On my first patrol of my new career...

[cawimmer430]

So I started a new career with a VIIB in 1939. My home base is Kiel and on my first mission I was sent to patrol grid AM18 which is west of Ireland a short way into the Atlantic. I sunk a few small merchants on the way there with the deck gun, reach my assigned grid, patrol for 24 hours and then go hunting for more. Sadly, I was then plagued with bad weather throughout the patrol. Heavy rains and winds and zero visibility. I also didn't detect any merchants when I went down to 25 meters to listen.

So I figured I'd head home because I will probably encounter some enemy vessels off the coast of Northern England. My route home took me north of Scapa Flow. The weather was still miserable but visibility had improved thanks to no rain (oddly enough there was a light fog but you could see through it).

Suddenly, my lookouts detect a V&W Destroyer, distance about 4.5 km. I am aching for some action so I head towards it at full speed and submerge to periscope depth at about 2 km and go to low speed. The destroyer has still not spotted me and I am in perfect firing position.

Now here's the good part.

I'm viewing the destroyer through my attack periscope preparing to fire a torpedo when all of sudden I spot a convoy behind the destroyer. Holy cow! Finally I am being rewarded. But when I magnify the convoy I nearly make my pants dirty. Revenge Class Battleship and Nelson Class Battleship as well as several Fiji and Dido Cruisers and a two J-Class destroyers. There were a bunch of other warships in the convoy but I couldn't identify them.

I have to act quickly! I fire a salvo of three torpedoes at the Revenge Class Battleship and then fire my last torpedo at the destroyer near me.

The fourth torpedo sinks the V&W Destroyer in half. It sinks but its bow stands out above the water. The depth under keel is 60 meters. I immediately set up my position near the sunk vessel so that I can't be attacked from the now alerted enemy task force. A J-Class destroyers heads my way. He's close and he's not zigzagging. I'm about to fire a torpedo when he makes a course correction and ends up going behind me pinging away. No problem, I fire a fish at him from my stern torpedo and he goes down.

At this moment I also hear three explosions. Using my periscope I see that my torpedoes have stopped the Revenge battleship which is now dead in the water heavily listing to its port side. Meanwhile my three forward torpedo tubes have been reloaded. I am about 2 km away from the task force and still in perfect firing position for attacking the Nelson! My weapons officers does the calculations and I fire away a salvo of three torpedoes at the Nelson. I found it strange that none of the ships was zigzagging making them easy targets.

Two of them impact near the rear of the Nelson, one of them misses. Thankfully the Nelson is also dead in the water so my attack has most likely disabled its engines. I am still near the sunk V&W destroyer and I wait for the remaining task force to perform their search and move away. To my amazement no destroyer comes after me. At my hydrophone station I detect no pinging noises. It's like they don't care! :D

So after a few minutes the task force is out of visual distance leaving behind the Nelson and the Revenge class battleship. I fire my last two forward torpedoes at the Nelson. It sinks.

Then I fire another torpedo at the Revenge class battleship using my stern torpedo. It's a solid hit but the ship doesn't go down. The weather is still foggy and the waves are rough so I move out of visual range. Surface, reload the stern torpedo with my last exterior reserve torpedo. Double back and fire away at the battleship. She goes down.

Then I proceed to get the hell out of here at max speed. I made it safely back to Kiel encountering two large enemy cargo ships on the way but being unable to sink them because of a lack of torpedoes and rough weather (no use of the deck gun).

Still, it was a great first patrol! :salute:

Kriegsmarine 1 : Royal Navy 0 :yeah: :D

[Dissaray]

Well that is a nice notch to have in your hat. When ever I am near angry war ships I useualy have to dive deep and hide just to survive. I have only ever made it out of one attack, a real nice co-ordinated 4 distroyer effort, using the mask of depth charge explosions to blast flank speed and snuck away. They ended up killing me when I got greedy and tryed to get a stern shot and was seen and couldn't get deep enuf in time to get away again.

Did the kills count for your renown or was it befor the war had started? If it was befor September 9, I think, England isn't in the war and might account for why the distroyers payed you no mind. If it was befor the war you will end up in a hole renown wise.

[Zilch]

Two BB's in one task force? Lucky find. I've only seen two, and I "cheated" to find thses by putting myself in the right place, historically, to intercept the Rodney and King George V on their way to wreck the Bismarck. Finding two, randomly, is quite fortunate.

[Rothwell white]

Thats what i call a good piece of luck two battleships on your first patrol :yep:

[Commander Gizmo]

Wow! Great work! When I caught two battleships (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=157865), I couldn't even scratch them despite being in a ship designed for the task. I envy your first patrol.

[Weiss Pinguin]

Two of them impact near the rear of the Nelson, one of them misses. Thankfully the Nelson is also dead in the water so my attack has most likely disabled its engines. I am still near the sunk V&W destroyer and I wait for the remaining task force to perform their search and move away. To my amazement no destroyer comes after me. At my hydrophone station I detect no pinging noises. It's like they don't care! :D
Had the same thing happen to me when I encountered the Warspite, and I had taken out destroyer at least 2-3 minutes earlier. The entire time I was expecting frigates and destroyers to come down on me furiously, but not a peep out of any of them, although the convoy did start to take evasive action.

Very odd, but hey, I wasn't complaining. :arrgh!:

[Brag]

Excellent report, Cawimer. Keep up the good work!:salute:

[U-46 Commander]

Be More Agressive!:salute:

[cawimmer430]

Hi guys,

Thanks for all the replies. :)

I have to admit that I was really lucky. Lucky in the sense that I came across this task force and also from a very suitable attack position. At first I thought the V&W Destroyer was a loner on patrol. Only when I got nearer did I really see the "good stuff" behind him.

Also, the fact that I didn't encounter any merchants in terrible weather meant I basically had my full compliment of torpedoes. Man, this would have been really great if I had those Falke and Zaunkonig torpedoes available in 1939! :yeah:


Oh, and the two sunk battleships did count for renown. I started my patrol well past September 9 so those ships were fair game. Yahoo! :salute:

[Falkirion]

Caw I too am a part of the first patrol down a BB club. Found the Nelson in the middle of a convoy in BF16 or near about there on Sep 3rd or 4th. I'd check but I haven't got my home pc handy.

[Iranon]

These are the moments that make the game truly rewarding :)

I never got anything nice in my first patrol, and I seem to have terrible luck catching capital ships in open water... but in my current career I decided to take a peek at Scapa Flow in my 2nd.

'Wow, that's big. Wait a minute... that's the Hood!'

Having the pride of the Royal Navy sunk at home 1 month into the war must have made a lot of Brits very unhappy...

[cawimmer430]

Caw I too am a part of the first patrol down a BB club. Found the Nelson in the middle of a convoy in BF16 or near about there on Sep 3rd or 4th. I'd check but I haven't got my home pc handy.


I wish you all the best of luck with sinking her. Make the score Kriegsmarine 2 : Royal Navy 0! :salute:

[cawimmer430]

These are the moments that make the game truly rewarding :)

I never got anything nice in my first patrol, and I seem to have terrible luck catching capital ships in open water... but in my current career I decided to take a peek at Scapa Flow in my 2nd.

'Wow, that's big. Wait a minute... that's the Hood!'

Having the pride of the Royal Navy sunk at home 1 month into the war must have made a lot of Brits very unhappy...

Sweet! :yeah:

I guess I should try Scapa Flow in my next mission. Sneaking in is never a problem and sneaking out is also "easy" once the destroyers begin settling down and listening. The problem is that I've done this numerous times and I've only ever come across the a light cruiser. No battleships. :cry:


By the way: are passenger liners valid targets?

[Kapt Z]

The crew of U-207 salute you!:salute:

Just bagged my first BB last patrol. Similiar situation. 500 km W of Vigo. Sound reported a single warship. When I put the scope up I found a BB TF heading right at us! A Revenge, KGV, a cruiser and 4 DDs. I managed to hit Revenge with two of four fish meant for KGV and hit somebody with a third torpedo. Expected a heavy DD response, but only one stayed behind to search for me. No depth charges. After 40 minutes or so I cautiously came up to persicope depth and saw him about 5000 m away and saw Revenge listing heavily to starboard about 8000 m at 5 kts. Didn't dare surface to pursue until the DD finally gave up and headed off at high speed. I was able to surface and shadow Revenge(overcast, light fog) and perform a end-around finally sinking her with three more torpedoes several hours later.

[cawimmer430]

The crew of U-207 salute you!:salute:

Just bagged my first BB last patrol. Similiar situation. 500 km W of Vigo. Sound reported a single warship. When I put the scope up I found a BB TF heading right at us! A Revenge, KGV, a cruiser and 4 DDs. I managed to hit Revenge with two of four fish meant for KGV and hit somebody with a third torpedo. Expected a heavy DD response, but only one stayed behind to search for me. No depth charges. After 40 minutes or so I cautiously came up to persicope depth and saw him about 5000 m away and saw Revenge listing heavily to starboard about 8000 m at 5 kts. Didn't dare surface to pursue until the DD finally gave up and headed off at high speed. I was able to surface and shadow Revenge(overcast, light fog) and perform a end-around finally sinking her with three more torpedoes several hours later.

Nice work! :salute:


I love it when the escorts "abandon" the big battleships after a few hits. It's like they've become outcasts! :D

[Dissaray]

I hit Scapa Flow once, at least I think it was Scapa though it could have been the one north east of there. I was on my way back from the Irish sea on patrol where the weather had been too bad to get a shot off on anyone leaving me with a full load of ammo and just itching to vent some agresion on some one.

I dove to avoid the costal defense guns and picked up numerous sound contacts and figured that it was as good a target as any. I snuk in runing silent and found a nice little set of targets lined up for me. Nothing as exciting as the Hood or any thing of that sort, but there were eight targets. Three fishing boats, two t-class subs, and three distoryers of varying type. All but one of the distroyers was moored at or near the port.

I launched a three eel spread at the fishing boats, I was just off their bow may be 1.5K out, and while they were en rute I sized up my first distroyer of the attack. One shot just forward of the bridge was all it took to sink it, set for magnetic detonation and about .5 M under the keel. The fishing boats took the hits first, two of them went down imidiatly (not sure but I think they were both hit by the same torpido as they were very close together.) and the third was bobbing away from the wreck. Just seconds after that I nailed the first distoyer.

I then poped my scope back up to survay the damage and see just how quickly I had to get the hell out of there. To my suprize none of the ships were moving. I figured if that is how they were going to play things I am game and lined up my next target, the second distroyer at the port's moorings. I cracked it's keel with one shot and it now rests there in two sections. Still no activity so I lined up a shot each on the two subs. These were hard to hit beacouse I had no idea how deep they went, I ended up going with 3 M and hoping for the best, one eel to each of them was all it took. I then set off a little further in land to nail a distroyer that seemed to be moored in an inlet, may be 1K away from the port proper.

As I turned I picked up a new sound contact coming at be from astern. I swiveled the scope around and saw a new distoyer. I said to my self, "Well I guess that is why this thing has a stern tube." stoped my boat and took the shot. I managed to get the depth just right, the eel bit my new freind about a meter below the engin room. With him out of action I figured I could come back for him on my way out and left him there, bobbing and burning. I lined up in perfect firing posision on my last target and let him have my last two eels in a salvo, tight spred one struck just aft of the engins and the other just forward of the mag and down he went.

I turned back to finish off the late arival but he managed to sink all by him self while I was away. That was a good thing too beacouse I had forgot he was there and used my last forward torpido on the other ship and decided to kill the last lonely fishing boat with my last from the stern. With no one left to play with I decided that it was time to go. I ploted a course that had me leaving via the eastern side of the inlet. I was almost out of the harber when all of the suden there was an explosion and reports of damage, casualties and heavy flooding. I had hit a mine. In a panic I blew balast in hopes of helping to stem the flooding, on the off chance that hole was blasted into the uper section of the ship, while the crew patched things up; having entierly forgeten about the coastal defense guns. I don't think lasted more than five seconds up there. The moral of the story is, always leave thru the door you came in and never pop up to say "Hi!" at an enemy port.

[hellfish6]

Lucky! I haven't played in years, but just reinstalled and popped in GWX. I've got a slew of destroyers, a sub and two light cruisers, but that's about it since starting in '39. It's early '42 now, and I'm still hoping to stumble into a carrier or BB at some point before I inevitably get sunk...

[Jimbuna]

BE MORE AGGRESSIVE!! http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

[hellfish6]

Yeah, seems every time I get a heads up about a task force I'm out of fish and heading back to port. :-?

[cawimmer430]

I hit Scapa Flow once, at least I think it was Scapa though it could have been the one north east of there. I was on my way back from the Irish sea on patrol where the weather had been too bad to get a shot off on anyone leaving me with a full load of ammo and just itching to vent some agresion on some one.

I dove to avoid the costal defense guns and picked up numerous sound contacts and figured that it was as good a target as any. I snuk in runing silent and found a nice little set of targets lined up for me. Nothing as exciting as the Hood or any thing of that sort, but there were eight targets. Three fishing boats, two t-class subs, and three distoryers of varying type. All but one of the distroyers was moored at or near the port.

I launched a three eel spread at the fishing boats, I was just off their bow may be 1.5K out, and while they were en rute I sized up my first distroyer of the attack. One shot just forward of the bridge was all it took to sink it, set for magnetic detonation and about .5 M under the keel. The fishing boats took the hits first, two of them went down imidiatly (not sure but I think they were both hit by the same torpido as they were very close together.) and the third was bobbing away from the wreck. Just seconds after that I nailed the first distoyer.

I then poped my scope back up to survay the damage and see just how quickly I had to get the hell out of there. To my suprize none of the ships were moving. I figured if that is how they were going to play things I am game and lined up my next target, the second distroyer at the port's moorings. I cracked it's keel with one shot and it now rests there in two sections. Still no activity so I lined up a shot each on the two subs. These were hard to hit beacouse I had no idea how deep they went, I ended up going with 3 M and hoping for the best, one eel to each of them was all it took. I then set off a little further in land to nail a distroyer that seemed to be moored in an inlet, may be 1K away from the port proper.

As I turned I picked up a new sound contact coming at be from astern. I swiveled the scope around and saw a new distoyer. I said to my self, "Well I guess that is why this thing has a stern tube." stoped my boat and took the shot. I managed to get the depth just right, the eel bit my new freind about a meter below the engin room. With him out of action I figured I could come back for him on my way out and left him there, bobbing and burning. I lined up in perfect firing posision on my last target and let him have my last two eels in a salvo, tight spred one struck just aft of the engins and the other just forward of the mag and down he went.

I turned back to finish off the late arival but he managed to sink all by him self while I was away. That was a good thing too beacouse I had forgot he was there and used my last forward torpido on the other ship and decided to kill the last lonely fishing boat with my last from the stern. With no one left to play with I decided that it was time to go. I ploted a course that had me leaving via the eastern side of the inlet. I was almost out of the harber when all of the suden there was an explosion and reports of damage, casualties and heavy flooding. I had hit a mine. In a panic I blew balast in hopes of helping to stem the flooding, on the off chance that hole was blasted into the uper section of the ship, while the crew patched things up; having entierly forgeten about the coastal defense guns. I don't think lasted more than five seconds up there. The moral of the story is, always leave thru the door you came in and never pop up to say "Hi!" at an enemy port.


That's really a shame. The BDU never found out about your success! :cry:

The last time I tried entering Scapa Flow via the single mission game, I had just made it into the harbor when by chance a V&W Destroyer patrolling the area came up on me from behind, FOUND ME and DEPTH-CHARGED ME. I didn't have a chance. This was with a VIIB. :cry: