czwij
02-18-10, 07:04 AM
May 1944, U-1001 (type VIIC) off of Norway in the north sea (Bergen), first few hours into my patrol.
task force has been sighted, moving fast NNE, right into my line of travel. They are more than likely going to intercept a friendly convoy some 100 miles north of my position.
I figure i can move into position to take out that task force before it gets in sight of our convoy. after an hour, ships are sighted and i radio in the contact and submerge. i track them and after about a half hour i have friendly aircraft flying in. looks like three heinkel 111's. they begin their bombing run on five destroyers and miss every time. one corvette sees my periscope from 2000m off (yeah, right...) so he comes in at 16knots, no zigzag. i put an eel into his bow, but he doesn't sink (a real corvette would sink in 60 seconds as they have very few compartments, so again, yeah, right...) the heinkels circle and harass but do little significant damage. the corvette lost speed and manueverability, so at least something worked out. three more destroyers come after me at speed and zigzagging. i let out three more torps from bow, all miss and one falke from stern, then crash dive to 180m. in the end, i knock out one destroyer with the falke, but the other three get me after about three actual hours of cat and mouse. we sink to the bottom some 220m with a great big hole in the pressure hull near the engine room.
what bugs me;
why wasn't the luftwaffe effective at all through all this? why are allied planes, during late war patrols, so on the mark when bombing a sub already crashed to 30m and they kill me? why is the luftwaffe deadly on their attacks in the beginning of the war and the latter part they fly blind. i should have gotten away as the destroyers would have had their hands full with the bombers. they pretty much ingnored them and drove straight in to hunt me down.
not fair.
task force has been sighted, moving fast NNE, right into my line of travel. They are more than likely going to intercept a friendly convoy some 100 miles north of my position.
I figure i can move into position to take out that task force before it gets in sight of our convoy. after an hour, ships are sighted and i radio in the contact and submerge. i track them and after about a half hour i have friendly aircraft flying in. looks like three heinkel 111's. they begin their bombing run on five destroyers and miss every time. one corvette sees my periscope from 2000m off (yeah, right...) so he comes in at 16knots, no zigzag. i put an eel into his bow, but he doesn't sink (a real corvette would sink in 60 seconds as they have very few compartments, so again, yeah, right...) the heinkels circle and harass but do little significant damage. the corvette lost speed and manueverability, so at least something worked out. three more destroyers come after me at speed and zigzagging. i let out three more torps from bow, all miss and one falke from stern, then crash dive to 180m. in the end, i knock out one destroyer with the falke, but the other three get me after about three actual hours of cat and mouse. we sink to the bottom some 220m with a great big hole in the pressure hull near the engine room.
what bugs me;
why wasn't the luftwaffe effective at all through all this? why are allied planes, during late war patrols, so on the mark when bombing a sub already crashed to 30m and they kill me? why is the luftwaffe deadly on their attacks in the beginning of the war and the latter part they fly blind. i should have gotten away as the destroyers would have had their hands full with the bombers. they pretty much ingnored them and drove straight in to hunt me down.
not fair.