Agiel7
02-08-09, 11:38 PM
(I was using limited battery, limited air, and manual TDC)
Based out of Brisbane, I was ordered to take the USS Cabrilla up to the South China Sea and engage enemy merchant shipping. The last patrol had me bagging two Huge Passanger Carriers at 18,000 tons apiece (I suspect that the Tojo's last meal of spicy shrimp tempura and Kobe beef helped my tonnage totals :P ) along with two tankers while screwing around in Manila harbor and a few Large Composite Freighters while convoy hunting.
En route, I encounter an enemy convoy composed of Medium Composite Freighters. I was able to sink one while disabling two others. I think to myself: "Okay, I'll just stay down here and wait for the escorts to mosey off. Sure enough, after a few hours, the destroyers left, and I became giddy with excitement since I was itching to try out the new 5 inch gun I just installed on my boat. I sink the two freighters and continue on my way. I decide to terrorise Manila harbor once again and bag a large 10,000 ton tanker. Soon ASW patrols start to show up and I silently skulk back into deeper waters. I soon got to my assigned patrol area and was ordered to sink my tonnage quota, however...
Oh my good gravy! The skies were thick with Zeroes and Val dive bombers. There was literally not a square mile that wasn't covered by the Tojos. My AA crews didn't even have a minute of rest. This wasn't the War in the Pacific, this was the goddamn Blitz. My only saving grace was that I was playing the stock game and the bombadiers couldn't even hit the flight deck of a carrier, much less the slender, svelte form of my boat. One bomb landed perilously close to the starboard bow of my sub and I finally decided to dive, after my AA crews had downed two dozen Tojos. Luckily, the onslaught of dive bombers ceased when night fell and I was free to surface and recharge my batteries. Unfortunately, throughout the night, our periodic radar sweeps failed to pick up anything, and as soon as the sun rose, air contacts were lighting up on the radar like smokers getting off of a plane.
I check my captain's log and say to myself:
"50,000 tons of merchant shipping, you've had better days, but COMSUBPAC can't complain if I did more in one patrol than most skippers in the actual war did in their entire careers."
So I decide to set course back to home. My route takes me through the Sulu sea, and while I crack open my copy of "Jane's Fighting Ships," my sonar man reports multiple warship contacts closing on our position.
Thinking it was a small task force of sub hunters, I make a quick sweep with the boat's radar and discover that it was more than a simple line of destroyers. It was an entire fleet. Not only that, the Cabrilla was smack dab in the course of the task force. I order the helmsman to go back slow so that my periscope doesn't get snapped by the hull of a destroyer and go deep, at least, until the task force's foward ASW screen passes. As soon as they do, I go to periscope depth and deduce that, assuming when it would be perpindicular to the bow of my boat, the center line of the task force would be about 2000 metres (or yards, or whatever range scale the TDC uses) from me. It wasn't ideal for the casual skipper, but I've managed to worse before (the longest range from which I was able to hit a ship was about 3000 metres). Its a task force of battleships and cruisers and I get giddy with excitement. Like any wannabe skipper, I search for the biggest, fattest target. Plenty of Kongo battleships, but one in particular caught my eye.
"Hrmmm..." I thought, "I don't think I've seen one of those before." I must have gone through the target identification manual about 3 times until it dawned on me the scale of the situation.
"Surely it can't be..." I thought, but sure enough, it was, the Yamato. So I order general quarters and open up all my foward tubes, that Yamato was going to get my full and undivided attention. As it turned out, the Yamato was about 1500 metres out when she came perpindicular to the bow of my sub, so I was hard pressed not to hit her. I make my TDC calculations and let all six foward torpedoes fly. All six fishes hit home and I quickly dive below the thermocline. I then stare at the message history screen at the top of my monitor, praying for the magical words: "Enemy Unit Destroyed."
I wait for an hour while the task force suddenly scatters like an ants. Destroyers start dropping depth charges everywhere and every other ship frantically blink their signal lights. I wait and I wait and realize that that Yamato was probably going to need a bit more firepower to take down. I think back to that movie "Flight of the Intruder" and what Defoe said to his pilot after they failed to drop their bombs on the first run: "They'd never expect us to come back... Nobody would go through that again." I come back up to periscope depth and to my delight, my initial attack must have done a number on the Yamato's rudder, as she had done a half circle around me and positioned itself in front of my fully loaded aft tubes. To say I was astounded that the Yamato could take that much punishment and still stay afloat is a masterpiece of understatement. I launch all four torpedoes, quickly dive back down to a hundred metres, rig for silent running, make turns for 4 knots, and get the hell out of Dodge. Two of the torpedoes were the 10 knot Mk. 23s, so it took a while for them to hit after the faster Mk. 18s, so imagine how flabbergasted I was when the Mk. 18s did their work and the Yamato was still afloat. Happily, the Mk. 23s finally finish the Yamato.
After a while, another sunken ship icon curiously appeared on my navigation map. My guess, one of the DD captains decided to commit seppuku for letting the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy get sunk on his watch, and take the rest of his crew with him. At the end of my patrol, I had a whopping 104000 tons sunk and twenty three aircraft shot down to my credit :haha:
Based out of Brisbane, I was ordered to take the USS Cabrilla up to the South China Sea and engage enemy merchant shipping. The last patrol had me bagging two Huge Passanger Carriers at 18,000 tons apiece (I suspect that the Tojo's last meal of spicy shrimp tempura and Kobe beef helped my tonnage totals :P ) along with two tankers while screwing around in Manila harbor and a few Large Composite Freighters while convoy hunting.
En route, I encounter an enemy convoy composed of Medium Composite Freighters. I was able to sink one while disabling two others. I think to myself: "Okay, I'll just stay down here and wait for the escorts to mosey off. Sure enough, after a few hours, the destroyers left, and I became giddy with excitement since I was itching to try out the new 5 inch gun I just installed on my boat. I sink the two freighters and continue on my way. I decide to terrorise Manila harbor once again and bag a large 10,000 ton tanker. Soon ASW patrols start to show up and I silently skulk back into deeper waters. I soon got to my assigned patrol area and was ordered to sink my tonnage quota, however...
Oh my good gravy! The skies were thick with Zeroes and Val dive bombers. There was literally not a square mile that wasn't covered by the Tojos. My AA crews didn't even have a minute of rest. This wasn't the War in the Pacific, this was the goddamn Blitz. My only saving grace was that I was playing the stock game and the bombadiers couldn't even hit the flight deck of a carrier, much less the slender, svelte form of my boat. One bomb landed perilously close to the starboard bow of my sub and I finally decided to dive, after my AA crews had downed two dozen Tojos. Luckily, the onslaught of dive bombers ceased when night fell and I was free to surface and recharge my batteries. Unfortunately, throughout the night, our periodic radar sweeps failed to pick up anything, and as soon as the sun rose, air contacts were lighting up on the radar like smokers getting off of a plane.
I check my captain's log and say to myself:
"50,000 tons of merchant shipping, you've had better days, but COMSUBPAC can't complain if I did more in one patrol than most skippers in the actual war did in their entire careers."
So I decide to set course back to home. My route takes me through the Sulu sea, and while I crack open my copy of "Jane's Fighting Ships," my sonar man reports multiple warship contacts closing on our position.
Thinking it was a small task force of sub hunters, I make a quick sweep with the boat's radar and discover that it was more than a simple line of destroyers. It was an entire fleet. Not only that, the Cabrilla was smack dab in the course of the task force. I order the helmsman to go back slow so that my periscope doesn't get snapped by the hull of a destroyer and go deep, at least, until the task force's foward ASW screen passes. As soon as they do, I go to periscope depth and deduce that, assuming when it would be perpindicular to the bow of my boat, the center line of the task force would be about 2000 metres (or yards, or whatever range scale the TDC uses) from me. It wasn't ideal for the casual skipper, but I've managed to worse before (the longest range from which I was able to hit a ship was about 3000 metres). Its a task force of battleships and cruisers and I get giddy with excitement. Like any wannabe skipper, I search for the biggest, fattest target. Plenty of Kongo battleships, but one in particular caught my eye.
"Hrmmm..." I thought, "I don't think I've seen one of those before." I must have gone through the target identification manual about 3 times until it dawned on me the scale of the situation.
"Surely it can't be..." I thought, but sure enough, it was, the Yamato. So I order general quarters and open up all my foward tubes, that Yamato was going to get my full and undivided attention. As it turned out, the Yamato was about 1500 metres out when she came perpindicular to the bow of my sub, so I was hard pressed not to hit her. I make my TDC calculations and let all six foward torpedoes fly. All six fishes hit home and I quickly dive below the thermocline. I then stare at the message history screen at the top of my monitor, praying for the magical words: "Enemy Unit Destroyed."
I wait for an hour while the task force suddenly scatters like an ants. Destroyers start dropping depth charges everywhere and every other ship frantically blink their signal lights. I wait and I wait and realize that that Yamato was probably going to need a bit more firepower to take down. I think back to that movie "Flight of the Intruder" and what Defoe said to his pilot after they failed to drop their bombs on the first run: "They'd never expect us to come back... Nobody would go through that again." I come back up to periscope depth and to my delight, my initial attack must have done a number on the Yamato's rudder, as she had done a half circle around me and positioned itself in front of my fully loaded aft tubes. To say I was astounded that the Yamato could take that much punishment and still stay afloat is a masterpiece of understatement. I launch all four torpedoes, quickly dive back down to a hundred metres, rig for silent running, make turns for 4 knots, and get the hell out of Dodge. Two of the torpedoes were the 10 knot Mk. 23s, so it took a while for them to hit after the faster Mk. 18s, so imagine how flabbergasted I was when the Mk. 18s did their work and the Yamato was still afloat. Happily, the Mk. 23s finally finish the Yamato.
After a while, another sunken ship icon curiously appeared on my navigation map. My guess, one of the DD captains decided to commit seppuku for letting the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy get sunk on his watch, and take the rest of his crew with him. At the end of my patrol, I had a whopping 104000 tons sunk and twenty three aircraft shot down to my credit :haha: