Minor frustration with missions

[scalelokt]

Not posting to complain, just wondering if maybe I'm doing something wrong of if any of you have ideas for a better strategy.

SH4 is really shaping up and I'm having a lot of fun with it. My only real annoyance so far is with the missions, some of them seem inappropriate for the sub. For example, last night I played with a Gato class (huge sub) and my first mission was to take pictures of a Japanese harbor. Sounds fun. Problem is that in that sub it seemed incredibly difficult, I just couldnt pull it off after several attempts.

The reason was because for one thing, once you get close to Japan you have to crash dive from air attacks constantly. That sub is very slow to dive, and I took quite a beating before I even got to my destination. On my second attempt, I submerged for the entire day and only sailed at night. That worked out pretty well with the air attacks. Problem is when I got close to the harbor I was low on batteries due to all this diving to escape planes. On top of that, it seemed once I got in shallow waters these little patrol boats would find me submerged, even running at 2 knots. Once they found me they circled my position and soon after escorts came and killed me.

The third try went pretty much the same way, spent most of my time submerged and going at a snails pace dead quiet. Was never able to get to the port to take pictures before getting discovered, the escort traffic was so thick. It seems realistic to me, but I guess my problem is that in a smaller faster sub I think I could have pulled it off, but in that one it seemed like mission impossible. I wouldnt last a second on the surface near that port, and submerged the traffic is so thick I would always be discovered and killed.

So is it just a case of me not knowing about a better strategy? Or are the missions randomly assigned and sometimes you get stuck with one that your sub is really inappropriate for? Another thing I've noticed is patrolling the Marshall islands is one I get assigned a lot. So far there has never been anything there but friendlies. Am I missing something?