Your Mission should choose to accept it- capture a convoy.

[tigercat]

Germany is desperate for supplies and  a propaganda victory.

As one of Germany's military planners you have been assigned the task using any of the resources available to the Third Reich or it's allies to capture all or part of an Allied Convoy and get the ships and their much needed supplies back to a friendly port.Timeline = any period of WW2 .

What resources would you employ ?
What would be your strategy ?
How would you ensure the ships safe passage to Germany
Which convoy route would you target.

[Maverick]

I think initial capture would be by the wolf pack supported by surface vessels.  Once captured (if at all) those same surface vessels could perform close escort whilst the subs would be utilised as outer layer sweepers.  The most logical convoy attacks would be the PQs to Russia, given that Allied resources were stretched fairly thin there and the Soviets were rather reticent to send out any long-range aircraft in support.  The return route would head initially to Norwegian ports and then piecemeal through to northern Germany for a road trip.

Regards,

Mav

[raafif]

great idea !

My first thought was that if America was less isolationist & convoys were implemented from January 1940, the Bismark etc + U-boats in mid-atlantic would intercept a US convoy from Nova Scotia & escort them via Greenland/Iceland to a north German port. Britain was unprepared for convoy-protection (in ships, strategy & technology) until later & never really had a chance to stop anything in the "gap".

Second thought was to hijack one of the Russian-bound convoys like PQ-17.
At that stage the Tirpitz was damaged & the high-command was afraid of losing her too.  But if she, Bismark (not sunk earlier) & other capital ships actually went forth, as was thought at the time, & chased away/sank the R.N. Battleships (major RN ships turned back from PQ-17 to engaged reported German battleships), then Germany could indeed have captured the whole convoy.

As it was the battle was fought largely by the Luftwaffe with easy pickings taken by the wolf-pack.  Eye-witnesses on the flak-ships say they were occasionally firing DOWN on the He-115 & He-111 torpedo-bombers & Ju-88s flying between the ships -- they considered the U-boats as "chicken", staying off at a distance.  Kriegsmarine surface ships were not seen by anyone.

The only Brit aircraft in PQ-17 was a Walrus, no carriers -- so just to add some more excitement of the story, maybe just a CAM-ship or a few small Russian flying-boat fighters for top-cover ??

(my uncle flew on SAR Catalinas from the Shetlands over the Murmansk convoys, rescuing a few sailors -- they had the range to land in Russia but Stalin didn't allow that, so they always returned to base, limiting their operational effectiveness.)