Last night I had some unbelievable luck. Came across a carrier by her lonesome with just one destroyer running ahead of her. When I configured for that patrol, I had unwittingly chosen to have four of those little ASW torpedoes in the aft reserves. That meant after my usual patrol had been satisfied, I had four of those minies plus two MK18s in the stern with four german torps in the bow tubes (I forget the name, they're wakeless).
I decided to go after the destroyer first. Fired three bow torpedoes at the destroyer. Two missed, the third blew her to bits (shattered her backbone) on impact.
After that, I was down to just six torpedoes: Two regulars, and four ASW torps. Since I had only one MK18 torpedo in the rear tubes and the rest occupied by those "minies", I had one removed and the tube loaded with a regular torpedo while I fired off the other MK18 at her midsection.
She took the hit handily, didn't sink, only suffered a minor list. I cranked off the other two Mini's into her bow and stern to help improve the flood rate, and improve it did. She started listing more, but wasn't about to go down yet. By this time, the last remaining MK 18 Torpedo had been loaded and ready. I had it fired immediately into the area immediately astern to her midsection.
She continued being stubborn despite the increasing list, and I debated on surfacing to utilize the deckgun when the crew decided to abandon the carrier. Scratch one shiny new Carrier from the list of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
P.S. I plan on starting a new thread on this forum with a running log of each of my patrols in my second career for your reading pleasure since I seem to write these rather well.
