A couple of patrols ago (May, 1943) I was infiltrating the Irish strait where I like to lay in wait for passing ships. I usually go up west of Ireland and come in from the North. The waters approaching the strait are often shallow (and a bad place to run into destroyers with advanced sonar) so I take no chances and stay submerged, giving warships a huge birth as I detect them with hydrophone. Whenever I do this I have to surface at least once to resupply O2 and to charge batteries, for this I usually park my boat in one of the inlets on the North coast of Ireland.
When I had a full charge I headed back out when the wind picked up to 15 m/s and I only had about 10 meters of clearance surfaced (to make matters worse, dawn was breaking) so I put it to the wall and headed for deeper water when about a million planes showed up.
I knew if I dived I would be tossed up and down by the waves and my hull would be beaten continuously on the bottom (I have the seasonal double wave height enabled) so I set my men to their guns and started to weave. Plane after plane went down and bombs were falling all over the place
"This is It!", "My moment has finally come!", "Rotten f-n bastards finally got me! after 33 patrols!", "If I die now, I swear It'll be for real because I'll shoot myself!". I really embarrassed myself. I try to not get excited at games when I have friends around, as I did the other day when this happened. I really can't help yelling at the thing or slamming my mouse against the desk repeatedly.
Anyway, when I was hit in the bow by a bomb but survived with 56% I finally decided that it was a 100% certainty that I would die if I stayed surfaced so I went to periscope depth and turned 80 degrees to starboard, staying flank speed all the while. I never hit bottom once! :oops:
I made it to deep water, crept my way to the 15km gap between Ireland and England and sunk 6 or so ships and crept back out. I decided to just surface while traveling when I needed rather than risk the extreme shallows again - praying I wouldn't meet a destroyer head to head.
On my way south past Ireland I was attacked by a b-24 and hit astern. At 11% I was afraid to go as far as periscope depth. I knew I was dead. The next air attack would finish me so I chickened out and warped back to Brest by ending mission.
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