Toughest small cargo ship in the world...
 

September 9, 1939

Stumbled across a small cargo ship - which I'll call "Ironsides" - in the rain, just North of Scotland. Kept losing sight of the bugger, but managed to plot a good intercept. Swung about to loose tube 5, perfect solution from 525 meters with impact pistol, detonation amidships on her starboard side. Tough little S.O.B. slowed to 5 knots. Hit her again - also dead center, starboard side - after reloading tube 5. Slowed to 2 knots, but still afloat.

Swung about, bringing forward tubes to bear, now on her port side. Third torpedo a dud. Fourth fish detonates amidships, port side. Her engines are finished, she's dead in the water. Must have serious flooding. I'll let her go down slow, no need to finish off the crew, I'll let them get the life boats in the water.

Two hours later she's still afloat.

Alright, time to finish her off, before any destoyers respond to her SOS. Seas too rough for the deck gun. I hit her a second time on the port side, center of her keel, below the masts.

She drifts another hour, giving no sign of sinking. Are you kidding me?

Seas are still too dangerous for the deck-gun crew. Another dud torpedo smacks off her port side, but the next one sets her cargo afire. Secondary explosions peel the deckhouse back and finally she slips beneath the waves.

Seven torpedoes - half my inventory - to sink one lousy small cargo ship. Am I doing something wrong?

No. These small merchants are among the toughest ones indeed. :arrgh!:

One option is to let her go. Two fish, hit them near the engine room if possible, blow up her boilers and maybe a third aft torpedo to get hew screws if she hasn't stoped yet. Then you wait. I remember waiting for a ship to sink in the convoy attack tutorial for over 4h. It had 2 torps alredy and was showing signs of flooding. It was a tramp steamer. I finish the second tramp steamer with my deck gun. Then I stop, set TC to 1024X, sure she will sink. I have realistic sinking times on (for the ships). After 3h, I decide to man my DG, set TC to really high and keep pressing spacebar. 60 shells later on the waterline (I use GW, so DG is less powerfull) she finaly starts to sink.

Small ships are truly strong! :yep:

I prefer tankers. Right shot "BANG!!!" :/\\x: and she's ablaze or exploding! :up:

This makes the game so intresting, you want fast food go Mc D :rock:

Well, it must have just been bad luck. I sank a large merchant with two torps. Go figure.

I've seen cargo ships and tankers of all sizes go down with one torpedo and then seen others take up to 5 or more to sink them. All were hit in the fuel bunkers and with pistol set to impact. I even went from one side of the ship being attacked to the other figuring that would help. Not!

You never know what will happen from leaving port to your return, that's what makes SHIII so interesting. The same stands for Super Mods, or even Vanilla SHIII modded to what you want.

That a fist on me normally a small merchant will go down with 1 fish some Iv'e snapped in two some went down intact after a min or two and some took about 30 mins but I never used 2 fish on a small merchant.

I don't know what it is about the small merchants, but with the NYGM damage mods those buggers seem to be made of cork. Virtually all of my attack approaches have me within 500 meters of the target, with a bearing between 330 and 30 degrees, and AoB of 65 - 120 degrees. Normally that has the critical areas appear on the target registry book, but even if it doesn't by now I've a pretty good idea where those are and I'll manually target for them. A good half the time the cargo and tankers go down in one shot, and half of those times they explode and break in half.

Not so those dratted small merchants. I can hit one with a perfectly placed shot, and watch it drift to a dead stop, sunk down to its gunwales . . . and bob . . . and bob . . . and bob . . . for hours. And keep floating after two more torpedoes, carefully aimed so as to evenly distribute the damage (i.e. if my first one impacted just ahead of the funnel at 3 -4 meters depth, then I aim #s 2 and 3 about 20 meters ahead of stern and 20 behind bow).

Cork . . . gotta be cork . . .

If it makes you feel any better, I took the English Channel in 39 (even with grey wolfs it CAN be done if you are patient by the way), sinking 2 tugboats and a trawler (if it floats, it will sink in my eyes) for the cost of 5 torpedos, all of which hit. Trawler was deckgunned, the first tug was 2 torpedos cause I felt like watching it sink like a rock, but the second tug was 1 torp, a few rounds, another torp, a few rounds, then a third torp and a run like hell cause by then I managed to attract a pissed off destroyer (which by the way, took a torpedo then sailed off into the sunset)

I had same problem.3 torps for small merchant dead center nice 90 degrease shot and that bugger wouldn't go down. My last patrol i wondered to NY city took the passenger liner down with one torp same for troop transport .How do you explain that?I'm running GW btw

I have never used more than 2 torpedoes on the small or coastal merchant and more often than not, only 1 torpedo and that is not with a BOOM but by sinking.

Aim for the masts as that is where the bulkheads are.

Normally I can sink large merchants and tankers with 1-2 torps, but those darn small merchants and tramp steamers can take anything from 3-5 perfectly placed torps. Maybe they are prototypes for top secret reinforced steel hulls? :lol:

Maybe magnetic fuse is the solution. I just sank 3 small merchants or tramps with 1 each, set to magnetic fuse...:hmm:

Heres a theory as to why the small mercants are the toughest. All the mercants in SH3 are made out of the same amount of steel. So a smaller ship in order to use up all the steel would have thicker sides and a stronger keel.

Makes sense to me at least

That's nothing. There was an occasion when I was waiting for two cargoes to go down which eventually took 5 days. Being a tight fisted sob I didn't want to waste any more torps.