Peacetime scoring pushed submarines toward the wrong targets

Were submarines unfairly hobbled during Royal Navy anti-submarine exercises?

Not deliberately: fixed schedules, prestige targets, safety limits, and peacetime incentives made exercise behaviour differ from wartime choices.

Exercise incentives changed how submariners selected targets. A simulated attack on a battleship or carrier brought prestige, while firing at a destroyer could be judged a wasted opportunity. In war, destroying that escort would be valuable in its own right and might open a later route to the capital ship. Exercise time limits also constrained the slow repositioning available to submarines. Useful training therefore operated under a different risk and reward structure from combat, a serious caution when turning results into doctrine.