Lone DDs...
 

Are these guys more tenacious then the ones in a convoy?


While patroling the South China Sea - spotted 2 Ashi DDs running about 19 knots and were going to cross my path - glass seas.

I thought why not try to take out one or both? If I nail one then one should be easy to evade.

I set up about 3000 yards to be safe and fire my fish... Just as the fish leave the tube, my WO forgot to set the depth setting to as shallow as possible to ensure a hit (definitely can't be captains fault!). Of course one fish goes right under and the other is easily evaded...

The DDs steam towards my position thus beginning a 10 hour hunt... :o


These nasty bastards had a fix on me every time. If I manuevered too late, I would get damaged by close DCs. One would sit pinging away while the other DD would creep on me - going like 5 knots or something and drop his load. Very similar to British creeping tactics. The only chance I had was blow tanks to persicope depth and try to fire quick fish. Tried this FOUR times, all missed by evasion. The fifth chance finally nailed one with my last fish.

The lone DD kept making runs on me but ran out of DC's!! Tried to manuever, but every time (2 hours worth) he knew my exact position (250 ft, riggged for silent, 1/3). had enough of trying evadea DD shooting blanks so reloaded remaining fish and popped up to finish him off.

At the end I had 6 fish left (yes my skills need improvement), down to 10% batteries :o , 30% CO2, hull damage at 25%, and severely wounded crew members.


As I limped back to base, I wondered:

Do other skippers go for lone DDs or do you wait for larger prey? :hmm:

And are the lone DD's uber tough? I'm using TMO and usually the DDs in a convoy return after some time.

Cheers!

Sounds like you ran into some elites. Running any mods? If your running RFB your lucky to have gotten away.

Read this thread for more http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=144478

I'm running TMO...

I know RFB can have uber-DDs, I guess I can also assume that TMO has them too...

I'm just wondering whether its worth to tangle with those lone DDs... ;)

Historically, the IJN was under the impression that US submarines could not dive to depths below 200 ft. Consequently, their ASW efforts tended to stay in the 50 - 150 ft range.
Valor at Sea
http://www.valoratsea.com/main.htm

Not in this game they dont :know:

Ive watched em drop a string with depths set from 80 to 300 feet in the same strring.

Lone DD's need not to take care for any precious merchants they are assigned to protect, so these guys have more spare time ;) to go hunting. If these two guys would have been escorting something, they would have broken up their attack to go back to their assignment - looks kinda bad if they spend hours on end going for a sub, only to have their merchants been sunk a couple se miles away...

Usually I leave them alone, unless it's a single ship, and I am in dire need for results to report back in port to my superiors.

ah good, thanks for the warning. so much to learn. hopefully my crew wont pay for my ignorance too much. thanks

It always pays to check your weapons setting before a launch. It's part of my routine.

Good evasion!

I am in no way an expert, in fact I am more of an egg-spurt but daylight attack, glass seas, 2 DDs and steam fish at 3000yds sounds like a solution that has depth charges somewhere in the result.

Seaman, pass me the beard clippers...

Well I suppose one learns from their mistakes... :lol:


Funny, during the engangement I blew the emergency ballast to quickly rise to PD but was listening on hydrophones and forgot to give the order to stop my ascent. The pings and shell thuds was quite disconcerting, especially for the forward torpedo room crew considering a shell penetrated and wounded all three watches.

Much to learn.... :doh:

Gee Ive never done that :p I think thats why they have officers repeat orders in real life.

Another favorite is to hit the C key by accident when only 20 or so feet above the bottom :oops:

RFB goes for realism and DD are actually less deadly than stock and way weaker than TMO

TMO makes everything super hard and i suspect most if not all ships are set to elite crew setting

Put RFB & RSRD together... you betcha theres elite destroyers, ran into a pack of three of them. Ended my best carrier to date.

i didnt mean to imply RFB didnt have elite DD, i was just pointing out that in stock the depth charges are more powerfull and more effective than they were in real life so RFB reduced the power and effectiveness of the depth charges and made the DD sensors and DD attack results more in line with the historical records.

Done that myself in a Type XII or whatever the class the U-Boat is when I was sailing out of Singapore. Did some TC, and to check out its preformance I ordered a crash dive drill, in 20 feet of water. Spammed blow ballast to prevent myself from scraping the sea floor. Ah good times, with a sub angled down around 15 degrees, engines back emergency and all compressed air gone to save my sub. It worked and the boat settled back onto the waves. Luckily. I think I got within a couple of feet.