Sinking Neutral Ships

[Karl Martel]

Is there any "penalty" on sinking neutral ships?

I sink all ships, I did not pay attention to the points I gather for each sunken boat, so maybe you gain less for the neutral ones. Historically speaking, as far as I remember, Dontz issued an order to sink all ships, enemy or neutral, after the USA joined the war, so after the end of 1941. Does it have any application in the game?

[Karl Martel]

PS: Of course, I am ignoring the fact that you can sink nazi uboats and get a good amount of points ;) and no penalty :)

[KeC Horst]

u lose reputation to the BdU i guess

[Ruby]

HI,

With neutral ships you will have no problem at the moment. You just should not sink your own ships/boats.

Cheers Ruby

[El Rushbo]

"I have heard of no neutral merchant ships being sunk. What are you talking about? Such things clearly do not happen"

[[22g]Ben]

I tend to avoid sinking neutral vessels but I suppose it's down to your own individual play style. I once misidentified a neutral boat as an enemy boat, sunk her and worried all the way back to port but didn't see any penalty as a result of my mistake.

[Justin]

Quite contrary.

Arguably, Germany developed the concept of "Unrestricted Submarine Warfare" during WWI. From Wikipedia;

"Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink vessels such as freighters and tankers without warning..."

Hitler ordered such a strategy during the start of the Battle of the Atlantic to compensate for the relative weakness of the Kriegsmarine in comparison to the Royal Navy. In 1940 the British Royal Navy was the strongest Naval force on Earth with over 1,400 warships in operation. A direct confrontation of surface ships by Germany at that time was suicide.

Instead Hitler ordered unrestricted submarine warfare and encouraged his submarines to target vulnerable cargo ships and tankers. Literally anything on the water was fair game unless it flew a Nazi flag.

The Germans had such great success with this initially in large part due to the London Naval Treaty and the subsequent Second London Naval Treaty. After WWI the allies forced Germany to agree to the first treaty which strictly governed submarine size and strength. It imposed restrictions on the size of submarines, the size of their guns, the size of the fleet, and conduct of crews. When it expired in 1936, Germany and Japan refused to participate in a renewed agreement. The allies, however, continued the agreement on their own. They basically kneecapped themselves out of naivety and allowed Germany and Japan to build out their submarine fleets and playbooks in complete secrecy. When Hitler ordered unrestricted submarine warfare the allies were completely unprepared to respond. It took the allies years to develop the technology and tactics to reach parity with German submarines.

They were lured into a false sense of security that the world wasn't going to engage in guerilla warfare with submarines. They were prepared for, and expecting, a large surface navy and massive standoffs like previous wars. That would not have been in Germany's best interest, as she only had so much steel and so much oil with which to wage war. She had to make those resources count, and for years while the allies ramped up anti-submarine technology that's exactly what she did.

So go wild. Tanker? Sure. Freighter? Two please! Cruise ship full of vacationers? Na-night!

[wolf310ii]

Originally posted by Justin:

Instead Hitler ordered unrestricted submarine warfare and encouraged his submarines to target vulnerable cargo ships and tankers. Literally anything on the water was fair game unless it flew a Nazi flag.

No, unrestricted submarine warfare means not, sink anything that floats without the own flag.
It means only, sink any enemy ship without warning.
They even had corridors through the warzone for neutral ships.
Blockade runners lost their neutrality status, neutral ships in british convoys too, also ships who act like an enemy (no lights at night, zick-zack course, ect.)

Also Germany was not forced to agree to the first London Naval Treaty, Germany was not even part of it.
Also Germany didnt refuse to renew the agreement in the second London Naval Treaty, Italy, France and Japan did refuse. The 2nd Treaty was the first Germany agreed to, befor that they were resticted by the Versailes Treaty and not even allowed to own u-boats.
With the 2nd Treaty Germany was allowed to have a navy 35% the size of the Royal Navy and 100% of the submarines the Royal Navy had, with a limit of 2000 tons, wich Hitler limits itself to 45% and stayed far below the 2000 ton limit per boat.
Germany canceled the 2nd Treaty in 1939, after Britain allied with Poland.
Britain was not surprized by secretly build u-boats, they simply thought u-boats were already outdated, because of ASW and ASDIC.

[ждун]

Originally posted by Justin:

"Unrestricted submarine warfare is a type of naval warfare in which submarines sink vessels such as freighters and tankers without warning..."

nono this doesn't mean it was applied to anything including neutral vessels.

It just ment that they attacked enemies without warning. In early WWI it was common for subs to surface, stop a merchant, get aboard, inspect the load, decide if it was valuable to sink, let the crew get off board and call their command so they could organize their resque before actual strike.

Attacking without any warning and without letting the crew to save themselves was considered a war crime cruel and inhuman in the beginning of XX. century. But as WW-I progressed and became more and more violent and cruel this practise was abbandoned in favor of unrestricted sub warfare. This quickly became standard for all other nations too. War became war without sentimentalities. It was just not smart exposing a submarine to unwarned attacks in example by planes for hours during inspections of merchants.

usually neutral vessels where not attacked in WW-II and it was of course generaly forbidden. Attacking them gave these nations a reason to join the enemy parties which was mostly not in the interest of germany.

However there were cases when neutral vessels were attacked by german submarines either by accident, and sometimes on purpuse as provocation or when they had a good reason suspecting them secretely supporting the enemy parties with war supplies.

[Drakken]

Some ships were more neutral than others. Sinking a Spanish ship (or an American or Soviet ship pre-1941) was a big no-no. A Greek or Portuguese ship, not so much, because they were diplomatically puny and would continue to trade war contraband with the Allies.

Also, any neutral ship who was spotted inside an Allied convoy, armed on deck, transmitting and reporting u-boat contacts on radio frequencies, making evasive maneuvers like zig-zagging, or travelling in the dark without their sailing lights on was absolutely fair game.

That being said, I definitely agree that sinking neutral ships willy-nilly should have penalties. It just looked bad because BdU hated having to cook report books and find excuses for "accidents". Sinking only neutral ships would have been a fast way toward early retirement to a motor boat command at best, or facing a court-martial at worst.

[Wyzard]

Ive been sinking USA ship's cause why not

[inix40]

Just a note .. i've destroyed a friendly UBOAT during one of the random missions on B127, when i found it after the time limit and i got a radio message, that my UBOAT should surrender to a German vessel or they are free to shoot on sight. When i came back to the docks, the port defenses opened fire on me, together with German Uboats that were docked there.

So don't shoot on friendly boats :)