Heavy cruisers, firecrackers, what's the diff?
 

South of Luzon Strait, early Dec 1941. My first cruise in a Porpoise class. The area just swarms with IJN activity. I pick up a task force on radar and tail it all the way to the edge of the Lingayen Gulf, and the whole TF just... stops. It was 8 destroyers protecting 3 Mogami heavy cruisers, with a complement of small passenger ships -- I assume it was an invasion force, since the timing was right.

I saved before my first attempt, in which I got greedy and wound up with a sucking chest wound at 200m. But I'm a nub, so I reloaded and tried again, with a little extra know-how garnished from my first experience.

Turns out those Mogami's make a very, very pretty explosion. And completely stationary, it's pretty easy to pick out that sweet spot at a perfect 90 degrees -- let a single fish loose at each, running at 4m, right below the forward gun batteries. Wouldn't you know it, three fish, three kills.

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/7478/4for4dm8.png

It felt weird being that conservative with torps, but the Porpoise only has the four front tubes. I guess this time the greed just paid off -- can't imagine that kind of an outcome if the Mogamis were moving.

Konga class battleships also take one torp in the ammo bunker under the first forward gun. Massive explosion, they go down in seconds.

ship's magazine give the big boom
 

Nice photos of burning victims, they need to add some ambience noise.

Remember 1 scene in Das Boote where they surface and watched the burning wreck with people screaming and water parties trying their last efforts.