A RAND study pretty much defined the stuff about a decade ago.
You're wrong. Wolfpacks were the answer to convoys, not the other way around. Convoys were the answer to individual subs in 1917.Originally Posted by William F. Owen
Wolfpacks were quite complicated. Aerial recce played a minor role, there were never more than two aerial recce squadrons with sufficient range available and their aircraft were quite suboptimal.
First Phase:
Establish a screening line till one sub gets in contact with a convoy (that enough subs can intercept in time).
Second Phase:
One sub gets into contact and keeps in contact, shadows the convoy and radios its position and movement.
A central station receives the radio message and transmits necessary info, not the least to make sure that every sub gets the message with minimum radiation from the shadowing sub.
Third Phase:
The subs of the wolfpack move into position and attack all in the same night, from different directions if possible at almost the same time.
This was a saturation approach to overcome the defences.
Fourth Phase:
Convoy still being shadowed, subs regroup for an attack another night, proceed to phase 3 again.
It's vastly different from the more understood tactics of battlefleets and army units/formations from battalion up to corps (the big arrows on maps).
This vast difference easily justifies that earlier authors chose to attach an own label to this behaviour.
Conventional tactics don't include an all-round pulse attack - not even during the annihilation of a pocket.
The German army would never have developed wolfpack tactics - their mode of attack was too much opposed to the Schwerpunkt idea. The difference is huge.
@marct:
"Finding" was no key issue in the Teutoburg Forest battle. Enemy identification was the key issue for the Romans, logistics & politics for the Germans.
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