Being chased: What would you do?

[Bothersome]

Playing TMO 1.9....

Last night, as captain of the USS Narwhal, I had a 680 ton sub chaser come after me. Thing to know before deciding, is Narwhal class has two 4" guns and is slow diving. 2 minutes to get 60 in a normal dive. Crash takes about 1 minute to 60 feet. Turn rate is slow. But has large batteries and lots of fuel (long range).

It was about 22:00 local time for the sub and I'm in Luzon Straight seeking a convoy or other juicy merchants. I get a radar contact at 55 degrees. Ship looks to be moving fast due east. My course is 245. Hydrophone says it's a warship. So I continue on my bearing at 12 knots. Medium waves.

I time compress a little to verify contact is moving away. I check radar and he is at my 120 about 9Km away. TC again some and reverify. Contact is now about 8Km and looks to be closing.

What would you do?

Me? I set battle stations and get on the radar and get as close of an estimate of distance as possible. Then jump in the aft gun and start shooting. Didn't make the first hit till about 5500 out. Finally got at couple of hits. My other gun got a few hits too, occasionally. Target finally goes down at about 4500 out. No hits and no damage to sub.

My XO says in confidence, that it was a risky plan and HQ always recommends escape. I explain my thinking is that since this lone ship was on a course probably on a hunt and not an escort, it would relentlessly pursue us. Possibly for days. And, since it was alone, it was worth a fight for the surface.

[HMCS]

What kind of warship? Akizuki Class DD or a trawler? Light conditions?

I wouldn't take on a serious escort like that, personally.

[Bothersome]

I don't know what kind it was. It sort of looked like a tug boat to me.

[Keelbuster]

My gut feeling is that manning the deck gun oneself allows for unrealistic accuracy. If I get the range right, I can pretty much land hit after hit on a boat like 5-6000 yards away. These are really long shots... Maybe try your scenario again but let your crew do the gunning... I have a feeling you would be convinced to dive when the subchaser got within 3000 yards because his shells would be zeroing in pretty close.

[Admiral8Q]

Would you rather get depth charged by a tug boat like a sub chaser? Not in the Narwhal. It's two 6" deck guns by the way, not 4". Those buggers can whipe out one of those little ships quite quick.

What I would do? I'd tell the deck gun crew to fire at will. Then go to the bridge, ahead flank and keep changing rudder to keep the counter fire off us. Generally keep the bow in it's derection, but always keep an angle so that both guns can fire.

That's what I'd do.

[peabody]

My opinion, yes the 6 inch guns, if they hit, do some damage. But the key is survival. If it looked like a tugboat, it was probably an armed trawler which does not have much fire power, nor is it heavily armored. BUT if it does fire and hit you, and does some hull damage, you may find yourself not being able to submerge, or maybe submerge but not very deep. So, even though you may defeat him, is it worth losing the sub later because of damage.

And if it had turned out to be a destroyer instead of a "tugboat", you could find yourself staring at 6- 5inch guns, instead of one and if he gets your distance right, the Narwhal will take a while to submerge to avoid it. And you may not come out looking so pretty.

And you are talking TMO here, remember Ducimus is an evil man. :har: Be very, very careful. He tends to have a lot of tricks up his sleeve. :03:

Also, in case you didn't know, I don't know about TMO but in the 'stock' game TC is a Destroyer magnet!!!

Peabody

[Bothersome]

I think you may be very right about time compression being a destroyer magnet.

When I first got the contact, I kept on course at first. Then thought it might be a lone merchant. So I stopped to get a target heading. Noticed it seemed to be moving fairly quickly and determined a warship. Then verified by hydrophone. Decided to leave it and continue on. Didn't notice it was getting any closer so I TC to speed along. That's when I noticed it was giving chase after about 30 seconds of 32x TC.

I'll try to remember to 1x around the bad guys.

[magic452]

I concur with the TC thing. I recently attacked a convoy and was well on my way for an easy escape, at about 6,000 yd I hit 32x by mistake and the three DD almost instantly started coming my way. I had just saved so I loaded it up and avoided more than 4x TC and they just didn't react like they did before.
Couldn't play the save thou so had to endure the DC attack from the original play. I also think high TC draws aircraft as well.

Magic

[commandosolo2009]

Playing TMO 1.9....

Last night, as captain of the USS Narwhal, I had a 680 ton sub chaser come after me. Thing to know before deciding, is Narwhal class has two 4" guns and is slow diving. 2 minutes to get 60 in a normal dive. Crash takes about 1 minute to 60 feet. Turn rate is slow. But has large batteries and lots of fuel (long range).

It was about 22:00 local time for the sub and I'm in Luzon Straight seeking a convoy or other juicy merchants. I get a radar contact at 55 degrees. Ship looks to be moving fast due east. My course is 245. Hydrophone says it's a warship. So I continue on my bearing at 12 knots. Medium waves.

I time compress a little to verify contact is moving away. I check radar and he is at my 120 about 9Km away. TC again some and reverify. Contact is now about 8Km and looks to be closing.

What would you do?

Me? I set battle stations and get on the radar and get as close of an estimate of distance as possible. Then jump in the aft gun and start shooting. Didn't make the first hit till about 5500 out. Finally got at couple of hits. My other gun got a few hits too, occasionally. Target finally goes down at about 4500 out. No hits and no damage to sub.

My XO says in confidence, that it was a risky plan and HQ always recommends escape. I explain my thinking is that since this lone ship was on a course probably on a hunt and not an escort, it would relentlessly pursue us. Possibly for days. And, since it was alone, it was worth a fight for the surface.


Well, at my case, If the escort has no depth charges, I flank and ram them from behind.. I know I know, risky and ****s up the boat, but once he's disabled, we surface and light them up in circles..

one thing not realistic about escorts is that they dont seem to run out of depth charges (thanks to the onboard at-the-time depth charge factory installed :har::har:) which leads us to the up and down policy...

[V.C. Sniper]

go super uber deep