Ah, yes. Nasty buggers they are. I was pleased when Ducimus introduced that to TMO way back, partially at my suggestion as I had asked about Q ships/decoys after reading about them. They were labeled as small split freighters then. First time I encountered one (long ago) in the sim was in early 1943 off Japan, attacked on surface at night what I thought was two small merchants, turned out to be the Q ship and a small freighter. The gunfire the Q ship can lay down is impressive. I took a near miss near the stern was was diving, did not hole the boat but did bust hull damage to from the 4 percent had from a severe depth charging earlier in patrol to 11. Then the q ship proceeded to attack my Tambor Class (USS Triton) for seven hours. I waited three more hours before coming to periscope depth and sure enough at 1200 yards, he was sleeping listening, and heard me, boom came in and hunted another hour or so, pushing me, with hull damage to 475 feet, in a Tambor. A close pattern made the hull collapse due to the depth, career over.


Second time was one on patrol caught me and hounded me until my battery power was exhausted from the high speed maneuvering have to do to stay away from its charges, was forced to surface. I surfaced, battled it out, rammed it t high speed amidships, and survived with heavy damage. Cant recall if it sunk or not but was disabled and did not pursue as sped away on surface dodging gunfire. I close surfaced very close if I recall, maybe 400 yards off and let loose with deck gun (something reminiscent of the John Wayne Submarine film "Operation Pacific" ) Actually, I remember writing up a post about it, because was shocked how it turned out, similar to the movie, which incorporated a lot of historical events (the ramming of a gunboat for example, was done by USS Growler in Feb 1943). May have to try and find the thread .

Generally I have avoided the q ships since then lol but had a few run ins, fortunately survived. The are pretty rare, especially in later war.


I hate you lost your boat, but as the designer of the update I am happy to see my ruse worked lol. I changed the name to TAMA MARU as a way to confuse the player and lure them into a trap, as Q ships did from time to time. This along with other things such as submerged enemy submarines that can fire torpedoes, friendly fire, mines than can get you on the surface, adds a lot of unknowns to being on patrol.

Also...the real TAMA MARU was a small freighter converted to a gunboat/q ship if I recall, which is why I chose the name.