OK....goto your map and look at the Palau Islands. You'll find two harbors, Koror on the west coast and Meleleok on the east.
The Meleleok photo mission had the exploding DC. The way in is all deep water. This was my seond time there. The first time there no naval vessels at all. I went in on the surface, took the picture and cruised out. This time once the destroyer toasted itself, I went in submerged and got pics of a freighter, a sub chaser and a gunboat. The chaser/gunboat were tied up to the piers while the freighter was agound south of them.
Korok was a bear, period. The mission was to photo the battleship fleet and it's like fishing a mudflat in there. Went in from the west over the sand bar seperating the pockets of deep water SW and NW of the harbor. Once I cleared that short run I watched the destroyers for a couple of hours looking for a pattern. There were 5, yes 5, patroling close to the harbor.I saw it would be "easier" to go south until I was almost due west and then try to sneak in behind two that were patrolling in a SW-NE loop. I timed them, got in as close as I could and went in after them at 3 knots until the scope locked in on a battleship. Then I cussed because I had to get back out of there and had to leave a Yamato at anchor 8000 yards away. But my love of breathing made me back out at 3 knots, play possum until the destroyers had started their loop over again and then turned to take the same way out.
As I got about a mile south of that little sandbar to get back to open water, here comes two more destroyers herding a pair of liners with a third destroyer behind them.
That put me and 8 ASW ships in the same location. Once I hit open ocean I had a beer to celebrate and cussed some more about leaving those targets. But the DD blowing itself up is still funny as all getout.
I may go back on this patrol to see if any targets are still there.
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