Howdy Stew,
I'm a very, very long way from being an expert on this subject and I'm sure there are some wiley old and cunning Kapitänleutnant's here at Subsim that can offer better advice, but I've had a few "you've gotta be kidding" type encounters recently that I've somehow managed to survive just by the skin of my teeth, so here's my two bobs worth! :D
Always try to go as deep as possible ; ASDIC becomes less effective the more water you have between it and you. If you're near the coast and in shallow water, move in as close as you can to the shoreline ; the AS operator has more background hash to discriminate out as there's more things to bounce the ping.
Deep water is a double edged sword in "TWoS" ; deep water allows more scope for maneuvering and avoiding detection, but if you're badly damaged and sinking, and the bottom is deeper than your crush depth, it's goodnight! :dead: With Vdr's R.S.D mod, at least you have a chance in shallow water to just sit on the bottom if your boat's been badly damaged and unable to stay afloat, and just wait it out until the crew can do enough repairs to hopefully struggle your way back the surface.
Never use E-motor settings above silent speed unless you're in grave and imminent danger of your day being seriously ruined by a wasserbomben dropping directly on your head ; only then "knuckle" or "Double knuckle" as the DD passes over the top, preferably to the opposite side that you anticipate his next run will be. This is the time to release a decoy if you have any.
Be aware that every time you maneuver at settings above silent speed, there is a high probability that a positive contact will be made by the Hunter group. This will result in resetting the A.I's "30 minutes on station from last contact" back to zero so you can guarantee at least another half hour of stress playing cat and mouse before they lose interest and move on again. :wah:
Groups of Hunters normally work in concert with each other, some quietly listening while others are running search patterns and randomly depth charging to see what pops up ; the A.I can be quite devious at times due to TDW's IRAI mod.:yep:
For example, recently during a patrol along the Southeast coast of Britain, I stirred up a hornets nest while attempting a running gunfight with a small freighter close to a busy port. Nine Destroyers, a PT boat and a couple of planes all converged from different directions to gather at the scene of the crime. This was the start of one of those "skin of your teeth" survival epics that I mentioned previously. Our poor little U-boat was hunted, harassed, hounded and pounded for bloody hours before they finally tired of their fun and must have unanimously agreed that they had more than likely killed us and decided to call it a day. :dead:
Meanwhile, down in the cold murky depths, a growing sense of relief was starting to prevail among the shaken crew. Our young sound guy Benno, was making absolutely sure there was no misunderstanding about what he was trying to tell us, because he told us over and over again, which was that our tormentors and would be assassins were racing away at high speed toward the distant horizon! After waiting for what I considered a reasonable amount of time, I ordered the boat to periscope depth to take a look around. Sure enough, the task force was fast receding off into the distance, each belching tall, twin columns of black smoke.
While looking through the scope, with that warm and fuzzy feeling building as it does when you have just been proven the better warrior and superior example of the species than your adversaries, I decided to take a precautionary sweep around before surfacing. Turning the scope leisurely through the starboard sector, my view was suddenly greyed out at the 180 bearing by a solid wall..... I froze! :o Holy crap!!....sitting almost on top of the stern tubes was a dirty, filthy, deceitful, stationary and very silent warship!!:eek: The trap was sprung! They must have spotted my periscope at the same time as my coronary shifted to the acute stage because all hell suddenly broke loose with their siren whooping and me screaming "ALARM!....ALARM!" to the crew.
As you all well know, even at periscope depth, nothing happens with any sense of urgency when trying to crash dive from a standing start! :nope: Fortunately for us, the short range made it near impossible for DD gunners to depress the big guns down enough to draw a bead, but they stung us with smaller calibre fire before we finally managed to slip further under the waves and out of gun engagement range. Eventually as our E-motors built up a head of steam, our crash dive started to resemble the real thing so we powered down into the depths at flank speed until even the extended factory warranty was exceeded, switched to silent speed and then headed off in a completely different direction. Our deceitful adversary however, wasted no time calling his angry smokey compatriots from the distant horizon, because they were back on top of us in double quick time hellbent on destruction and mayhem, bringing on a very serious case of Déjà vu to us poor sailors.
Needless to say, we did eventually manage to somehow survive the day after a fashion. They achieved the next best thing to killing us, i.e. by damaging our boat to the point of being unable to complete the patrol and forcing us limp back to our home port for repairs. :hmmm: So there you have it ; any engagement between your U-boat and surface warships can just end up a case of how the cookie crumbles or the mop flops....Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes you draw!! :haha:
http://i60.tinypic.com/hs72g5.jpg
Here are a couple of links to documents that you might find interesting reading. :yep:
"The Submarine Commander's Handbook"
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/down...do=file&id=134
"Diving Regulations for U-boats"
http://www.uboatarchive.net/Diving/D...egulations.htm