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Warren Peace
03-29-14, 11:25 PM
So, I've been away on shore-leave for quite some time, but got the bug to play some more SH III. Figured I'd better take a Type VII boat out to get reacquainted, since they are much more forgiving than the Type II's I typically captain. First pre-war patrol went fine, so I picked up a few raw recruits to fill out the ranks and went back out.

Coming down the western coast of Ireland to my assigned patrol grid and I get a contact. Go check it out, and I find an unescorted tanker trundling along at a leisurely 6 knots, good times! Come up beside him and surface for a deck-gun attack, get the boys on-station and tell 'em to fire for the waterline. What I hadn't realized is the guy on the gun is one of my rookies, fresh out of the naval academy and on his first cruise. Great, this'll take half my ammo. Now, I've come to expect the first few shots to be fairly horrible, until the boys get their eye in, but he surprised me - hit just above the waterline almost dead amidship, not bad. Smoke starts billowing, so I know something's on fire, took a few seconds before I knew just how badly that fire actually was. Before the second shot was fired, she blew. Massive fireball, pieces of ship flying everywhere, and she split clean in half.

That man will never buy his own beer again as long as I live, what a shot!

captgeo
03-29-14, 11:29 PM
LOL, great stuff......:har:

Warren Peace
03-30-14, 06:00 AM
I've read it three times now and can't quite believe - did this really happen?

Yes, it really did. The only thing I can figure is the tanker was loaded down with some sort of fuel and he put that HE round right into the tanks. I wish like hell I'd been FRAPSing that, funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

Edit/Update - Well...this is mildly embarrassing. Thanks to my wonderful ability to remember things (read: none at all), I forgot that prior to getting away from SH3, I had been using the VIIB as a testbed for comparing the big-guns to their historical performance. Now, forgetting that I'd been doing this, I never checked my mod-list before starting up, meaning that my boat wasn't carrying an 88, it was packing one of the 15in. guns off of the Bismarck... Oops.

maillemaker
03-31-14, 01:40 PM
it was packing one of the 15in. guns off of the Bismarck... Oops.

I need this mod. :haha:

Steve

Warren Peace
03-31-14, 03:14 PM
That's given me an idea...

Just for kicks, if I get the drive to start modding again, perhaps I'll do a complete overhaul of the U-boat line-up. Remove the majority of the torpedo tubes, but upgrade the deck-guns to cruiser-calibres.

Would definitely give those ASW escorts something to think about.

XO- 'Kaleun, we're being actively pinged!'
Kaleun - 'Surface the boat, come about 90 degrees'
DD Captain - 'Aha! There he is! Train all guns on that submarine!'
Kaleun - 'Fire.'
DD ceases to exist.