Hi everyone
I was assigned to patrol the China Sea around the Phillippines, to clean the sea of all IJN warships in preparation for the Allied invasion of the Phillippines. (September 20th, 1944).
In the coast of Luzon, near the Manilla Bay, i sunk 2 big passanger ships converted into troop transports (each one of them was beign escorted by 4 DDs), and some days later I sunk 2 little anti-sub TFs of 2 DD each. I patrolled the area without succes for a couple of weeks. When i was retourning to Brisbane (October 18th), i was in the Sulu Sea, i received the Fox Traffic saying that American and Japanesse fleets were converging at the Phillippines Sea , and all patrolling ships near were ordered to assist the Allied flleet. At 10 knts (full fuel economic) i arrived the San Bernandito Strait (23rd), at midnight. but there was not a single ship there.
I was really angry, thinking that this of the din campaign was bul*****, that i dumped a lot of precious fuel, and now i would have to retourn at 10 ktns trough all Oceania, taking the double of time to reach the nearest refit point. But 1 hour later my radar detected 20+ big contacts heading for the San Bern strait fast. It was Kurita 's Central Force.
My eyes shined, In my mind, only a single sentece repeteaded again and again and again: "Itīs my moment"
In a couple of minutes i manuevered to get the perfect attack postion:
90° from the path of the TF, like 1000 mts from the farest ship and 300 mts from the nearest one (estimated course). Depth 100 mts. Speed: 0
The DD s never knew i was there, and when they got away i blowed balast to climb quickly and then level to PD. I observed the ships with the scope: Lots of Cruisers, like 5 BB (Yamato and Mushashi were there !!) and very few DDs. Some DDs ran aground on the strait s coast and were set on fire.
What would you do in such situation? Try to sink the most cruisers you could ? Use all of your torps with the BBs, hoping one or two would sink?
In the end i sunk 6 ships: I spent all torps remaining.
3 Takaos: (2 torps to the first one (Kurita's one, leader of the formation), 1 torp for the 2nd one, and the 3rd was sunk later by 2 "lost" cuties)
1 Mogami: 1 torp (Magn det, 6 mts depth, took a while to sink)
1 Maya: 1 torp
Kongo BB: 4 cuties.
I almost got sunk by the Yamato, haha. I was at pd firing torps and then i decided take a look around for incoming DDs, what i found it was more than i expected. The Yamato was heading for me at fulll speed very very close range. i crash dived, and when i reached 30 METERS, the Yamato hit my submarine (cunning tower), thanks to the unrealistic collision damage of the game she inflicted no damage to me, but the sub almost do a 180° roll because of the impact. I retourned to Brisbane some days later with 0 torps left and more than 100.000 tons of shipping, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, haha. I have to admit i was very lucky of sunking the Cruisers with so few torps hits