Index
Here are direct links to some of the key posts in the thread:
Pre-game comments: Lower down this post, plus:
More pre-game comments
Convoy war progress reports:
October 1st 1939
October 15th 1939
Vichy event
November 1st 1939
November 15th 1939, December 1st 1939 (combined)
December 15th 1939
Trade Efficiency Report, Winter 1939
U-Boat Patrol Lines, Winter 1939
January 1st 1940
January 15th 1940
February 1st 1940
February 15th 1940
March 1st 1940
March 15th 1940
April 1st 1940
April 15th 1940
May 1st 1940, May 15th 1940 (combined)
June 1st 1940, Total sinkings pass 1000, campaign declared successful.
Barbarossa:
Preparations, June 1st 1940
More preparations, June 15th 1940
Final preparations, July 1st 1940
DoW vs Soviets, 05:00 hours, July 1st 1940
Status report at time of DoW
July 7th 1940
July 8th 1940, the pockets close on the Russian armies
July 16th 1940
July 22nd 1940
July 26th 1940
August 1st 1940
Early August 1940, Barbarossa declared successful
October 27th 1940, Last Bitter Peace city captured, 116 days into campaign
November 26th 1940, Stalin Sues for Peace
Barbarossa in retrospect
Subsequent operations:
March 1941, Iraq and Persia annexed
May 1st 1941, Situation reports: India, Middle East, Battle of Britain
Early June 1941, Situation reports
Early July 1941, Situation reports
Late July 1941, Situation reports
August 30th 1941, Sealion launched
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Are submarines worthless?... or just hard to use effectively?
In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I have started a "What If?" Germany game... what if the German Naval High Command had accepted Doenitz's "300 U-Boat" plan for neutralizing England, and had persuaded Hitler to back it?
Doomsday v1.2, no mods, no file editting. Normal/Aggressive.
Minister Choices:
Schacht, Gurtner (switching to Busch as soon as he becomes available), Doenitz (as soon as he becomes available).
Tech research:
No Tech-Rushing by more than one year (and rarely even that much). Focus on Naval Doctrines and Air Doctrines.
U-Boat production:
Nine long serials of Type-IX U-Boats (1938-model), timed to reach a target strength of 63 U-Boat flotillas (at five U-Boats per flotilla, that's 315 U-Boats) by "Danzig or War". No other pre-war Naval production except for a few Transports.
German Forces as of August 30th, 1939:
63 U-Boat flotillas, 9 more building.
- starting Naval forces plus Graf Spee and six transports.
17 INT, 9 CAS, 12 TAC, 6 NAV
87 Infantry, 1 Cavalry, 3 Mountain, 12 Motorized, 12 Armor, 4 HQ, 4 Garrison.
Planned strategy (Operation Sea-Monkey):
- Pre-position the U-Boats in the North Atlantic before the outbreak of war.
- Focus on Convoy Raiding at night, under "Sea Wolf" leaders, avoiding battle as much as possible.
- Planned operations areas for Phase One (Operation Sea-Monkey) stretch from the Central Atlantic south of Greenland, to the Spanish and African coasts, to the Azores and Central South Atlantic.
- Attack France as soon as possible after Poland falls, in order to gain Naval and Air bases on the Bay of Biscay, thus avoiding the risky passage around England... and allowing the Luftwaffe to cooperate with the Kriegsmarine.
- Attack Spain as soon as possible after France falls, to further improve our strategic position with even better bases, and to close Gibraltar... thus forcing the British Convoys to take the longer and more exposed route around Africa, instead of through the Med.
- Disperse the U-Boat force in stacks of six flotillas, each in a seperate sea area (not just a seperate sea zone).
Sneak-Peek:
As far as I can tell from looking in the save, Britain has 1080 Convoys and 170 Escorts as of August 1939. My operational target: 100+ sinkings per month, which will entirely destroy the British Merchant Marine in less than a year.
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Preliminary Results:
By the time Poland was annexed (Sept 11th, 1939), I had sunk 121 Convoys and 9 Escorts... at a cost of 2 U-Boats sunk (but 9 new U-Boats were launched in the same 12-day period). If this rate of attrition can be kept up... which is highly unlikely... the British will have no Convoys left by Christmas 1939... none.
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