Identifying named ships in a convoy?

[CapnLanky]

This may sound obvious but Ive gotten a couple missions where I am required to sink a specific ship in a convoy and ive struggled with them. The current one Im dealing with is in a convoy of 16-37. How do I identify the correct ship and avoid detection? Even in heavy fog Im getting picked up by warships before Ive been able to identify more than a couple.

[urseus]

Sink em all and let Donitz sort it out.

[Dewgle]

Discretion is the better part of valor
The great thing about being a u-boat commander is that you have the element of surprise on your side and because of the nature of u-boat warfare in WW2, you have complete control over the engagement. If the current sea state is too rough with high swells causing your conning tower to broach above the waves and threatening to give away your position, or if visibility is poor due to heavy fog making it impossible to see beyond a few meters in front of your boat? Then do not engage.

Mark the convoy's position and current course then pull away from the convoy until you enter "travel mode" and can use higher time compression to shadow the convoy at a safe distance while waiting for better conditions. This becomes more difficult later in the war due to allied radar equipment but enjoy the freedom to be more selective about your engagements while you can in the early war.

"How do I avoid detection?"
As I try to tell all new players; Get into the habit of hovering your mouse over everything. Every button, every switch, every icon. You'd be surprised the wealth of knowledge the devs slipped into the game wherever they could. Case in point, the Detection Hint Icon.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2784802244
^This handy little tool will tell you how many decibels your boat is generating, how 'visible' you are to enemy sonar pings and how visible your periscope (or your entire boat) is above water.

Some players might consider the DHI a bit of a cheat and ignore it or disable it completely but over 1,000 hours into Uboat and I still use it unashamedly to help remind me which components I need to disable and to give me helpful feedback in real-time so I can better learn and understand what I did wrong to give myself away during a convoy infiltration.

"How do I identify the correct ship?"
If we presume the conditions are just right, a dark night with calm seas and you've already shut off all non-essential components that could give away your position such as the gyro compass and you've switched your depth steers to manual control with an engineer overseeing the dive to keep the boat steady and avoid broaching the surface. You've disabled the automatic loading & warming of torpedoes and turned on the blue light to hush your crew.

Well now your objective is to infiltrate the convoy. Most players who are new to u-boat tactics just try to approach the convoy from the sides but this is a mistake. Approaching from the sides puts you at greater risk of being detected AND puts your torpedo solutions at higher risk of missing because of the extreme range required to stay out of an escort's detection field.

Most u-boat commanders in real life fired their torpedoes from spitting-distance of around 500 meters or less and that's exactly how I play as well. It's impossible to miss at that range even when the target is zig-zagging and it makes it much easier to identify a particular ship such as the mission you're describing.

But how do you infiltrate a convoy?
The most effective method is approaching directly from the front and going right down the throat of the beast. Using your map tools, plot the course of each escort leading the convoy and try to position your boat between their paths. Once you've accomplished this? Go dead silent..

Shut everything off including your engines, come to a complete stop and just wait for the escorts to pass by. Sometimes this is not enough and it is necessary to dive down deep to put a little extra distance between you and the escorts as they sail over your head. But once they've sailed over you and you are in their baffles? Now it's time to rise back up to periscope depth and have the time of your life because now you're the fox in the hen house. You have free reign over the entire convoy so long as you don't rev your engines too fast or let your periscope get spotted by a merchant.

Escorts cannot hear very well behind them you see, so once you're inside the convoy, you will be much harder to detect. I once was able to sink several tankers in the middle of a convoy and was never discovered because of the noise and chaos that ensued allowing me to slip away clean after getting my required tonnage.

I hope that helps and good hunting.

[Battleshipfree99]

Ship names can be seen on most merchants within 2~2.5km. Try your best to get that close and identify each ship or simply forget it - sink them all!

[Lipi]

Originally posted by Battleshipfree99:

Ship names can be seen on most merchants within 2~2.5km. Try your best to get that close and identify each ship or simply forget it - sink them all!

Poor visibility may not allow that when your max radius is < 1km.


I personally approach a convoy from behind or from the flanks wherever there is a sufficient gap so that I will always have a 3-4km clearance from the nearest warship. Vanguard escorts can detect you using their bow mounted sonar no matter how quiet you are and even if you're at 150m (their max range is appx 4km as well), so I only come from the front if there is sufficient gap between the escorts to slip through their detection cones.

If there is no gap at all, I pick a side to infiltrate of my choosing, kill off exactly one escort to create a "breach", run away from the convoy until chasing escorts give up, then go back and this time comfortably infiltrate through the "breach" I created.

Now I will get into 700-400m of each merchant and see via periscope which is my target.

[jfblake90]

its a good idea to shadow the convoy for awhile to gather data and decide on your approach. If I get near a convoy during the day I will watch it from a distance and try to ID targets, get a course, speed, etc.. At that point I plot an intercept point and attack radius on the map. Steam ahead to the interception point and then begin my attack run.

I use that data gathering during the day where I can see the flags and names of boats clearly because I cant see crap other than silhouettes at night.

If you use vanilla game, targeting is alot easier. I use realistic nav and TDC amongst other things so thorough planning is more essential.