Loch Ewe!
 

Early 1940 and I've taken my brand new VIIB over the top of Scotland and into Loch Ewe. Was headed for Scapa Flow originally but came within 50m of being run over by a destroyer steaming for home during the filthiest storm I've ever been in ... thankfully my watch crew had sharper eyes than his!

Anyway. We sneaked through the outer defences (two ancient corvettes and a little patrol boat) and into the main basin. Sure enough, there was a 5000-ton merchantman riding at anchor and a couple of floating docks. I selected the magnetic pistols and, just in case BdU's dire warnings about magnetic pistols detonating prematurely came true, fired a two-tube salvo. Off they went, I patted my IWO on the back and sent him down the bows to supervise reloading.

A minute and a half later, I heard an explosion. This was strange because the merchantman was about 4,000m away, so I raised the scope to have a look. No damage visible on the freighter and nobody in the harbour seemed to have even noticed the explosion. My navigator shook his head when I looked at him. Surely we didn't fire two duds at once?

We came a few degrees port and lined up on the floating dock. This time I let my II.WO come up with the firing solution (good lad, thinks clearly and has an excellent grasp of maths - he'll make a fine commander one day!) and he sensibly opted for a shallow running torpedo set for impact detonation. I let him fire that one and watched the trail of bubbles disappear towards our target.

Thirty seconds later the thing detonated! I couldn't believe my eyes.

As fate clearly didn't want us sinking anything that day, I had the boat come about and set course out of the basin. I left my Chief in charge of the control room and climbed into my bunk for some rest - it had taken almost three hours to sneak in, after all.

No sooner had I put my head down then there was an almighty judder that shook the boat from stem to stern. The radioman was flung backwards off his seat and the hatch to the control room bounced off the bulkhead with a loud clang. My mug of coffee flew off my table and smashed to pieces on the floor plates. Swearing, I staggered to my feet and made my way into the control room.

"Chief, what the hell just happened?" Even as I spoke, I saw that the Papenberg was reading just five metres!
"We've hit a shoal, Herr Kaleu!"
"Dammit! Back emergency and get her below the surface! Damage reports!"

It wasn't too bad. A couple of dented torpedo tube doors (still operational, thankfully) and a few cuts and bruises amongst the torpedo gang. We pulled back into deeper water while I scanned the surface, praying none of the nearby escorts had heard the almighty racket we'd made or seen our conning tower. Luckily, none had.

Cursing our ill fortune, I had the navigator plot our course back out of the basin, following the track we had taken on the way in so we'd avoid the treacherous sandbanks. On our way out, I spotted the old corvette plodding along her route. We still had a few fish in the tubes and I figured we might as well get a few hundred tons to our name as well as making our journey a little safer.

This time I worked out the firing solution myself and fired the fish. It blasted out of our tube with the usual hiss of compressed air, the Chief re-balanced the boat perfectly, and I stayed at the scope with my stopwatch running.

One minute.

One minute thirty.

One minute forty five.

One minute fifty one ... explosion. Short of the target.

ANOTHER damned sand bank! Four torpedoes wasted because of them: 80,000 marks down the drain!


I brought the scope down. "Chief, you have the bridge. Don't wake me up until we're out of this damned hole, and don't dare hit another shoal!

Sub net.

A narrow escape.
I lost a career a few months ago by running smack into the middle of 4 destroyers in a storm.
Now in that sort of weather I run submerged. :DL

I agree subnet...lucky you didn't hit a mine.
Raid harbour is :down: shooting at sitting ducks with a **** AI, what a challenge waouh...

excellent story!

Aye http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...ies/pirate.gif

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/5636/89295097.jpg

I once wasted two or three torpedoes in Scapa Flow before realizing that the ship I had targeted was surrounded by sub nets. Set the torpedo running depth to minimum and they should clear those barriers just fine. :yep:

True,
 

:up:

hmm, in real life if subnets where so eficent in stopping torpedos, why couldnt they just put subnets around ships like a curtain to stop torpedos?

That's precisely what they did in the main naval anchorages to protect the most valuable units such as BB's and Carriers.

And if I recall, no U-boats were actually were sunk by sub nets. They were excellent deterrents though.

There still finding U Boat wrecks miles from where they thought they were,
In the last few years they have found that the deep coastal minefields were much more effective than they had thought
who knows what's still out there

Is this a mod? :o:06:

No, That's the mission editor. Comes with the game (or at least GWX).

IIRC, they actually tried that. There were some test ships that had nets on booms that could be lowered into the water while underway. I don't think they did much with them, but I know at least one skipper claimed (wrongly it it is assumed) to have been thwarted by such a device.


@Ober: excellent story. Enjoyed that

This is the Mission Editor that comes with SH3....a very handy tool, especially when you've scripted additional units into the game and want to direct their behavior or testing out missions you are having difficulty with or have written yourself.