What stern tube damage?
 

Hi, all!

RL intervened and kept me from SH4 for a little bit, but I'm back at it. Currently, I'm commanding a Salmon class and it's mid-February '42. I'm on the second patrol of my current campaign, heading out of Surabaya for my patrol zone off the West Coast of the Phillipines.

About halfway there, I encountered 2 Aux Subchasers. They obviously detected me, because they started going into search patterns. Seas were moderate, and they seemed to be having trouble locating my exact position. I was at periscope depth, silent running and heading away from them at about 3,000 yards. Suddenly, one of them came to a dead stop, perpendicular to me on an almost perfect 180 degree bearing. It was tempting so I decided to shoot one stern tube at it.

About 3/4 into the run, the chaser started back up. I don't think he saw the torp, because he only went up to 9 knots and started a search pattern again. Hilariously, the other chaser looped around, intercepted the torp and down she went (talk about luck).

I decided to surface and take out the other chaser with my DG. This didn't work out very well. They're very small targets. He got one hit on me and I emergency dived and eventually evaded him.

My damage control panel showed 6% hull damage, but no other damage evident.

Fast-forward a couple of days and I'm lining up a shot on a freighter with my stern tubes. When I press fire I get the message "Too much damage on stern tubes" and no torp fired. I tried the other 3 stern tubes with the same result.

I double checked my damage control panel and the stern tubes look normal. They are not listed as even being damaged let along destroyed... what gives?

Likely what happened is when you surfaced to duke it out with that subchaser his shot hit aft near the stern tubes and destroyed the outer door models. There are few thing on the boat that have a destructible model and torpedo tube outer doors are one of them.

You probably already know this but, hull damage can only be repaired at the home port, and by ending your patrol.

Sometimes when things get totally destroyed it doesn't show up on your damage meter, not sure if this is a bug or what, but it often happens. Nothing sucks worse than lining up a target, shoot and you get the damage message, check, see no damage. Radar is another that will get you killed, think it works then a plane spotted and it bombs you before you dive...

pay attention to those messages when you get hit, it will tell you if things get destroyed.

I had this happen to me on my last patrol. A destroyer landed a DG real close to my stern. Flooded the aft torpedo room. I was having trouble evading these two destroyers because I couldn't maintain constant depth with the flooded torpedo room so had to keep some sort of forward propulsion.

I come up to periscope depth at Flank speed to purposely draw the destroyers towards me to attempt a down the throat shot. Lined it up. Waited, waited. Watched that DD get closer and closer and then gave the command to fire....click "Sir, the aft torpedo tubes are too damaged." Definitely not the time you want to discover this as the DD quickly filled my entire scope view. I crash dived and eventually got away but it was closer than I wanted to make things. Lesson learned.

I scrolled up through the messages and found the "We're taking damage" message, but nothing specific.

Yes, I do know that. I could be wrong, but I always thought Hull Damage referred to the pressure hull. I guess I don't think of the tubes as part of the hull.

That could very well be the case. He was bearing about 150-ish, so he definitely had a clear shot at the stern outer doors. Oh well, lesson learned. I now view Aux Subchasers as the psychotic, PMS-ing Aqua Chihuahuas of the IJN. I will not choose to duke it out on the surface with them again if I can avoid it.

That message is usually mild damage, AA fire, ect..

What mods are you running?

TMO 2.0. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was fairly generic. Nothing that would have led me to believe my stern tubes were FUBARed.