Comments by "William Cox" (@WildBillCox13) on "The Drydock - Episode 120" video.
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A few WW2 specific facts before I begin:
Convoy average speed:
12 nauts (12 nautical miles, or 14 standard miles) or 18 nauts (21 miles) per hour, depending on type of merchant ships.
(Liberty ships 12 nauts. Victory ships 18 nauts).
Convoy escort average maximum speed:
21-24 nauts.
U-Boat surfaced speed:
21 nauts
U-boat submerged speed:
7-9 nauts (much slower if hiding from enemy SoNAR)
To whit:
The convoy escort's duty is to escort the convoy. As with rearguards, its essence is not confrontational. It is meant solely to cause the enemy to "deploy", by which I mean in this case to submerge (or, simpler, to slow way down). Once the convoy passes the escort must leave off the attack, and burn oil to get back to its main mission: escort the convoy.
Use of this understanding as a deliberate tactic revealed one of the errors of cheap, mass produced, ASW frigates. Those, you see, were not meant to zoom around at 30 nauts, they needed merely to outrun enemy subs on the surface. And, with the engines they got, this was often a difficult stern chase . . . AND a very long run at maximum power to catch up with the convoy again. The kind of run that ruins engines (which then puts you out of the game until refurbished in a yard).
Happily, once the u-boat is submerged and the convoy passes, its captain is forced to surface again in order to outrun the convoy and reposition himself for a new attack. A surfaced U-boat is at its most vulnerable for interception by Destroyers, of course. Far worse is the danger of interception/interdiction by air.
That introduces the Distant Cover idea. In the distant cover group you have a Carrier which sends out CAP, and ASW and Anti-shipping patrols. You'll have cruisers and, quite often, a battleship. Those are the specialists meant to engage and defeat the enemy units trying to destroy the convoyed merchant ships.
If the convoy escort can force the U-boat to submerge and evade, breaking off its torpedo attack, then the convoy is no longer the hunted. No matter what happens to that escort ship, the U-boat and its course are now known quantities whose future is very, very, short.
Hunter/killer groups, as separate from distant cover, were only tried a few times and found out to be great wastes of time, ships, and effort. This would come back in the Pacific near the end of the war, however, when many Allied warships could be sent off to sink one (or a small group of) code-broken IJN I-class submarine raider(s) or transport. That's how we get newsworthy stories, like that of USS England.
Notes:
1)Destroyers are general warships far more valuable and expensive than mass produced convoy escorts. And they are far more needed for their intended mission of screening friendly capital ships than they are cruising at low speed. It's the same as using Afghan hounds for sheepdogs. This forced upon the allies an economy of resources than ended in the purpose built ASW frigate.
2) The real philosophy behind the Guerre de Course/Handelskrieg is the raising of maritime insurance rates and, therefore, loss of entrepreneurial profits on transported goods. When the costs of transport exceed the expected mission overhead (and also exceed the hoped for profit), the entrepreneur stops sending goods by sea. -WBC
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