Do ai escorts have radar?

[Ashley]

I have considered doing surface night attacks and I was wanting to know if ai ships have surface radar?

[R0b]

Y,.-
N,.- Cargoships
Y,.- Plane/Some,.- Dive Dive

[BanDHMO]

Yes, they definitely do detect you at night. I got killed time and time again during the tutorial mission when I was just learning the game. I could not figure out how the escorts knew where I was and steamed straight towards me even though I was still outside of visual range and couldn't see them, except on my own radar. Then I went around in a wider hook and laid in wait submerged in the convoy's path, and sure enough the escorts didn't know where I was until the merchants started burning.

[Dr Sys]

Some do and some don't - there is a likelyhood based on the time period and ship class. As you get farther into the war, you are going to have more and more outfitted with radar - until ultimately pretty much they all have it.

Planes have always been a bit of a sore point in this game for us WW2 Sub simmers. Sh4 cheats by always knowing where your sub is - so the planes always will route within visual distance of your sub - so if you are on the surface they will almost certainly see you.

[TommyGuns]

I have thousand of hours on Silent Hunter 4 with and without mods.
Japanese escorts and merchants do not have radar. They don't.

[zosxavius]

The answer is no because historically the Japanese had vastly inferior radar and widespread usage didn't come until very late in the war. They also had radar warning receivers but also rarely used them or trusted them. From what I understand they also didn't work very well. I believe that TMO models later escorts having radar? But in general the answer is no.

The fact is that the US submarines typically had vastly better equipment and held a massive advantage over the Japanese. Our subs were essentially immune to depth charges too until some politician stupidly admitted to the press that the Japanese were underestimating how deep American subs could dive.

For the most part the US submarine action in the Pacific was a turkey shoot against unprotected merchant vessels with the Japanese refusing to adopt convoy tactics. If you are just getting into this game and want to increase the realism factor I'd suggest TMO, its a great mod that definitely makes the escorts more of a threat. Airplanes can be a real threat too so be prepared to dive the first moment your radar picks up a plane because even if they are out of range they likely are running a patrol and will circle back overhead soon enough.