Longest evasion ???

[TheDudTorpedo]

Hi All,

Last night I was sailing on southerly heading and was half-way between Takoradi and St Helena, for an eventual patrol in GR91 off the Cape of Good Hope (I hope! - excuse the pun!).

An A&B destroyer pinpointed me, and despite submerging to 200m on "eins knotten" and silent running, I couldn't shake him off. After 3 hrs, it was 1AM and I need to get some sleep. Of course I couldn't risk an underwater save, so decided to leave the game running overnight at 8 times speed. Well, at 7am this morning, Im up out of bed and down to the PC to discover the A&B still hasn't given up, but at least she had run out of depth-charges!

In my frustration to get a save so I could bugger off to work, I went to periscope depth at flank speed and fired off a TII at magnetic pistol from the stern torpedo, and voila......the A&B and her crew are taken unto their Makers bosum! I guess sometimes attack is the best form of defense. Now to raid St. Helena....:arrgh!:

All in all, my evasion attempt totals 9hrs - most of which I was fast asleep :D . Lets hear your longest evasion stories here.

Regards,
Dud

[polynike]

Now thats dedicaton!

[_Seth_]

Well.....i have this girl that im trying to avoid..She's been on my tail for over two years now..:shifty: *hehehe*

No, serious, i totally agree with polynike: That's dedication! *Good job killing the destroyer!* :DL I don't have the time to wait so long, i usually go totally Gung Ho, and attack the destroyers with all i got. When im out of torps, i surface, and go down in a blaze of glory! :salute:

[nikbear]

Dear lord TDT,9hrs:rock:thats hardcore:salute:The longest I've gone is 4hrs,attacked a convoy in AM52,early war,quite choppy weather,pitch black night thought I was in for an easy ride:nope:Oh was I wrong,the initial attack went fine,3 merchants hit,1 sank straight away,the other 2 were on the way,so I made my excuses and left the scene of the crime:03:and thats when it all started going wrong,2 DD's started to take great delight in blowing the merry hell out of me,even at 200+Mts they're accuracy was unbelivable,silent running,getting the crew to breath quieter nothing seemed to work,the missus kept telling me that I had work tommorow,your going to be knackered,I nearly gave up......eventually they gave up,probably out of sheer boardem,and me.....I fell asleep at work during my dinner break the next day:doh:

[Jazer]

Fortunately, I've never had a long encounter with a destroyer. Anytime I have ever tangled with them I have been able to lose them with little effort. I don't understand why this has been such an issue for so long. I've browsed many a threads about "uber" destroyers and the like, all stating the extreme difficulty of shaking the would be death dealers. Perhaps I have a bug in my install? I always tend to stay in water over 1000 meters, but I have attacked harbors and convoys in shallower water before as well. Sometimes, in foul weather, I will wait until an escort is within a 1000 meters distance before diving when attacking convoys while still evading them. I always dive deep from the get go as well. Say, 150 meters to start. Then deeper if charges are getting too close. I would say no more than a half hour of game time has been the longest I've had to dance with an escort.
Maybe, I'm just a superb u-boat commander! (just kidding):shifty:

Jazer

[Otto Heinzmeir]

So the game was running at 8TC for 6 hours? That would be 48 hours real time. Was the TC still at 8 when you got up or was it knocked back down to 1? Just wondering how you would have any batteries left.

Two and 1/2 hours has been my max for evading, perhaps a few minutes more. One thing that puzzles me is escorts in my games are just as likely to locate me when the seas are rough as when they are calm.

[TheDudTorpedo]

Oh...thats a good point Otto - I didn't even think to check the battery level afterwards, but I suspect you are correct : it probably bumnped back down to 1TC, otherwise it would have been dead batteries for sure.

I never encountered such a determined destroyer before, but the end of 1942 is supposed to be a really tough time for the U-boat fleet - perhaps very well modelled in the SH3 AI? :DL

[Contact]

I still mising something in this topic. Ok lets say DD was after you constantly while your depth was 200 meters. Was the DD pinging you ?

You see it is not necessary that DD has to ping you in order to throw his DC right onto your bridge. Historically yes they had to ping you to get the depth and pitch of your u-boat.
BUT in SH3 it is enough for DD to hear you on his passive sonar and DC will come straight down at you even without pinging.

So in other words you should be dead by now or the DD had to be long gone by the time you woke up.

But if he ran out of depth charges it is explainable :hmmm:

However if you maintained silent running and is such depth the DD had to let you go if there was no ping.

[TheDudTorpedo]

I still mising something in this topic. Ok lets say DD was after you constantly while your depth was 200 meters. Was the DD pinging you ?


Yes, thats correct Contact - he seemed to be pinging me on and off for the entire duration of the pursuit. When I came back to the PC, and scrolled the message screen back several hours there were several repeat messages of "Enemy is pinging us Sir". In addition I used to external camera, and indeed the DD was still circling my position and the pinging was still active. Hence, my rash (and lucky) stern torpedo shot in an attempt to surface to get a game save.

[Contact]

Now that explains things :)

When destroyers already has the improved sonars and happy times begins to feel not so happy :timeout:

You could of try to go deeper to ~230 meters trying to rise stern towards destroyer to lower your echo but if DD got a lock on you in close range and is circuling around there are low chances of escape though..

Somebody represented a decoy tactics wish I found usefull in certain cases and made a copy of it. Pasting..

"strategic use of decoys...
What i have done in the past is launch decoys in the following manner.
While diving after the initial attack start a 270 degree turn, release a decoy every 45 degrees of heading change
lets assume you start at 000 degrees
here is the procedure
order a depth of 220 meters
start a right turn
rig for silent running
at heading 045 - launch decoy
at heading 090 - launch decoy
at heading 135 - launch decoy
at heading 180 - launch decoy
at heading 225 - launch decoy
at heading 270 - launch decoy - stop turn - continue dive to about 220 meters
this will create a descending spiral of decoys... the destroyers will be receiving seven echo returns when they ping...
6 decoys and 1 u-boat. this forces them to decide which return is the actual u-boat and then attack it...
they have a 1 in 7 chance of selecting the right target... hopefully the selected a decoy instead of your boat.
sneak away at 220 meters depth making gentle 15 degree turns left and right.
never increasing speed never surfacing or never securing from silent running until you are sure you have escaped.
the problem with this strategy is you use up pretty much all of your decoys in the process, but you can refit at a supply ship."
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My Note: if you got spoted by an escort near the convoy, the use of every bold decoy will attract additional escorts to your location. It works like expression "every stick has its own second side". So it's up to you, to try evase one DD without bolds at close range to convoy or at least try to entice away it from the rest of the convoy and then use bolds and try to escape. Or to use bolds in close range with the convoy where you will be deffinetly be starting the depth charge party and it is not very gratifying :shucks:

[TheDudTorpedo]

Ah thanks for the tip about using the decoys in that spiral pattern - I will definately try that because so far I haven't had much success with them at all.

[BasilY]

My longest evasion happened in the grand banks off the US east coast, just after a fruitful patrol of my grid. I am in shallow water being hunted by a ASW trawler, She's dump enough wasted all her DC's quickly, but small and nimble enough to dodge the last 2 torps I had. Now I am dashing (at 4 knots) underwater, trying to make the deep water further east. With this trawler following my tail. Now 30 km (if my memory is right, it's been a while.) seperates my boat and deep, beutifully blue water.

As my battery and Oxigen running low, 2 destroyers also joined the hunt.

In real time, this evasion took 2 days (on and off), Thank god my laptop can hibernate with the game running (paused). Finally I reach deep water. Now it's the question whether my oxygen can last long enough for the DD's to leave me alone.


Then kaboom, the laptop crash...

[TheDudTorpedo]

Ouch!!! Unlucky Basily :wah: