Am unsure but I think my last posting was earlier this week (or end of last) where I had gone around the top of the Irish sea and had got lucky and encountered a lone merchant in seas that were calming down compared to the malestrom we'd encountered in the open atlantic. We had already obliterated a lone merchant with a succesfull magnetic torpedo shot, before I chose to resume my progress from monday night where I'd pottered around ireland for a little while chasing a lone merchant.
I had another chance to finally have another campaign session of SH3 last night and BOY did I find it frustrating. I was off the coast of holyhead, persuing a solitary, small merchant and I discovered that I was unable to lock either of my periscopes or my UZO onto the ship ( I could but only for a short time)
It was raining again and winds were 6mtrs per sec, with a slight sea-state. (Which could be why). After shooting a torpedo and missing I decided I would not continue to persue my contact in these pathetic conditions (In actual fact I'm getting tired of bad atlantic storms in oct 1940).
I decided to turn tail and run south towards my base and make a desicion on my next course as we pass longships.
Shortly after I turned in 40winks in my bunk and I had barely nodded off when I got awoken by the buzz of my radio man, reporting that he'd recieved a message saying that Bdu had visual intelligence of a good-sized convoy just some 20 clicks SSW of my position which were on a NNE'rly course. Holding a tea in one hand and pencil in the other, I did some rough, very quick calculations, using some of the methods i've read about on these forums in the "noob" section.
Before long I arrived at my planned intercept point and proceeded to sit silently and awaited the arrival of the convoy. This was a convoy every Kaleun dreams of - Un-escorted! Although they didn't have anything much larger than medium cargo's they were still worth having a "butchers" at.
So before long they were upon me and I began locking up and firing at the various targets. However, I noticed my persistant problem of the sight locking bug was still with me and therefore I began to work on a couple of manual solutions! I got lucky and counted three explosions topside. I obliterated one contact (reported as a med cargo in my log) and damaged one or two others.
However in my salvo I expended around half of my torpedoes and I'd prob say 85% of them were wastage because of the sight lock problems and also me forgetting I'd still got my TDC set to manual imput, so any direction I was looking to shoot in, my torps were simply running straight and true from the tubes with no turning and without anything crossing my bow to be shot at by the torpedoes. (i'd read somewhere else about another guy achieving amazing success with straight out of the tubes bow shots - anyone who can post me the link - wld be really appreciated)
Cursing my rotten luck I ordered ahead flank and turned away from the convoy to run away - I was very lucky this was unescorted.
After running for 1 game hr, I sat on the surface for another hour re-loading my tubes and bringing inside my external load-out, ready for another go at the convoy. I set ahead full and at daybreak I was beginning to catch upto the last of the trailing ships in the convoy.
I fired again and my shot scored a direct hit although I think my shot merely damaged the vessel rather than an outright kill.
I got into a firing solution again with another vessel and launched three torpedoes at him, one struck but failed to detonate (set running hight too high/shallow, combined with a poor vessel angle) and the other two simply whizzed by.
Feeling rather peeved
I exited my patrol and shutdown my computer and went to bed.
I have thus far bagged only two kills for aprox 7,000 GRT and have wasted alot of torpedoes in far from ideal situations. I am definately showing a very green element to my skippering.
I will spend a few days mulling over it in port and probably play the in-game training exercises
before we put to sea again, hoping that the persistantly beautiful weather i always seemed to be blessed with in lorient upon departure, actually holds and follows me to the UK!!!
Written by Kaleun Gazpode
Patrol #1 (career2)
Sunk: 2 ships for Aprox 7,000 Grt.
Game date: Mid Oct 1940.