Had to take a break from the campaign just to spend some time
playing.
Even put TC to some good use.
August 1940. Assigned to AN34 in an engine upgraded VIIB.
24 plus hours of spotting fishing boats and schooners for the Luftwaffe, and my patrol is finally finished. Not one bite.
So considering the date :hmm: , let's see how Norway is holding up.
Refueled at Trondheim. No action to be found. Lots of Kreigsmarine destroyers making sure of that.
But wait ! What's this at the top of the chart ? Tommy's still got a playground to the north.
Let's pay them a visit !
Longyearby. If no one has tried it yet, use my tactic.
Didn't know about minefields, so stayed in the middle of the channel. But patrols are rampant ! Discovered ?! WHAT!?#@! And they're using ASDIC, too.
Depth charged for two hours. 97% hull integrity after laying doggo at 164 meters.
So much hustle and bustle overhead that I had to get an external view peek.
Scads of armed trawlers, torpedo boat, and two Flowers. Lucky for me the torpedo boats kept getting in the way of the depth charging.
Eventually cleared and began moving directly south towards the harbor entrance. Silent speed, 3 knots, slow ascent.
A heavy / troop transport parked outside the harbor, pointed north. She will be my cover as I sign in for a large cargo and a large tanker lined up on the east side of the harbor. Two eels to sink the cargo, and then the party starts over again. But I snuggle close to the transport and I'm left undiscovered. Their frustration gets the best of them this time, and I haven't long to wait. I can't get a line up on the tanker without going into the harbor, which I do. There are to harbors. The main one to the east which I am turning around in, and an adjoining one to the west.
Backing up to put the tanker in my sights, and I wish I had saved that second torpedo. Tanker must have been empty and full of fumes. One BIG fireball, and she's done.
And the west harbor is making noise. Armed trawler firing AA guns. At the buildings between us ! But a strange idea came over me. Reverse motors. Back into the corner slip, and recharge batteries, and replenish air (both half gone). With decks awash the boat should stay low enough to be unobtrusive. The hotshot potshot must have seen my periscope. I had it fully extended. Still, what about the buildings. Of course ! There are people in them, reporting the sighting !
Yet as soon as I'm parked and at seven meters, sounds of the party animals returning. It was incredible ! The breakwater running east and west in front of me ?
Two Flowers charged me from that direction without stopping. No more Flowers.
Sailors bodies flew everywhere. Lifeboats hurled from their davits. Torpedo boats ran wild and smacked into piers, exploding. Armed trawlers took up positions east and west, firing guns until their ammunition was spent. And I never saw so much Blue-on-blue before. One trawler had backed itself onto the western outer shore, behind it a torpedo boat out of the water and nosed into the sand, burning. That trawler destroyed two other trawlers which came in the line of fire, and damaged three other vessels. From the east three patrol craft singularly crept into the harbor. One tried nosing into the outside slip, but fire from the east struck and set it askew at the pier before it exploded. The other two, ammo spent, bought it in their prowl outside my slip. One with a torpedo, 437 ft. The other when I popped to the surface with the deckgun. After everybody killed one another more or less, and I sound detected reinforcements (afraid I would get blocked in at the pier), I decided to retreat. Had to pop up and shell one outside my door who had been playing possum. Threaded our way through three wrecked Flowers (creak, groan), and torpedoed a trawler at the corner of the outer east breakwater. Reinforcements sounding closer. Up to six knots at periscope depth. Lined up on the heavy transport, and she bought it with two eels. Smoke on the horizon east and west. Made way due north, Atlas Echolot getting a workout while it could. I was two hundred meters north and eighty meters deep when the first depth charges went off outside the north breakwater.
Sixteen sunk, countless damaged, but I was only responsible for six of them.
Due to gunfire, hull integrity was reduced to 84% (slow diving). Batteries and air replenished with the seven meter stature, and used it on newcomers to get them spending their ammo. A clean getaway. What a blast !:rotfl:
Reverie