Frustrating Photo Recon Mission

[bsalyers]

I'd like to add my own bizarre experience to those who have had problems with carrier recon missions:

I was tasked with doing photo reconnaissance of a carrier group in the enemy port of Dalian. I arrived with about 30,000 tons in marus sunk along the way and 6 fish forward should an opportunity present itself. I crept up to the sub net in late afternoon and raised my scope to see detailed views of two carriers, one at medium and one at close range. I snapped several photos of both. My mission was still marked "incomplete." At a loss, I also took snaps of the Fubuki escort hovering in the background... Nothing. "Well," I thought, "I'm pretty close, but maybe I need to get closer." I waitied until nightfall, surfaced, and crept over the net. Though it was dark and I immediately submerged again, I unfortunately attracted the attention of the destroyer. He headed over, pinging away, and I sent all three remaining stern torpedoes at him in a hail-Mary defense. I missed and prepared to die. There was much loudness and damage to my boat, but then everything got quiet again. After a few minutes, I raised my scope to find that the destroyer had gutted itself on my indestructible Balao! Futily, I took a few more snapshots, now close enough to see their dental work. "Well, heck," I thought, "if I can't complete my mission, I might as well try to sink one of these big boys." I fired all six fish. The first torpedo blew the thing sky high! Perhaps there was a tiny chance of this realistically occurring, but it seems far-fetched to me, kind of like a destroyer breaking herself in two on a submarine in shallow water. As light was starting to break, I lined myself out while submerged, popped up right in front of the sub net and made flank speed out of there. I'm now headed back, happy to have survived but overall dismayed at the whole thing. I still have no idea why I couldn't complete my mission. While the manual offers almost no info about the parameters of these missions, this is the first one I have completely failed to figure out. I took many, many photos at close range, but it just didn't matter.