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Old 10-29-14, 07:34 AM   #4723
Zosimus
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Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: Chorrillos, Lima, Peru
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Well, I almost bought it last night. I was following a small convoy consisting of three cargo ships and a patrol craft when I started picking up confusing hydrophone contacts heading in a new direction. I believed that the convoy had changed headings.

Wrong. Two convoys were involved, and they were very near each other. I popped the scope up to take a look, drew a rough line through the convoy ships to determine its new course and popped the scope back down. I swear it was no more than 3 seconds.

Then I got the first ping. I crash dived immediately, but I took a close depth charge at 40 meters hitting near the front of the boat. I immediately started to take on water. I loaded my repair specialist onto damage control and sent him to fix the fore quarters. He informed me 7:49 seconds to flood recovery in the front and then amended that to 7:50 then 7:51.

And the fore torpedo area was in worse shape.

So I loaded every officer I could find into the damage control team. Yes, even the hydrophone officer, and set them to work. That dropped my time to 2:50 and slowly ticking down. I could see that the forward torpedo tube area was flooded to the ceiling. I checked the depth gauge and got the bad news. I was at 120 meters and going down fast.

So I ordered that the boat be surfaced, but this did almost nothing to stop the rapid descent. Fortunately the pinging had stopped so I couldn't do much except hope for the best and root for the damage control team. I kicked TC up to 8 and that held for a few seconds until my crew informed me that we were nearing critical depth. I checked the gauges and saw us at 164 meters and still heading down.

Ausblasen!

I heard the comforting hiss of air, but I gave the order twice more to be sure. Ausblasen! Ausblasen! Then I checked on the damage control team. Flooding control in 43 seconds... in the fore quarters. The tube area was a whole different thing. Keep going guys!

That's when they called me back to the bridge. "We are diving too deep," they informed me. 189 meters and sinking fast.

Ausblasen!!!!

At 207 meters we got the fore quarters flooding stopped and I sent the team to work on the fore torpedo area. They must have been swimming in there. I have no idea how they were doing anything with that much water. It was hard to tell, but I think we were diving more slowly. I could hear the groaning of the metal around me in my soon-to-be coffin. So I hurried back to the bridge and checked our depth. We were at 217 meters. No, scratch that... 218.

Ausblasen!

That's when they informed me that we were at 10 percent compressed air. There was only one thing to say: Ausblasen! Then I checked the gauges. We were at 216 meters. My God. We're going to live.

"Your orders captain?"
"Ausblasen."

I ditched the destroyer-patrolled convoy in a hurry and went back to the first one where I sank a large cargo ship for 10,000 tons and a medium for 5,000. The patrol craft was helpless to stop me. Then I headed north. It's going to be a long trip around England to Wilhelmshaven.

At least we're alive.
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