My First Campaign Battleship!
Had been patrolling the mouth of Kii Suido for days with some mild, single target successes. A lone destroyer had been sent out to try to hold us down or scare us off. They were easily evaded and after a time, they moved off to the NW. While we were monitoring his departure, and by accident, I picked up a large convoy on the hydrophone exiting Kii Suido. We pointed our nose at them and as luck would have it, they steamed directly at us. As they got closer, individual screws could be picked out. There was not a single merchant among the dozen or so warhips. The task force spread across 30 degrees of the hydrophone dial.
It was very dark but eventually a Fuso Battleship could be distinguished as the closest target. Purely by accident, the escorts passed harmlessly to either side as we chugged along at a silent and safe 2kts at peri depth trying to head off the Battleship.
Frantic Speed, distance and heading was calculated with my shaking hands. I had my 90 degree setup and my type 10s would be within range with just a short run. All torps fore and aft were set to run just under the keel with mag detonation. The plan was to fire a four spread from the bow and then turn and add two more either at the fuso or, if it was going down, anything near it.
Despite having my scope up way too much, not a single ship raised an alarm.
As she passed through the cross hairs, we fired an in-line balistic spread of four from the bow to rake her broadside. Because of the proximity of other ships in the formation, I didn't want to crank the rpms for my 180 to bring the aft tubes to bear. This made the turn around agonzingly slow. The nail biting was interrupted as three of our four fish hit home. Not sure if the first was early and crossed her bow or the last may have ran deep. The burning battleship rolled heavy towards us and sank almost peacfully with a slight stern-first settle.
All hell broke loose and I lost my nerve for the stern tubes. Imagining a horde of escorts headed my way, we zeroed the rudder and took her deep. Turns out I could have taken a stern shot since the escorts appeared to have almost no idea where I was. They never over-ran me. Three buzzed around for forty minutes or so and then they all hi-tailed it back to the formation. We were alone on the surface, charging batts approx 1 hour after firing.
My first battleship in a campaign! 34 thousand tons ought to get me a new shiny boat and a promotion!
It must have been disheartening to them to suffer a loss basically at their front door before they'd even really got started. Thoughts of their lady friends and a hero's send off cut short by the sight of one of theirs gowing down in flames in home waters--Not the way for them to start a mission.
Again, a lone destroyer approaches from the straight. He bee-lines me and makes a depth charge pass. With plenty of warning, we had max depth, silent running and easily scooted out from under the charges. A slow crawl away to night and safety.
With an inventory of only three torps aft, we round Wakayama's southern peninsula and head NE to run up the Japanese coast toward Tokyo. With any luck we'll snag a loner and then head to Midway and Pearl to pick out our new shiny boat!
--No big shakes for you vets but for me this was a big night! I have recently gone to 'no map updates' so this was doubly exciting to have such a success with the new challenges.
