3rd patrol USS S-35, stock S class except for early SJ radar installed. Departed 20 March 1942 from PHANTOM 42 with orders to patrol Java Sea. Radar contact, one of them stupid troopship "task force" madhouses, with the usual skittering about like waterbugs and colliding with each other. Wasn't in the mood to deal with that nonsense so I turned south to avoid contact. And picked up another one on radar to the south. Turned west to go between them (since they weren't actually going anywhere, just milling around in circles) and found myself flanked by two more of those abortions heading the same direction.
Turned around and headed back toward PHANTOM 42, once I was out of the Celebes Sea stopped engines and drifted for 48 hours to let all them idiots disappear.
Tried again, on entering Celebes Sea picked up another task force on radar - this one turned out to be a real task force with 4 battlewagon shapes in column. 12 torpedoes in an S-boat but what the hell, might as well see if I can sink one or two.
Escort cooperated by getting stupid, at 15000 yards the screen unscreened and started running search patterns to the rear, while the lead escort wove in and out of the BB column until the predictable happened, he got run over. No screen in front, so approached from head on until sighting the first BB, a FUSO, then submerged.
Went deep and found the layer was at 150, came back up to periscope depth.
Waited until FUSO was within 800 yards and fired one at the 3rd BB, waited a 10 count and fired the second at the number 2 BB, then two high gyro angle shots at the leading FUSO. Dove for 200 feet and reversed course to head the same way as the task force, heard 4 hits within a few seconds of each other.
Even with nothing but rated torpedomen for some reason it takes a long long time to reload tubes on an S class, fortunately the escorts were so far behind the task force I had a lot of time. After the first tube was (FINALLY!) reloaded came back up to periscope depth, FUSO sinking, 3rd ship was an ISE who was smoking while ramming a light cruiser, and I almost got run over by a YAMATO with a big hole in her side - hadn't noticed the second BB I fired a single shot at was bigger than the others. Let her have the one loaded fish in the rudder as she passed by to slow her down, fired the second at the ISE and went deep again. Came back up into a ramming party, the destroyers had arrived and were colliding with each other while getting run over by light and heavy cruisers plus the one undamaged BB who was running the other way. YAMATO still running at 4 knots while ISE was DIW, so I fired two more at YAMATO which stopped DIW, then sank half an hour later while I was deep reloading tubes again.
Came back up into a destroyer convention, hit the ISE with two more, kicked out a decoy and went back to 200 feet while running full speed under a MAYA heavy cruiser to give the destroyers something to run into. Which they did.
Dark out now, reloaded the last fish and came back up to fire another into the ISE while dodging destroyers (fortunately there were so many of them they kept getting in each other's way, but I did get one close depth charge which damaged the deck gun) but he just settled a little further without sinking. Eventually had to fire all remaining fish at that ISE before she went down, so total score was 2 fish to sink FUSO, 4 fish to sink YAMATO, six to put that dogged ISE down.
The enemy's score was higher than mine, I sank 3 ships and counted 8 wrecks on the map, so they sank five of their own ships with all the panicky running around.
Real task forces are fun.
