Japanese Q ship?

[Fish40]

It's April, 44', and I'm attacking a small convoy in the Sulu Sea. Oh by the way, latest RFB and RSRD as well as RE and assorted compatable mods. Anyway, after makeing repeated attacks and sinking half the convoy, I decide to surface to check in with Subpac. The remains of the convoy plus the escort (3 Auxiliary Sub Chasers) are still visible, but it's early dawn, and the seas are sloppy so I'm not worried about them seeing me.

After sending a contact and status report, I decide to keep stalking and contemplate yet another attack. Several minutes go by, and the shelling starts. I'm assumeing the escort picked up and triangulated my radio signals. I dive to periscope depth to size up the situation before heading deep.

I see the Subchasers closeing in, and what's this??:o It's what appears to be a Tramp Steamer from SH3 joining the chase, flying the IJN flag. Astonished, I search the RM, but can't ID the ship. What did I encounter?

[ColonelSandersLite]

Could have possible been an auxiliary gunboat (not sub chaser). I *think* those came with 1.5, but I've only seen one so far. It's just a medium-large merchant ship with quite a number of guns on it as I recall. Listed under Japanese warships, not merchants.

[sergei]

Could have possible been an auxiliary gunboat

I ran into two of these suckers (using tmo).
They had sonar, Y throwers and hundreds of DCs.
That ended that career. It was my first contact of first patrol.
Possibly my shortest career ever.
Ducimus is evil :DL

[Rockin Robbins]

Yeah, I found that out as I pursued a hapless "merchie" which proceeded to go to high speed and turn toward me. Luckily, I remembered Duci's warning that he may be up to no good and evaded immediately.

Idleness is the devil's playground and when Ducimus has extra time on his hands, evil things are bound to emerge. I'm just waiting to be executing a surface attack and have an escort fire torpedoes at me...as evil airplanes drop out of the sun and all the merchies I'm targeting reveal themselves as Q-ships.

"Captain, I see the light at the end of the tunnel!"

"Idiot, that's an express train coming our way! Dive! Ahead emergency! Full left rudder! All hands pray for our lives! Never mind, is there an exorcist on board?":nope:

[banjo]

In TMO there are two kinds of Q ships, one is a small frieghter with guns for and aft. Has sonar and is fast. Takes at least 2 torps to sink. Always in the company of one or two escorts. The other (at least that I've experienced) is a large merchie that sits very high in the water and seems to be impossible to sink. I put several torps into one the first time I came across one before I wised up.

[Arsenius]

i guess that you've saw is this?
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/3295/penguin1.jpg

i was going to my station point( SH IV 1.5 with TMO 1.7) and founf a contact
decided to investigate and ID him

(as my last patrol, sailors have identified a mechant as a "english large tanker", and for my surprise he had a japanese flag)

now, again for my surprise... note, they have no flag....:o

the ship started to behave like a destroyer punching active sonar and circling me, hit me hard causing hard damage and then when i put one torpedo in his hull...... he's still firing at me!:arrgh!:

i needed 3.... i said three torpedo hits to destroy him
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/3247/penguin3.jpg
this time i've remembered to take a shot.

never seen a ship so agressive like that. and it's the second ship i've found
an unsuspicious small split freighter falls on you very angry

what's going on?:06:

[Fish40]

That ship is in the RM. That is definitly not what I saw. I'm telling you it looked like the Tramp Steamer from SH3. Don't know how it could of landed in the game (unless it was imported from a mod and I didn't realize it:hmmm:) Didn't think of takeing a screenie:damn: Anyway, after a short, inacurate depth charge barrage, they all sped off into the sunset to rejoin the remains of the convoy. Totally baffled by this one:doh:

[Bubblehead1980]

:damn:lol when ducimus first put the Q ship(small split freighter) in TMO, I forgot his telling me about it and it nearly cost me my sub.

Was around east cost of the Philippines in late 1942, found a destroyer and what appeared to be a small merchant.Sound was reporting warships, which made sense because of the DD.I attacked the DD, figured would take out the small merchant with deck gun, save my torpedos.

Fired 4 torpedos at DD, 3 hit and sank it, then ordered battle surface.

The moment surfaced my sub came under heavy automatic gunfire, ordered the 3'' deck gun up forward to open fire, was at 1800 yards, scored a direct hit, started a fire.But soon shell splashes came and I realized that no normal merchant has this kind of firepower.No time to dive. I took as play from the real life story of the USS Growler, ordered ahead flank while deck gun crew banged away and we dodged shell splashes and took on heavy, concentrated automatic gunfire.

Soon i was too close for their deck guns to hit but their AA kept banging away, wounding my XO and several others on bridge watch, I then at 20 knots rammed right into the side, dead center of the q ship, then backed away at flank speed just as it blew up and report came in of "shes going down!"

I had 40 percent hull damage and yes the bow of my sub was gone(had a screenshot i posted at UBI forums back when this happened but cant find it) Ducimus fooled me:salute:

They are pretty tough when you are submerged as well.They can lay down an impressive pattern of depth charges.Their weakness though is that they have no racks, only throwers.Unlike most escorts which fire off charges from the throwers to the sides and roll them off the stern, laying down a complete pattern, the q ships only have throwers.So turn into them with a zero AOB and let them go right over you , the charges will land to the sides, may shake your boat up but their too far away to cause damage.This can be difficult to do, esp if you play on 100 realism like myself(without external cam) you have to try and do this via sound info only, but it is is possible.So to put it simply, you basically play chicken the whole time, keep turning into him and stay deep, will lose you eventually, or should.

[Ducimus]

No, i did not read this thread and manically laugh. :)

[Sailor Steve]

Methinks he doth protest too much.

[ColonelSandersLite]

There's more than one kind of gunboat. I haven't counted them per se, but there's at least 2. From your description, I'm guessing you mean this:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/ColonelSandersLite/gunboat.jpg

Just by dumb luck, I happened to encounter one today. This one sunk just fine with 2 torpedoes. Kinda hard to see in this screen shot, but worth noting that he's flying the military flag, not the basic one.

[Ducimus]

Just for the record, the Auxillary gunboat pictured there is not of my making. I could be mistaken, but i believe that one is the brainchild of Lurker (im assuming your running RSRD). The one that is flying no flag at all a few posts up, that one i did.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Just for the record, the Auxillary gunboat pictured there is not of my making. I could be mistaken, but i believe that one is the brainchild of Lurker (im assuming your running RSRD). The one that is flying no flag at all a few posts up, that one i did.

Yeah, the OP and I are both running RSRD, but he runs RFB while I run TMO (good job btw). Since the other gunboat is in TMO, that's most likely confirmation that this ship added with RSRD is the one in question. Besides, it actually does look quite a bit like a tramp steamer.

[Fish40]

There's more than one kind of gunboat. I haven't counted them per se, but there's at least 2. From your description, I'm guessing you mean this:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y91/ColonelSandersLite/gunboat.jpg

Just by dumb luck, I happened to encounter one today. This one sunk just fine with 2 torpedoes. Kinda hard to see in this screen shot, but worth noting that he's flying the military flag, not the basic one.



That's the one! I thought I was seeing things. The reason I couldn't ID it is because I didn't see it in the RM. The ship you show in the above RM picture I did see in the manual, but as you could see from the picture, they're not the same. Mystery solved!

[ColonelSandersLite]

The ship you show in the above RM picture I did see in the manual, but as you could see from the picture, they're not the same.!

They actually are the same. I dunno about you, but I had no trouble IDing the ship from the RM (I don't use the automatic ship id that comes with tmo). Well, not technically the same, they do have a few very subtle differences, but still at least 95% similar. The giveaways for me where:
Japanese Military Flag marks it as a warship.
Long thin stack, with lifeboat just aft of it, while the horizontal mast appendages are clearly noted in the RM and very noticeable on the ship.

[Fish40]

The thing that threw me was the ship in the RM has raised sides amid ship. The ship I saw did not. I guess other than that, they are pretty much the same.