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Post by oldpop2000 on Dec 5, 2018 11:24:38 GMT -6
Something I am not so sure about a US surface raider in the year of 1935 is its survivability against the the Japanese submarine and land based Mitsubishi G3M/G4M if you want to deploy it in the area of Borneo, Malaya. If I have control over the area of operations for a surface raider, then I would not conduct surface raider operations in the South China Sea, Malacca Strait, or the Gulf of Siam(Thailand) because they are narrow seas and straits. Those are dangerous for surface raiders. Keep the surface raiders in open waters. The Japanese trade route from the area in question up towards Japan can be attacked from the open ocean far more safely.
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Post by axe99 on Dec 6, 2018 15:48:48 GMT -6
As Oldpop's numbers will show (don't have time to look now, but I'm pretty confident it's a good link), while the Japanese did indeed lose a far higher proportion of their shipping, the Allies lost far more tonnage overall. Japan != The Axis. I was specifically talking about how frustrating it was to get the numbers except Japan. I am annoyed. Sorry, my bad - in my reading, it appears Japan's losses far outweighed those of Italy and Germany (who still lose a decent amount of traffic on coastal routes and during the invasion of Norway, and in the Baltic, but relatively insignificant numbers by 'Battle of the Atlantic' standards) - so as Japan didn't come close, Italy and Germany (and Romania and Finland, if you include them) aren't enough to move the dial anywhere near close enough to raise the total tonnage lost beyond the Allied figure. Some bits and pieces I've come across in my reading: - I've just finished reading Haarr's No Room for Mistakes about Allied submarine operations in Northern European waters in 1939-1940 (it's a great read as well - I highly recommend it). There's a handy appendix at the end listing ships sunk or damaged by Allied subs in that area in that period - eyeballing that gives around 135,000 GRT of merchant or transport shipping sunk.
- Four British fleet carriers sunk nearly 100,000 GRT of enemy shipping in strikes along the Norwegian coast between April and December 1944 (Carrier Operations in World War II, p. 29)
- The Soviet submarine campaign in the Baltic in 1942 cost the USSR 12 submarines (mainly to mines), and sank around 18 ships totallying 45,000 tons directly, and a further four vessels by mines laid by the submarines (The Naval War in the Baltic, p. 184)
- In 1942, Japanese submarines sank little more than 100,000 tons of merchant shipping (Anti-Submarine Warfare, p. 183)
- Germany convoyed 5.7 milion tons of shipping through the Straits of Dover in 1942, losing 17 ships and 42 escorts (either escorting or minesweeping). Germany lost 12 ships and 43 escorts in 1943. From 1942, the passage was made only by single ships with ever-stronger protection. (Naval Warfare in the English Channel, 1939-1945, p. 164)
- Overall, the Allies sank thirty-eight steamers in the Aegean, totaling 72,100 GRT, between the end of September 1943 and August 1944 (from "Struggle for the Middle Sea: The Great Navies at War in the Mediterranean Theater, 1940-1945" by Vincent P. O'Hara)
- The Axis lost 553,099 GRT in merchant ships in the Mediterranean between January and May 1943 (from a table in Struggle for the Middle Sea)
- Up through January 1941 the Regia Marina convoyed to Africa 331 freighters carrying 41,544 men with losses of 0.6 percent, and 346,559 tons of supplies with losses of 2.2 percent" (from "Struggle for the Middle Sea: The Great Navies at War in the Mediterranean Theater, 1940-1945" by Vincent P. O'Hara)
- In the first six months of 1941, 94 percent of the Axis materiel shipped to Libya arrived safely. From July traffic volume fell, but losses rose from 8,255 tons to 14,736 tons." (from "Struggle for the Middle Sea: The Great Navies at War in the Mediterranean Theater, 1940-1945" by Vincent P. O'Hara - Ch 9) - note, this is inconsistent with Friedman's table from Naval AA Guns and Gunnery, above.
- British submarines sunk or damaged a total of 518,000 GRT during WW2 (from a table in Bagnasco's Submarines of WW2)
- Soviet submarines sank a total of 231,058 GRT during WW2, MTBs sunk a further 15,700 GRT or so (from tables in On Seas Contested)
- Between Apr 1941 and Dec 1942, inclusive, Allied forces sunk around 449,300 tons of enemy merchant/transport shipping (from a table in Naval Anti-aircraft Guns and Gunnery)
- In total, Allied submarines sank 804,576 tons (not clear if GRT, but one would guess probably) of Italian shippin in WW2 (from a table in On Seas Contested)
While these numbers add up, they don't come close to: Submarines of WW2 has "In WW2, of the approximately 33 million tons of merchant shipping lost, more than 23 million were sunk by submarine (Submarines of WW2, p. 8)" - Assuming this is correct, the Allies of losses of a dash over 20 million tons mean allied ships comprise the majority of merchant shipping lost.
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AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
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Post by AiryW on Dec 6, 2018 22:37:56 GMT -6
I doubt those figures because that would mean the losses by all non-Japanese axis combined was only 2 million tons and the listings of ship losses already add up to 3 million tons for Germany and Italy while only restricting it to the half of ships listed with complete listings and disregarding all ships they might have operated under foreign flags.
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Post by aeson on Dec 7, 2018 13:05:46 GMT -6
I don't have any of these, but if you're interested in Axis shipping losses in the Second World War you might try to find a copy of:
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Post by axe99 on Dec 7, 2018 17:37:07 GMT -6
I doubt those figures because that would mean the losses by all non-Japanese axis combined was only 2 million tons and the listings of ship losses already add up to 3 million tons for Germany and Italy while only restricting it to the half of ships listed with complete listings and disregarding all ships they might have operated under foreign flags. Where do you get the only 2 million from? Apologies if my math is spotty, but if it's around 33 million tons lost overall, and 20 million lost were Allied vessels, and 8 million were Japanese, wouldn't that leave around 5 million for Germany and Italy? As always, correct me if I'm wrong. Obviously those numbers are only as good as those sources, but Bagnasco's Submarines of World War Two is pretty highly regarded, as is the author more generally, so while everyone makes mistakes, I'd be inclined to believe it unless (relatively strong) countervailing evidence popped up. Also - great links Aeson . I've heard good things about The World's Merchant Fleets' as well (it just hasn't made it's way to the top of my reading list yet).
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Post by aeson on Dec 8, 2018 0:08:59 GMT -6
Where do you get the only 2 million from? Apologies if my math is spotty, but if it's around 33 million tons lost overall, and 20 million lost were Allied vessels, and 8 million were Japanese, wouldn't that leave around 5 million for Germany and Italy? As always, correct me if I'm wrong. Obviously those numbers are only as good as those sources, but Bagnasco's Submarines of World War Two is pretty highly regarded, as is the author more generally, so while everyone makes mistakes, I'd be inclined to believe it unless (relatively strong) countervailing evidence popped up. Rounding issues. You can get a lot of different answers to a simple subtraction problem such as 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 depending on how you round the numbers before you do the subtraction. - Standard or banker's rounding to the first significant digit of each number: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 30 - 20 - 8 = 2 million GRT other losses.
- Round strictly up to the nearest million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 -22 - 9 = 2 million GRT other losses. - Standard or banker's rounding to the nearest million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 - 22 - 8 = 3 million GRT other losses. - Round to nearest odd integer million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 - 21 - 9 = 3 million GRT other losses. - Round strictly down to the nearest million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 - 21 - 8 = 4 million GRT other losses. - Rounding to the nearest two million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes either 34 - 22 - 8 = 4 million GRT other losses or 32 - 22 - 8 = 2 million GRT other losses.
- Standard or banker's rounding to the nearest ten million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 30 - 20 - 10 = 0 million GRT other losses. Obviously, there are other methods of rounding, and some could produce other answers than those listed above.
As 33 million GRT total - 21.6 million GRT Allied - 8.1 million GRT Japanese losses = 3.3 million GRT other losses, I would say that neither your 5 million GRT nor Airy_W's 2 million GRT is a particularly more accurate ballpark estimate of the non-Allied non-Japanese losses based on the numbers given, though as you rounded 33 to 33, 21.6 to 20, and 8.1 to 8 I would suggest that your rounding methodology is not perhaps as consistently applied as it should have been. Also, not that it greatly matters for something like this, but it tends to be a good idea to do as little rounding as possible before getting to the 'final' result, and if you do round numbers to try to round them in ways which will minimize error for the operations you'll be doing with them - for example, when subtracting one number from another rounding both numbers strictly up or strictly down will generally produce less error than standard rounding.
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Post by axe99 on Dec 8, 2018 16:21:10 GMT -6
Where do you get the only 2 million from? Apologies if my math is spotty, but if it's around 33 million tons lost overall, and 20 million lost were Allied vessels, and 8 million were Japanese, wouldn't that leave around 5 million for Germany and Italy? As always, correct me if I'm wrong. Obviously those numbers are only as good as those sources, but Bagnasco's Submarines of World War Two is pretty highly regarded, as is the author more generally, so while everyone makes mistakes, I'd be inclined to believe it unless (relatively strong) countervailing evidence popped up. Rounding issues. You can get a lot of different answers to a simple subtraction problem such as 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 depending on how you round the numbers before you do the subtraction. - Standard or banker's rounding to the first significant digit of each number: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 30 - 20 - 8 = 2 million GRT other losses.
- Round strictly up to the nearest million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 -22 - 9 = 2 million GRT other losses. - Standard or banker's rounding to the nearest million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 - 22 - 8 = 3 million GRT other losses. - Round to nearest odd integer million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 - 21 - 9 = 3 million GRT other losses. - Round strictly down to the nearest million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 33 - 21 - 8 = 4 million GRT other losses. - Rounding to the nearest two million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes either 34 - 22 - 8 = 4 million GRT other losses or 32 - 22 - 8 = 2 million GRT other losses.
- Standard or banker's rounding to the nearest ten million GRT: 33 - 21.6 - 8.1 becomes 30 - 20 - 10 = 0 million GRT other losses. Obviously, there are other methods of rounding, and some could produce other answers than those listed above.
As 33 million GRT total - 21.6 million GRT Allied - 8.1 million GRT Japanese losses = 3.3 million GRT other losses, I would say that neither your 5 million GRT nor Airy_W's 2 million GRT is a particularly more accurate ballpark estimate of the non-Allied non-Japanese losses based on the numbers given, though as you rounded 33 to 33, 21.6 to 20, and 8.1 to 8 I would suggest that your rounding methodology is not perhaps as consistently applied as it should have been. Also, not that it greatly matters for something like this, but it tends to be a good idea to do as little rounding as possible before getting to the 'final' result, and if you do round numbers to try to round them in ways which will minimize error for the operations you'll be doing with them - for example, when subtracting one number from another rounding both numbers strictly up or strictly down will generally produce less error than standard rounding.
Again, my apologies - that's not rounding issues, that's me being tired and assuming I remembered numbers I didn't issues (rounding 21.6 to 20 is to the nearest ten, in most normal cases of rounding, which would be a ridiculous level of rounding in this situaiton). You're quite right, 33-21.6-8.1 = 3.3 million, which does seem a bit low (I wouldn't be surprised if the Med would account for that alone). That being said, I highly doubt that Germany, Italy and the Axis minors are going to have losses of 13.5 million GRT between them (the amount required to bring the Axis total lost tonnage above that of the Allied). I think the onus is still on evidence being provided that would suggest this is the case, assuming 1 mn GRT lost by the minor Axis members (which would be a pretty high estimate), that's 6.25mn GRT on average lost by Germany and Italy each. I can't say categorically without having gone through your sources with a spreadsheet, but I'd be very surprised if the Allies carried out an anti-shipping campaign with success that dwarfed that of the US campaign against Japan, but no-one bothered to mention it.
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Post by alexbrunius on Dec 10, 2018 2:20:07 GMT -6
I doubt those figures because that would mean the losses by all non-Japanese axis combined was only 2 million tons and the listings of ship losses already add up to 3 million tons for Germany and Italy while only restricting it to the half of ships listed with complete listings and disregarding all ships they might have operated under foreign flags. I am also puzzled how you count when you got it to be only 2 million? 8.1 for Japan + 21.6 for the allies = 29.7 which leaves 3.3 million tons for the remaining Axis, when subtracted from the "Approximately" 33 million total. It could be as high as 3.8 though since "Approximately 33" could just as well be 33.5. That seems to match the 3 million number you got for Germany and Italy pretty well.
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AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
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Post by AiryW on Dec 11, 2018 6:32:41 GMT -6
That seems to match the 3 million number you got for Germany and Italy pretty well. That wasn't a 3 million ton number I got for them, that was a 3 million ton number that I got for a figure I know to be smaller then the total. Ditto the Japanese. I think that British and American totals are closer to the true amount but still slightly below. The source for 8.1 million is solely Japanese merchant ships. The total figure according to the JANAC study that source is going by is 10.5 million: www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/JANAC-Losses/JANAC-Losses-2.htmlSo 23 million - 10.5 million = 2.5 million for the Italians and Germans, a figure I already know is below the amount that I know is below the total.
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Post by axe99 on Dec 11, 2018 15:15:18 GMT -6
That seems to match the 3 million number you got for Germany and Italy pretty well. That wasn't a 3 million ton number I got for them, that was a 3 million ton number that I got for a figure I know to be smaller then the total. Ditto the Japanese. I think that British and American totals are closer to the true amount but still slightly below. The source for 8.1 million is solely Japanese merchant ships. The total figure according to the JANAC study that source is going by is 10.5 million: www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Japan/IJN/JANAC-Losses/JANAC-Losses-2.htmlSo 23 million - 10.5 million = 2.5 million for the Italians and Germans, a figure I already know is below the amount that I know is below the total. Keep in mind that the 33 million is also only merchant vessels - if all naval vessels were to be included the overall total you were taking away from would also be higher.
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