[bill clarke]

Ok guys this may sound silly, but in the game we get a red icon to signify a enemy contact, but in reality how did the u-baots fins their victims ?

[Khayman]

Patrol lines of U-Boats along presumed Convoy courses. First one to spot a convoy would home in other boats. Codebreaking and other intelligence. Guesswork. Sometimes the Luftwaffe, but their position reports were frequently found to be so inaccurate as to be virtually useless.

[tbarak]

I read too that they used a kind of dragnet technique, where the boats spread out abreast with maybe 50 miles between them and they "swept" the sea. Much like how fowl hunters walk abreast through the bushes to flush game birds. Only problem was I think maximum visibility is maybe 15 miles so there were always holes in their line of sight. It was in all reality a pathetically hit and miss operation with too few boats and ineffective tactics.

[runyan99]

In short, they picked a good spot, and then got lucky.

[Heibges]

The S.O.P for a patrol would be to stay on the surface and conserve as much fuel as possible. Soundchecks were conducted at dawn and dusk, so the uboat wouldn't be surprised in the rapidly changing visibility conditions.

I heavy fog, and conditions of extremely poor visibility, uboats stayed submerged because the danger of being rammed was greatly iincreased.

Airborne radar caused the the uboats to have to recharge batteries at night and attack submerged during the day. Their great successes had been mostly based on the highly mobile nighttime surface attack.

After Black May, uboats were increasingly forced to stay submerged for up to and including the entire patrol. This was accomplished through use of the snorkel. Due to its low underwater speed, the only way a uboat could intercept a target now, was if it steamed right over it. Also, by this time, uboats spent much more of their time going to and from port rather than patrolling for the same reason.

During the good years, to intercept a convoy they would set up a patrol line in the convoys path. They would move toward the convoy at low speed. If they got to a point where they should have intecepted the convoy, but hadn't, they turn around and follow a reverse course at hight speed, then start the process again. The first uboat to spot the convoy became the contact holder and would broadcast updates every hour. If a contact holder stopped broadcasting, another boat was expected to take over as contact holder. Keep in mind, uboats did not conduct "coordinated attacks" on convoys in the tradional military sense in the word.