The end for Kaleun Kagerer and U-556

[Foghladh_mhara]

What shall I do now?
Well I know what I'll do I'll start all over again

May 1943 and U-556 has been lost with all hands somewhere off the southwest coast of Ireland. I feel somewhat numbed. This was my premier DID career. Dud torps, manual targeting, unstable view and all the other bits and bobs. Everything but external camera cos hey you gotta have screenshots! This career lasted 2 months of my real life.

Together we notched up 25 war patrols and sank 929000 tons of enemy shipping. We were invicible. Granted the last few patrols were harder than the early days and battle damage became more frequent but we were getting by. HMS Anson and Rodney both fell to our sword as did HMS Formidable. I was confident we would survive to the wars end.

But alas it was not to be. Whilst en route to our patrol grid we detected radar emissions perpindicular to our course. A sound check at periscope depth revealed a group of warships headed our way. Believing it may have been a hunter/killer group we followed its plot closely. What we discovered was an Escort Carrier with a 4 destroyer screen at approx 4 km distance and travelling at 12 knots. Well within range for our TIII electrics with a magnetic setting. The solution was fed to the fish and Los! Once launched we hit 20 degrees rudder, set depth for 100m and ahead slow. By the time the eels impacted we were at 40m and headed away from the group. The external camera showed 2 impacts right under her stern. Excellent!!

Then the escorts found me. How I dont know. I was about 4500m from the carrier when it was hit, I was at 60m doing 1 knot and silent. They pinged the hell out of me! I spent an hour deploying decoys and sprinting. I just couldn't shake them off. I got down to 200m and still they found me. At last the Dc's found me killing my radioman and injuring the sonar dude. Damage reports from the bow indicated flooding. As the depth passed 220m we blew ballast to try and slow our descent. We levelled out at 230 and started to rise... until we met the next depth charge coming down Our compressed air must have been damaged but because the gauge just kept dropping until we were out. At that point the game was well and truly up. The aft batteries were damaged and speed dropped to 1 knot, too slow to maintain any forward motion with the flooding. When the depth gauge started to drop again there was nothing else to but sit back, light a cigarette and wait for the valkyries to arrive.

We never got credit for the carrier either so it obvously didn't go down

Bugger