Sink specific convoy mission
 

I just received a mission to sink a specific convoy going from Australia to Colombo Sri Lanka. I have never had a mission like this in SH III, or the American missions in 4. This is new as I was given 22 days to frag the whole convoy. Has anyone had this mission and, if so, should I expect anything worse from a normal convoy encounter?

I've never seen anything like that either. Sounds more like an SH5 mission, and hardly realistic.

I agree that it is not realistic at all. I told a friend of mine who also has III and 4 about this mission and I joked about being on eternal patrol by the time it was done. If a convoy needs to be fragged that bad, send a task force of destroyers and cruisers, not a lone IX boat.

I will probably update this thread with my mission progress, since this mission appears to be a new one.

EDIT: I looked up the mission in the Mission Editor. I know it is "cheating", but I had a bad feeling about this mission. It turns out my bad feeling was justified. The primary target is a large ocean liner (troop transport?) with a coastal merchant and an Old Medium Split merchant. However, that is not the fun part. The fun part are the three J-Class destroyers, the Clemson and the Tribal escorting the thing. :wah::damn:

I got this mission so I headed to Australia and saw lots of convoys but there was nothing to let me know which one was my target. Very odd mission.:hmmm:

On the other hand there is no punishment for ignoring a mission. The worst that can happen is that if you ask for a new mission they'll give you the same assignment again. Just go sink ships and go home when you're ready. BdU won't really care. :sunny:

A giant red objective star should appear on the map where the target convoy is. I saw this clearly when I zoomed the map all the way out.

I know and I have certainly considered it. The best-case scenario is to hit the cruiseliner with a full spread at 7000 meters, outside the visual range of any trouble that will come calling. It wouldn't be the first time I've done it on a large target.

I am going to at least try. What is the worst that can happen? :D:ping::har::88)

I finally got around to doing this mission. It was every bit as rough as I thought it would be. At the time of this writing, I am still leaving the area where I sank the Huge European Liner, which is the main target. I positioned myself within the area where the convoy and prepared for my attack. I miscalculated the bearing of the target ship and found I would be too far away for a perfect range 90 deg. AOB shot, so I had to rely on the TDC. I fired my four front tubes and quietly began my dive to 190 meters, knowing the escorts would hear my torpedoes soon enough. Not halfway through the run, I hear everyone's favorite sound.

:ping:*PING*:ping:

I immediately dumped a BOLD canister and hit ahead flank. In the span of three minutes, I am knuckling and changing speed everywhere while I hear all five ships banging away with sonar. I will tell you folks that having five VERY ANGRY destroyers hammering away at you at once is not fun. Fortunately, the decoys did their job and distracted the closest escorts. As they are dropping charges, I find out the hard way that at 1 knot, I am unable to go deeper than 197 Meters. I guess I did not have enough speed to have the planes offset the pressure that deep. Obviously, speeding up was not an option. Either I escaped or I was dead since I could not go deeper. Only a stray depth charge grazed my boat, shaking up my deck gun crew and scratching the deck gun and sonar coating. I came to periscope depth about 45 minutes before writing this post to see how many of the five escorts I lost. I found one of the Tribals 3600 yards away with its engines off waiting for me to surface. Never saw that before and I am glad I saw him first. I still have my kill and I am creeping away, relatively safe for now. I doubt I will accept another one of these missions as the escorts mean business and have the gear to make life miserable. At least I am still going. (Realism ~75%)

EDIT: Well, I made it back and apparently I did well as I just got U-796, a Type XVIII Walter U-Boat (which, of course, historically never saw the completion of its construction)

Now THAT was a good story. Now I know when to expect a command. :up:

I had this mission... It was pretty easy given a lot of preparation. They told me of the destination(dubayy) and the number of days till the convoys arrival. So instead of going toward the convoy I headed toward the destination at a good pace, maybe even flank speed for quite a while. To get to the port they have to pass through the Gulf of Oman into the Persian Gulf... and there is a choke point between the two... So I positioned myself at the narrowest point in the center at a location that still gave me a good depth to dive to safety... then I waited. Eventually they were within sonar range... using my pencil I was able to mark the positions of the convoy and draw out their path... I put myself in alignment for a great shot and waited, when they were close I raised my periscope. There were two ships that were my targets(big red stars on the boats on the nav map)... can't remember the boat's type name off hand, but they were huge 35kish Kind Edward battleships or something along those lines. I was in the perfect place for a shot. My patience, placement, and measurements had worked out perfectly.

I don't usually save for a specific encounter, but I knew this would be fun later if I wanted to replay and mess around...

FYI, in the mission you only have to sink one marked ship, not the whole convoy or all of the designated ships. That would be impossible given their size and speed. The timing was in the darkness of night, thankfully. I set my four steam torpedoes to go right under the ship and travel at high speed to keep them from avoiding the spread. I shot and connected, but the hits were not enough to slow it down below the 20ish knots pace and it continued with me having no chance to reload and go for a follow up, not to mention the escorts... The torpedoes didn't hit where I needed them to, so he got away...

It was a lot of build up for that... so I reloaded... same exact situation, except this time the torpedoes hit in the right places disabling the props and even though I went deep to safely reload it was not needed... before I reloaded and resurfaced the vessel capsized and my mission was accomplished.

So, I didn't find the mission difficult, but there is some luck involved in getting the torpedoes where you need them to disable or down the ship and with only 4 bow torpedoes you have to make them count on a ship of that size.