Quote:
Originally Posted by propbeanie
The planes on the sides of the hills, are those mostly American planes, by chance? The Japanese air traffic would come from further up The Slot, and should not be running into too many mountains, but might be. Do you know if your submarine was spotted by Japanese forces, either sea or air? I'm doing more testing in the area now, but I have not encountered a lot of air traffic. For it to be heavy, it would have to be either an AirBase that keeps detecting the enemy (which would include the CV, of course), or a set group that is looping, of which I cannot see in the campaign. There are those Solomon "Lifeguard" missions, but they should not be activating...  |
I do not believe I was ever spotted. I akways dive to 100' upon receiving a radar warning from the crew. Most of the crashed planes were US Wildcats, with some P40's in the mix, and just a few Japanese, Zeros I think. There were also numerous "survivors", all on land, some showing the pink flares. Japanese "survivors" tended to be on the South side of the West end of the island.
The traffic built slowly over 3 or 4 days, from a plane or two per hour in daylight only to a crescendo of traffic day and night in both directions (to and from Henderson in a NW and NNW direction). Even when at 100' depth, the volume of passing planes overhead was enough to drop the TC to 8x regularly. To get any TC at all (in hopes of getting past a "bubble" in the traffic volume) I had to go to almost 300'. But eventually I have to surface to clean the air, with a repeat of the traffic volume. I had to leave on November 6 to preserve my sanity, still without encountering any surface traffic, day or night. I had been on station just north of Savo Island and in the channel between there and Guadalcanal (is that Iron Bottom Sound?) since late September, hoping for some action. Never saw another ship, US or IJN. That also seems strange, given the historical events of the time.