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Old 03-17-06, 03:00 AM   #10
scandium
Ace of the Deep
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
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When spotted by a destroyer I risk the couple seconds to make a mental note of his bearing (assuming he is charging straight at you, as they usually do) before crash diving. Once I'm down to about 40 meters and all he can see on the surface is the swirling surface I dove through, I turn hard port/starboard directly onto that bearing while continuing to dive at flank speed. Once I'm roughly on a collision bearing, which will take me roughly under his boat and aft, I maintain that bearing but switch to silent running while continuing to dive aiming for a depth of about 150 meters.

The point of this approach: in racing full speed for my uboat his ASDIC (sonar) is useless and he won't slow down and begin using it until he's reached the spot he last saw me. By then I'm behind him (in his blind spot) and quietly diving deep, and by the time he begins a search pattern only the smallest portion of my hull (aft end of it) is visible to ASDIC.

If I don't hear active pings I ignore, at this point any calls of "depth charges" in the water other than to alter my depth 20 m up or down (its a bit of a risk but the gamble is that at this depth, and running silently he can't hear me on his passive hydrophone and is depth charging blindly where he thinks I am). If I am pinged, as soon as I hear "depth charges in the water" I immediately go flank speed then hard port/starboard and again change depth 20 m.

Throughout my goal, when no depth charges are dropped, to follow him on the hydrophone and keep him between 200-160 aft or bear directly at him within 340-20 degrees if he gets in front of me, using only small (3 degree) turns on the rudder to minimize cavitation (except when he lobs depth charges in my vacinity).

It can take hours to escape, especially when you're being pursued by multiple DDs but I find my initial manouevers enough to quickly lose a lone DD 90% of the time (and the other 10% it just takes more manouevering).
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