BlondieBC
Banned
Agreed, but given British shipping patterns the area where there would be a large number of high value targets routinely passing through are fairly predictable by both the raider and the escort commanders. Heavy escorts, local covering forces, rapid response forces etc can be used to force the raiders to choose to operate in far safer but far less valuable waters. A lot of this is the same strategy the UK used against u-boats. Each day further into the Atlantic ever expanding air cover forced the U-boats to operate was a net victory as that decreased the amount of effective time on station for a U-boat by 2 days. Forcing battlecruiser raiders to operate in the Caribbean or off of West Africa is a net win for the RN even if they lose merchies down there.
Not in this war. At the start of WW1, 1/3 of all merchant ships (10% of tonnage) were sail. Most ships did not have radios. The average response time to a report U-boat attack was over 12 hours. They UK lacked weapons to deal with a U-boat once it submerged. Air cover of merchant ships is basically unknown. You are confusing the WW2 tactics developed from the lessons of WW1 with the actual WW1 tactics, at least early in the war.