[Dogfish40]

Originally Posted by Daniel Prates

I once raided Quingdao, a harbor inside the yellow sea. I was there to deliver an agent, and after droping him off, i decided to check out the docks.

No subchasers, no DDs, nothing. I approached underwater and I rose periscope around 10pm, to take advantage of darkness.

Fog all around. I could not see a thing! According to the map, I came as close as 1000 meters to the dock and there was nothing to be seen.

Since fog works both ways, I emerged. Radar signals indicated 6 ships, all stationary. Perfect targets. But how could I see them? I slowly came as close as 500 meters and still could not see a thing. Since this is close to arming distance for the torpedoes, it was useless to go any closer.

I though of a way to shoot them, which might work for stationary targets. It is possible to get their bearings from radar, do the math with your own course, and set the torpedo gyroangle with that. When zooming down in the map, a compass appears which helps you trim those angles with finesse. If you are not too far away that could work fine. Of course, you must be lucky to have the ship in a 90 degrees angle in front ot you, because if it is facing you, the smallest angle error will imply a miss.

I did no try that tough, since there was no way to know if I would be spending torpedoes on useless targets as auxiliary subchasers or gunboats or such. So what i did was to wait another day submerged until the fog eventually dissipated and I could raise hell more properly!

I can't wait to get the SJ. I've still got several months before it becomes available and even then I might have to transfer. I mean, in one way I love it, the thick fog. I'm really trying to be a good little skipper and not peek because that increases the tension but, on the other hand I'm risking my crew, my boat and I want to use any methods that would give me the upper hand as any skipper would do in a situation such as this. The fog has been with us for days. I've not seen this before. I've had the long rainy, stormy patrols but this is creepy, like a Roger Corman flick. So, the best I have been able to do is use the deck gun, and that's me on the gun.

Originally Posted by surf_ten

Prior to having SD radar, I tried using the hydrohunt method I learned and used when I played sh III. I tracked the target, determined range, speed and course and set my intercept course all the while having zero visibility due to the fog. Even under 500 yds I still could not make visual contact so I cheated and used external view to verify the ships nationality (Japanese Merchant confirmed). Thinking I outwitted the weather conditons I let loose my torps and recieved the very satisfactory explosions, however despite knowing I just sunk the ship I was not given the credit for the sinking.

Perhaps the computer crew could not confirm the sinking due to not having a visual contact. This was definately different from SH III becuase I used the hydrohunt method numerous times due to long stretches of craptacular weather and recieved credit despite not having visual confirmation. I guess in reality this was quite a reckless action on my part since I could have ending up sinking a friendly.

I have credit on the log for sinking two enemy ships (different days) and it says enemy! I hope that it stays that way when I get back to base because on the nav-map the sunk icon is grey instead of red or blue. As I said, I used the deck gun, and since there was no confirmation except my visual checking against a chart, I didn't see a flag. I was relieved after the sinking to get the "enemy ship" on the log. I'm a bit over-cautious to get too close submerged in the fog. One mistake and I'm getting rammed. If they detect me, I've had merchants change course and half the time it's right at the boat. If this keeps up though, I might just go ahead and peek. Oh well... we'll see!
D40