Is my sub made of lead?

[goof]

I play on 72% realism, with manual TDC.

I've had some really odd damage control issues.

Here is one example, tho the same thing has happened many times in different circumstances.

I was headed to the Java Sea from Western Australia. I opted to go through the Sunda Strait even though it's shallow and gun emplacements are known to be in the area.

I wasn't paying attention and wandered in range of some of the coastal batteries and took a hit before I managed to submerge.

Instead of going to periscope depth like I'd ordered my sub dives straight to the bottom, like an aquatic lawn dart.

My scope had taken a hit, but the pumps were fully functional and there was no reported damage to any bulkhead. I had a full DC crew and put 'em to work. I was only 190' feet deep, the shallowness of the Sunda Strait looked like a godsend at this point.

I still hadn't figured out why I'd sank. There was no flooding. The DC crew reported the scope repaired along with other misc gear in the conning tower, TDC etc.

All systems were green. I blew ballast. Nothing happened. Ok, that's not completely true. Chief of the Watch says "Blow ballast!" and then nothing happened.

Hmmm. No flooding. No damage. 190' deep, resting on the bottom. I blew ballast and the only thing that happened was Chief repeating my order.

At this point it looks like I'll be spending eternity with the valient crews of the Houston and Perth, not that that would be bad company mind you, cept I wasn't ready to die.

I tried to blow ballast again. Same result. High pressure air was nearly full.

I hit the blow ballast button about four thousand times in rapid succession, Chief begins to say "Blow Ballast!" so fast and so often I'm sure he's going to pass out from lack of oxygen. I was seriously getting concerned about the amount of CO2 he was spewing into the atmosphere from screaming the words "Blow Ballast" six trillion times in 2 minutes.

The sub rocks a bit. Then ever so slowly she begins to rise.

FLANK SPEED! FULL RISE ON THE DIVE PLANES! Oh wait...I don't have independent control of my dive planes. Belay that last.

180'

150'

120'

She's picking up speed now!

But there is still a Japanese gun emplacement sitting there, just waiting for me to pop outta the water so they can put more holes into my boat.

So I decide I'd level out at periscope depth. Instead of picking a depth manually, or ordering my diving officer to maintain current depth, I gave the order to stop at periscope depth.

We were at about 40' by now, so the boat had to dive a bit to achieve the desired depth.

Down we go.

45'

50'

60'

70'

100'

Wait a second dammit! I said 60 feet!

She won't level off. I called down to maneuvering. "Why are we diving deeper! Is there a problem back there?"

"Negative sir, all systems are nominal."

The answer was the same from the rest of the boat. There were no problems! It seems that the hull of my beloved Gato class submarine has been transmogrified into lead!

We hit the bottom pretty hard, but suffered only minor damage. Which was promptly repaired.

I was down to about 50% on my compressed air. When all systems were repaired I again machine gunned the "blow ballast" order to my beleagured chief.

This time it didn't work. I kept it up until my compressed air was exhausted. The sub never budged again.

So now we are resting on the bottom not to far from the USS Houston and the HMAS Perth. At least they got to fight to the bitter end. My crew and I took one plink from a shore battery and sank without even flooding.


Anybody have anything similar happen to them? This exact same thing has happened to me numerous times. If my conning tower bulkhead takes ANY damage at all, which it hadn't in the above story, I cannot dive to even 30 feet after it's been repaired, unless I want my boat to sink. Damage control seems to be pretty useless.