fishing boats, coastal barges, and small coastal tramp steemers, which are not units in the game.