Dr. Trespasser
09-08-05, 06:40 PM
Hi people, I've been playing the game since it was released but am just now into the 5th patrol of a fun new career using the latest RUB mod. The reason I felt like writing about this event is that it all happened totally by chance, went extremely well and was very exciting. I know there are lists of when and where the capitol ships will be but I've never used them b/c I wanted it to be a suprise when I find a big cap ship sitting in port. Well, this patrol was a crazy suprise, I decided to sneak into Scapa Flow, something I'd never seriously attempted during a career patrol since sneaking into ports had never been fruitful for me before and just so you know the date of the sinking was April 20 1940.
I was sailing across the North Sea from Wilhelmshaven In my trusty VIIB after sinking a bla coastal merchant and starting thinking about where I wanted to go next. After some thought to try and do a strait shot right into the middle of the Southern entrance of Scapa Flow. Yea I know its crazy but I wanted a challenge and I wanted to take the main channel because I thought there might be a gap in the subnets there.
I surfaced at night about 25nm to the South East of the Scapa Flow entrance and proceeded at flank to the shore of South Ronaldsay. Here I hugged the coast under the cover of darkness until my eagle eye watchman sighted a Flower Corvette at around 4km. Silently freaking out I switched to ahead slow + (silent running) and dived to periscope depth still hugging the coast until having to make the NW turn to head for the mouth of Scapa Flow. My sonarman was picking up contacts all over the place and the ones I could see through the scope at this point were the scary Flower Corvettes and the not so scary Armed Trawlers. These were continually transiting the entrance of Scapa as I neared it. After about 2 hours of creeping, I was sailing through the mouth of Scapa Flow with only 5m under my keel at some points and every so often a Flower Corvette would pass close by while pinging away with it's ASDIC gear. I was also worried about running into the subnets which I knew were placed somewhere in the entrance area of Scapa Flow. As more time passed and I continued into the Open Water of Scapa I was relieved I never saw those subnets and was never detected on sonar, however after doing a quick look-around with the scope I saw some more trouble. There were Two stationary VW Destroyers anchored in the South Eastern part of the bay along with an unknown number of patroling Flower Corvettea that I knew I would have to deal with if I decided to torpedo something in the bay.
After about another 2 hours of silent creeping further into the bay I was scanning with my scope and saw something amazing in the barley lit bay ,directly ahead, a huge frigin ship that I thought was an aircraft carrier. If I was going to shoot it I wanted to use only T2s on my first volley so there wouldnt be any wake. This meant I had to close 3000 more meters, 6000m-3000m before I could get within the T2 range. In the excitement to identify and destroy my target I ordered ahead 2/3 to get my boat moving a little faster to put distance between me and the patrols and to bring me closer to my target. Well what I didnt do before ordering and increase in speed was to check up on the patrols and see where they were and what they were dong. I think a Flower Corvette either detected my engine noise or was already headed in my direction but after about 10 minutes I heard some ASDIC pings searching the area. After another few minutes I saw a Flower corvette on my tail at around 1500m. I slowed down and changed direction but he had me and compensated. I was getting worried that this was going to ruin my cruise and I wasnt going to let that happen.
At this point I was something like 4500m from the Illustrious Class Carrier and was thinking of making a magnetic bow shot at the Flower with a T2 from the stern tube. I decided to take a chance and when the Flower Corvette was within 750m I fired. The magnetic torpedo met its mark, exploding under the front section of the Corvette. This caused the Flower to sink immediately and also caused all hell to break lose in Scapa Flow. Something else that sucked at this moment was that it was about 5:15am and it was getting lighter. After this event I was nearing 3000m and set up a double T2 impact spread. I fired at the carrier and made a turn from the N to the WNW. After making this turn and waiting for the slow T2s to impact I did a quick scope scan and guess what I saw... two auxilery cruisers docked in the harbour at about 4500m directly ahead. I had missed these ships all night long due to my fixation on the Carrier to the North and the Patrols to the S and SE. Before getting over my suprise the torpedoes impacted and the carrier went up like a roman cangle and sank quickly staying level all the way down. By this time the 2 VWs I had seen anchored earlier and about 3 Flower Corvettes were racing to find and kill me. It was a race against time. My awesome torpedo crew quickey got one bow torpedo and my stern torpedo loaded so I had 3 of 4 in the Bow. I decided to go for the auxilery cruisers which I knew were pretty weak from previous experience. I fired a double T1 impact salvo at one and a single T1 magnetic at the other. Both found their mark but not before one of the cruisers spotted the torpedo wakes and started moving. Luckily he didnt move fast enough and both of them went to the bottom. By this time the patroling craft were going wild, doing circles, dropping charges every so often and comming very close at times. One of the VWs came within probably a few meters of hitting my conning tower but didnt detect me. I swore I wouldnt get out alive, but they mostly stuck around the general area of the sunk ships which by now, were half submerged and still burning in the shallow water. I dont think the very shallow water was helping their ASDIC gear any.
My final escape from Scapa Flow was the easiest part of all. I decided I would take a chance and try to get out through the western Clestrain and Hoy Sounds but didnt know if they were mined or netted. Low on Oxygen and with 25% battery remaining I slowly made my way back into the Atlantic to the west of Scapa Flow. I never saw any of the original patroling craft except for a single Elco and the billowing smoke from the burning aux. cruiser. Safe in open water I surfaced and replenished my Oxygen and charged my batteries a bit. The peace didnt last long since a Hurricane had spotted me and made an unsuccesful attack run, shortly after which an armed trawler came to investigate. I just decided to resubmerge and wait them all out while slowly cruising away. I did just that and that was that.
Thought it was a neat experience, here are some pics for your enjoyment
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/64CF793020BC11DAA723B4EB18D328EE.jpg
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/66D2752020BC11DA9F82DF2518D328EE.jpg
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/68A33D8020BC11DABCD9DAF518D328EE.jpg
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/6A7CDF8020BC11DA8EC6B49018D328EE.jpg
I was sailing across the North Sea from Wilhelmshaven In my trusty VIIB after sinking a bla coastal merchant and starting thinking about where I wanted to go next. After some thought to try and do a strait shot right into the middle of the Southern entrance of Scapa Flow. Yea I know its crazy but I wanted a challenge and I wanted to take the main channel because I thought there might be a gap in the subnets there.
I surfaced at night about 25nm to the South East of the Scapa Flow entrance and proceeded at flank to the shore of South Ronaldsay. Here I hugged the coast under the cover of darkness until my eagle eye watchman sighted a Flower Corvette at around 4km. Silently freaking out I switched to ahead slow + (silent running) and dived to periscope depth still hugging the coast until having to make the NW turn to head for the mouth of Scapa Flow. My sonarman was picking up contacts all over the place and the ones I could see through the scope at this point were the scary Flower Corvettes and the not so scary Armed Trawlers. These were continually transiting the entrance of Scapa as I neared it. After about 2 hours of creeping, I was sailing through the mouth of Scapa Flow with only 5m under my keel at some points and every so often a Flower Corvette would pass close by while pinging away with it's ASDIC gear. I was also worried about running into the subnets which I knew were placed somewhere in the entrance area of Scapa Flow. As more time passed and I continued into the Open Water of Scapa I was relieved I never saw those subnets and was never detected on sonar, however after doing a quick look-around with the scope I saw some more trouble. There were Two stationary VW Destroyers anchored in the South Eastern part of the bay along with an unknown number of patroling Flower Corvettea that I knew I would have to deal with if I decided to torpedo something in the bay.
After about another 2 hours of silent creeping further into the bay I was scanning with my scope and saw something amazing in the barley lit bay ,directly ahead, a huge frigin ship that I thought was an aircraft carrier. If I was going to shoot it I wanted to use only T2s on my first volley so there wouldnt be any wake. This meant I had to close 3000 more meters, 6000m-3000m before I could get within the T2 range. In the excitement to identify and destroy my target I ordered ahead 2/3 to get my boat moving a little faster to put distance between me and the patrols and to bring me closer to my target. Well what I didnt do before ordering and increase in speed was to check up on the patrols and see where they were and what they were dong. I think a Flower Corvette either detected my engine noise or was already headed in my direction but after about 10 minutes I heard some ASDIC pings searching the area. After another few minutes I saw a Flower corvette on my tail at around 1500m. I slowed down and changed direction but he had me and compensated. I was getting worried that this was going to ruin my cruise and I wasnt going to let that happen.
At this point I was something like 4500m from the Illustrious Class Carrier and was thinking of making a magnetic bow shot at the Flower with a T2 from the stern tube. I decided to take a chance and when the Flower Corvette was within 750m I fired. The magnetic torpedo met its mark, exploding under the front section of the Corvette. This caused the Flower to sink immediately and also caused all hell to break lose in Scapa Flow. Something else that sucked at this moment was that it was about 5:15am and it was getting lighter. After this event I was nearing 3000m and set up a double T2 impact spread. I fired at the carrier and made a turn from the N to the WNW. After making this turn and waiting for the slow T2s to impact I did a quick scope scan and guess what I saw... two auxilery cruisers docked in the harbour at about 4500m directly ahead. I had missed these ships all night long due to my fixation on the Carrier to the North and the Patrols to the S and SE. Before getting over my suprise the torpedoes impacted and the carrier went up like a roman cangle and sank quickly staying level all the way down. By this time the 2 VWs I had seen anchored earlier and about 3 Flower Corvettes were racing to find and kill me. It was a race against time. My awesome torpedo crew quickey got one bow torpedo and my stern torpedo loaded so I had 3 of 4 in the Bow. I decided to go for the auxilery cruisers which I knew were pretty weak from previous experience. I fired a double T1 impact salvo at one and a single T1 magnetic at the other. Both found their mark but not before one of the cruisers spotted the torpedo wakes and started moving. Luckily he didnt move fast enough and both of them went to the bottom. By this time the patroling craft were going wild, doing circles, dropping charges every so often and comming very close at times. One of the VWs came within probably a few meters of hitting my conning tower but didnt detect me. I swore I wouldnt get out alive, but they mostly stuck around the general area of the sunk ships which by now, were half submerged and still burning in the shallow water. I dont think the very shallow water was helping their ASDIC gear any.
My final escape from Scapa Flow was the easiest part of all. I decided I would take a chance and try to get out through the western Clestrain and Hoy Sounds but didnt know if they were mined or netted. Low on Oxygen and with 25% battery remaining I slowly made my way back into the Atlantic to the west of Scapa Flow. I never saw any of the original patroling craft except for a single Elco and the billowing smoke from the burning aux. cruiser. Safe in open water I surfaced and replenished my Oxygen and charged my batteries a bit. The peace didnt last long since a Hurricane had spotted me and made an unsuccesful attack run, shortly after which an armed trawler came to investigate. I just decided to resubmerge and wait them all out while slowly cruising away. I did just that and that was that.
Thought it was a neat experience, here are some pics for your enjoyment
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/64CF793020BC11DAA723B4EB18D328EE.jpg
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/66D2752020BC11DA9F82DF2518D328EE.jpg
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/68A33D8020BC11DABCD9DAF518D328EE.jpg
http://www.magix-photos.com/mediapool2/D7/CF/3D/A0/20/BA/11/DA/B8/62/26/E8/18/D3/28/EE/10/6A7CDF8020BC11DA8EC6B49018D328EE.jpg