It's a bird! It's a plane!...

[M. Sarsfield]

... no, it's actually 16 planes and they're heading right for me in shallow water north of Darwin!!! I got bounced by 4 waves of 4 Betty bombers each after pulling into Darwin for rearm/refit. Of course they dove at me like Stukas. Thanks to my two dual-20mm guns and the sharp shooters manning them, we wasted 13 of them, but still ended up with 69% hull damage from a nearby bomb explosion - I'll take 20mm's over 40mm's any day.

The whole thing was unrealistic, but it was fun to watch the fur fly. Needless to say, SD radar only picked up maybe 4 of the contacts. The radar operator didn't declare anymore contacts after the first wave attacked.

If anyone is wondering, I'm using TM 1.7.6, RSRDC Phase III, and NSM 4.

[Rockin Robbins]

Ed McMahon: how shallow was it?

[M. Sarsfield]

Only 80 ft. below the keel. I decided that I was better off trying to shoot them down at flank speed than diving to periscope depth and getting sunk for sure. The real trick was to order the gunners to only shoot at incoming targets. Otherwise they waste all of their ammo on a single plane until it's out of range.

[AkbarGulag]

If I'm not mistaken, thats a scripted event for the attack on Darwin. What was the date?

http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/darwin02.htm

February 1942 by any chance?

[M. Sarsfield]

Ealry Nov. 1943. I figured that it was an air raid from New Guinea, since they came from the north. I'm guessing that they had surface radar or radar detectors since they made a bee line for me. This is why I want SD radar to be as functional as SJ in the game.

[AkbarGulag]

I see. I have seen a heap of them before, constant streams, but they werre coming from the north west. Bali way somewhere.

New Guinea you say :hmm:

[M. Sarsfield]

The northern coast of New Guinea is closer than Bali, but they could easily make either trip, since a G4M2 has the range of almost 3,000 miles. Timor is a lot closer, though.

I was tracking the bombers to the NNE while on a 320 deg. heading when they attacked, which would make their origin either one of the many Pulau Islands (not Palau) or Papua New Guinea.

[Rockin Robbins]

Only 80 ft. below the keel. I decided that I was better off trying to shoot them down at flank speed than diving to periscope depth and getting sunk for sure. The real trick was to order the gunners to only shoot at incoming targets. Otherwise they waste all of their ammo on a single plane until it's out of range.

Just for future consideration, that would put you at around 100 to 110 feet if you went all the way to the bottom. Chances are they would not have bombed you. Of course if they did you would have been totally defenseless and that is a hard sell to the crew.:yep:

[M. Sarsfield]

I've been bombed at a depth of 120 before. 16 Betties would have scored a direct hit, eventually.

The nice thing about Betties is that they are lightly armored and don't have self-sealing gas tanks. They are very susceptible to anti-aircraft fire, just like in real life.

[Sailor Steve]

...just like in real life.
Show me a real-life reference to any submarine taking on 16 of any kind of airplane and surviving.:dead:

[M. Sarsfield]

I wasn't referring to being attacked and surviving as being realistic. I stated as much in my first post. I was only referring to the susceptibility of Betties to AA fire.