Telemon
11-10-08, 08:41 AM
As I mentioned elsewhere my first patrol was an unmitigated disaster. Here's the story.
I was tasked with patroling the Celebes Sea area and soon after getting on station I was surprised by an enemy task force of CVs, CAs, DDs and a few merchants, which in the sneaky devious manner of the Nips, caught me whilst having my evening cocoa and biscuits. I selected what I identified as a Hiryu class CV and having accuratly edtimated the range to be about 1200yds (plus or minus a couple of thousand) I fired off my bow torpedoes and dived to reload. Nothing was heard after the estimated time to impact, shame. But then I heard four explosions and found that I had been credited with sinking a Shokaku CV! What bad luck missing like that.
Worse was to come however.
I cruised my area but although in the following weeks I heard many contacts I never saw more than the odd masthead or the occasioanal glimpse of a funnel. The reason being that with any sort of sea running my 'scope' never seemed to get above the wavetops (I'm in a ''T' class sub) so I was never able to get a decent solution. So I slunk back to Cavite timing my arrival for the dead of night to hide my shame.
Thinking long and hard about missing my first target my conclusion is tha spilling the cocoa over the TDC was not a good thing.
On a more serious note I found it impossible to use the stadimeter in the sea conditions and if I reduced my depth the sub was visible. It looks as if things will be difficult until the weather improves.
I was tasked with patroling the Celebes Sea area and soon after getting on station I was surprised by an enemy task force of CVs, CAs, DDs and a few merchants, which in the sneaky devious manner of the Nips, caught me whilst having my evening cocoa and biscuits. I selected what I identified as a Hiryu class CV and having accuratly edtimated the range to be about 1200yds (plus or minus a couple of thousand) I fired off my bow torpedoes and dived to reload. Nothing was heard after the estimated time to impact, shame. But then I heard four explosions and found that I had been credited with sinking a Shokaku CV! What bad luck missing like that.
Worse was to come however.
I cruised my area but although in the following weeks I heard many contacts I never saw more than the odd masthead or the occasioanal glimpse of a funnel. The reason being that with any sort of sea running my 'scope' never seemed to get above the wavetops (I'm in a ''T' class sub) so I was never able to get a decent solution. So I slunk back to Cavite timing my arrival for the dead of night to hide my shame.
Thinking long and hard about missing my first target my conclusion is tha spilling the cocoa over the TDC was not a good thing.
On a more serious note I found it impossible to use the stadimeter in the sea conditions and if I reduced my depth the sub was visible. It looks as if things will be difficult until the weather improves.