SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - A 'nerve of steel' moment

Well, either nerves of steel or brilliant insanity. :D

While on the way to DG99, on my second patrol after taking over U-64 from her first commander, I received on 4 September, 1940, at around 2345 hours, a radio contact report of a large convoy approximately 60km from me in CG42. It's now 6 Sept and we're in CG79. I've run six different attack approaches since the original contact report, two of which were successful, both of which were at night and on the surface.

The first attack netted a large cargo and a large tanker at 0236 on 5 September, while the second one netted a large merchant and an ore carrier on 6 September at approximately 0220 hours, for a total GRT of 35002. In each case I'd fired two torpedoes at each one, to (hopefully) assure kills.

The four unsuccessful attempts were either due to poor pre-positioning, causing me to abort, or due to early detection by the escorts, who weren't at all pleased (don't ask me why:O:) to realize a U-boat was in the near vicinity.

At 2200 hours on 6 Sept I was, once more, in a pre-attack position, having spent that morning bringing in all my external torpedoes as I'd expended most of my internal ones. There was absolutely no wind, the sea smooth as glass. I spotted the lead escort at 40 degrees to my starboard, which annoyed me to no end, as I'd tried to take position more directly in front. Ringing up ahead flank I changed course to 50 degrees and started sweeping in front with the binoculars. Once I approached to within 5km (actually, I'm getting pretty good at eyeballing range estimates up to around 7km; it's my AoB eyeballing that still needs a wee bit o' work:oops:) I took us down as close to 8 meters as I could without clearing the bridge.

The lead escort was already past me and, from what I could see, hadn't a clue I was there. The starboard-side escort, on the other hand . . .

For all that this was a large convoy it wasn't particularly long in length. In order for me to close to within 1000 meters the starboard escort was going to be right on top of me. Even worse . . . even as I was watching her, she turned towards me and started heading my way! Damn!
I guessed she was about 2km and slowly closing. I almost dove and aborted, but I decided to take a chance.

Ringing up ahead standard I dropped my speed in an attempt to lessen my wake. Slowly the escort kept appraoching, but also just as slowly moving more astern. 2000 meters at 330 degrees. 1700 meters at 310 degrees. I rang up ahead slow. 1400 meters at 290 degrees. 1000 meters at 260 degrees!

By now the convoy was around my 330 degrees to dead ahead. I picked out the two largest silouhettes I could see, fired two electric at the closest, waited thirty seconds, then fired two steam at the nearest, then cleared the bridge, dove and did a hard ninety to port. At the time I dove the starboard escort was around 800 meters from me and around 240 degrees to me!

Normally I dive at ahead flank and go as deep as I can, but this time I couldn't. I was afraid that if the escort heard me he'd alarm the convoy and start them zigzagging. Granted, at the range I fired that shouldn't have made any significant difference, but I didn't want to take any chances.

I'd just about hit periscope depth when the torpedoes impacted. I'm pretty sure it was a case of overkill, because I got the 'She's going down!' after the first torpedo of each pair hit. Not that I'm complaining!
Both were large merchants, over 11,000 tonnes, bringing my total, so far, to 57,801, all from the same convoy, over two days of shadowing and attacking.

I've experienced nerve-wracking, palm-sweating moments before, most notably when getting the crap pounded out of me by depth charges. But slowly creeping past, while surfaced, an escort which wound up approaching to within 800 meters of me was, in its way, even more so. I felt like a tightly-wound watch on the very edge of exploding into pieces! And, in it's way, this was one of the most exciting and memorable moments I've had playing SHIII!