July 1940, Type VII-B

Found an unescorted convoy somewhere off Western France, also was the first time I saw German bombers attacking a convoy. I Managed to torpedo a merchant's propellor off.

Now, to add insult to injury, I made a victory loop around the static Merchant while surfaced (at very close range , around 10 m :o ) . Just as I finished the loop, BOOM! :damn: I was hit by bombs from a German JU . My deck crew almost got pwned, the impact actually pushed my sub onto the bloody merchant, and that crippled my rudder.

I heaved a sigh of relief that the sub was still afloat, while allotting repairs and trying to steer clear, I heard another explosion, courtesy a German bomber.

R.I.P Karl Heinz Schneider.
Sunk by Aircraft :down:

11 May 1941, 5th day of patrol. U-103 IXB. 200 miles west of Gibraltar. U-boat lost with all hands.

With accute perspicacity, I intercepted the large zigzagging convoy at 0315. The weather had turned sour: Moderate seas, rain. Without seeing escorts found myself amid a bunch of small freighters. Managed to get intermittent sightings of a large and a medium merchant. Launched four torpedoes at extreme range. 2 exploded prematurely, one missed. One hit: Large merchant sank immediately. Following my own dictums dove silently to 200 meters. Was not bothered by escorts.

Clear of the convoy, surfaced, plotted intercept for the following evening. followed plotted course at TC32, dealing with tired crew and torpedo reload.

Crash, bang "Das Boot ist bescheldig."
"Alaaarm."
We crash dived. Conning tower, flasck & DG, forward crew, aft crew, electric motors, aft torpedo compartments damaged.

Evaluating: Damage was not severe.
Pinging, destroyer rumbles overhead. We qre at 30 meters (I had slowed the dive not to agravate damage.
"wasserbomben."
Ahead flank. We avoided the DCs.
Off silent running, fixed leaks. Damage under control. Continue dive to 80 meters. Back to silent running.
Destroyer makes another pass. Depth charges explode some distance away.
Haha, we've made it. 5 minutes later we are at 100 meters. The destroyer makes another pass.
End of career :nope:

Analysis
Mistake number one. Proceeding in vicinity of convoy in low visibility at more than TCx1
Not considering convoy would change course.
Getting too smug about destroyer's capabilities, not avoiding depth charges by going flank at the moment of drop until the misses were at a greater distance.
Forgot to keep turning ALL the time.
Conclusion: After many succesful attacks, captain got overconfident.

Read the advice on convoy attacks on my webbie. If you don't get overconfident, they will work until you make a mistake.

Omg Ducimus - the dead-in-the-water sinking was awesome. I've never had that kind of slow-sink. My deaths have almost always been sudden and shocking.

My last two careers had the insta-crunch depth-charge demise. The lead-ups were different, but in both cases I was detected in calm waters, dove and was hit at medium depth by the escort's first or second depth charge run. In one case i had time to press F7, and in the other it was lights out, and before the lights came back on I had the screen o' death.

I did have one death where i had time to panic and scramble about the damage control screen. It was during one of my early careers, U-47, a VIIB. I was late in the career, with a whole lot of tonnage under my belt. I was in the med, and I had just sunk KGV without being detected, and I was heading back to Spezia.

Mid-day, clear weather, detected by a Catalina. I ordered crash dive, but it was on top of me as my stern was disappearing. It dropped a cluster of five or six bombs right onto my back. I started taking on water all over but the engines were still intact. I switched to damage control and started assigning folks. Transferring sailors took a few seconds and in that time my boat started to lean into a _steep_, 45 degreeish dive, and I was still travelling at flank. The added weight was actually speeding me up, so i was plummeting into the bottomless abyss. I panicked, froze, then hit all reverse and blew ballasts. It was too late to have any effect, and the boat sailed way into the red. I forget the point at which she cracked, but there was certainly time to clench. That's where I started playing DiD - despite my shock, i was sunk fair and square.

full story (sorry about the screenshot loadageddon):

http://www.dontgethurt.ca/arthur_glog/#363

This is my kinda thread.

Kb

A story about how my friend lost his newest career:

First patrol, 1941, Lorient, IXB. My friend follows the escort out and then plots a course to the north atlantic, turns on full time compression and leaves the computer to cook some food while I continue to watch the game.

After some time, west of Ireland, a ship was spotted. I paused the game and told my friend about it. He told be to check what kind of ship it is. I do, and find out it's a destroyer. He runs back to the computer and immediately dives.

Then, he tries to kill the destroyer using torpedoes. He dives up to periscope depth, tubes 1 and 2 being selected. He waits for the destroyer to come closer, and then fires the eels... one problem: he forgot to open the tubes beforehand. Naturally, both torpedoes miss.

He continues to stalk the destroyer in periscope depth, trying to find a new oppurnity to attack. And indeed, after some time, he finds another great moment to strike. Tube 3 selected, opened, fired... this one didn't hit either.

After that the destroyer was too close to attack in most cases. My friend still waits for a good oppurnity. After a time the destroyer uses a ramming course. My friend then fires off another torpedo (which barely missed the depth charges, and also the destroyer who threw them) and dives down.

But the charges hit critically, and so his U-Boat is sinking down. The whole boat is slowly filling with water. My friend tries to repair it, but he hesitates too much and is not able to repair the boat fast enough to rescue it.

The boat sinks down to 230 meters, where it hits the ground. Now, half of the crew is already dead, but the boat is still working. My friend still tried to repair the damage, which is not easy with much of the crew being dead. He does manage to repair most of the boat, though.

Then, the boat dives up again. Unfortunately, too late, because shortly before passing the 200 meter mark, the boat gets crushed, at 62% hull integrity.

Luckily, it's just the first patrol, so nothing was lost. I hope my friend has learned some lessons from this.

Your friend or you Prince :hmm:

:rotfl:

Some good stories there, thanks a lot!

Keelbuster: I liked the story on your website. And the shots were nice too... Always good to watch a battleship sinking. :)

Prince Kassad: Your friend was very lucky to survive that long and to meet the bottom at 230 metres. Most of us aren't... And I'd NEVER leave my career in anyone's hands. :D

Hey Keelbuster,
Loved those two stories..

Peter "Ali" Cremer's memoirs of his time served aboard U-333 are an excellent read, and that particular incident with the "Crocus" is related in harrowing detail, the pictures of the conning tower looking like swiss cheese and the bent periscope do a good job of just how close a call this was.

By the way, among the men there was a saying popular in the ubootwaffe "Ali Cremer is as good as Life Insurance"

Glad to see you escaped that particular encounter.

He was also called "Ali Wreck" as he managed to always come back with a really beaten up uboat. Check the story at uboat.net