Quote:
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Originally Posted by Captain Scribb
In my experience water depth does affect the amount of flooding and the time it takes to pump out/fix bulkheads.
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It's all about focusing on what you NEED to live and evade, and keeping the salt water from ruining your batteries or forcing you down to crush depth.
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Very good description, Captain Scribb. It echoes my last patrol experience.
The escorts found me just before I reached position for final periscope observation and torpedo firing. The closest escort dropped on me as I tried to dodge and stay shallow so I could still fire torps after initial evasion. My mistake! Took damage in aft torp room with flooding, but managed get under the thermal layer at 140 feet. Taking on water made me go deeper and deeper without enough time to repair the bulkhead, so I had to speed up and blow ballast to climb. That worked, but the escorts found me again. Evaded the next depth charge run but then took even more damage a minute later, just as the aft torp room leak was fixed. Now I had another leak in the forward torp room to deal with, making water fast and sinking even faster, to near 300 ft. That was nerve-wracking because I had no clue how the damage reduced my crush depth.
So I had to blow ballast again, managed to avoid surfacing and then slowly sank again while my damage control crew struggled with repairs. But I sank to 280 feet (very uncomfortable now...) and had to blow ballast yet again. This time I topped out at 100 feet and began sinking again soon after that. It was enough to buy me time to evade the next attack run at flank speed and get the flooding under control. Speeding up seemed to help control depth, also causing the escorts to keep after me. Depth control was still iffy for a while but I eventually managed to sneak away below the thermal layer, near 180 feet and at 2 kts. Now I was so low on compressed air that I could have only blown ballast one more time... Pump was fixed, forward battery out, both periscopes destroyed, diesel engine damage, radio damaged... I halted repairs after fixing the pump by going silent again.
Better to try sneaking away when possible instead of having repair noise attract the escorts again. I survived and made it back to base. All this could have been avoided if I went deep at first detection - instead of trying to stay shallow to launch torps. But that wouldn't be fun, would it?