What do you do when damaged?

[meduza]

What level of damage would you consider as critical, enough to force you to return home?

In my previous careers I hardly ever returned home even with heavy damage. Once I was bombed while schnorkeling, lost both periscopes, but continued patrol, hunting on surface at night.
Attack on a convoy with damaged boat spelled the end of my last career . I think I'll have to change something.

I wonder, what do you do in similar situations? Return home, continue patrol but avoid danger, or act as if nothing has happened?

I would return home immediatly if I loose the ability of stealth fight. Since it is the major priority of the every submarine. Wounded wolf is a bad hunter, so it is wise to know when to retreat and instead of try fighting today and die, have another go tomorrow with double luck

[Jimbuna]

I consider critical damage is when I estimate hull integrity to be approx 30%.

If both scopes get destroyed I do what happened in RL.....consider myself blind and return to base.

[Task Force]

For me, It depends on where im at, if I can rest on the bottom and repair, I will. If the water is too deep, I attempt to maintain depth untill my flooding has stopped.

If im too damaged, I will RTB, and if I am lightly to moderately damaged, I will continue patrol. (ex: DC hits above deck gun, sub shooken up by a close DC hit.)

[mookiemookie]

Depends on what the damages are. If your hull integrity is low enough so that you're going to have trouble getting under 100 m, I'd head home. Deck gun, aft torpedo tube damages....meh, doesn't matter much. Periscope damages are a definate RTB.

IRL Peter Cremer of U-333 stayed on patrol in the Caribbean after being rammed by the SS British Prestige causing this damage:

[Task Force]

wow, his bow was split open. just goes to show, uboats can take a beating.

[Hanomag]

Using GWX, if a Seagull craps on my bow it usually causes enough damage for me to return home... JK!

Seriously... No scopes, I am outta there!! Or no functional tubes!!!

I wonder how that Uboat pictured above kept there bow above water all the way back from the Carib! YIKES!

[meduza]

Thanks for your input, mates! It's just hard for me to return to base with torpedoes in the tubes. I say to myself I have to go home and repair, but there's another voice saying - sink just one more ship.

[Task Force]

Originally Posted by Hanomag

Using GWX, if a Seagull craps on my bow it usually causes enough damage for me to return home... JK!

Seriously... No scopes, I am outta there!! Or no functional tubes!!!

I wonder how that Uboat pictured above kept there bow above water all the way back from the Carib! YIKES!

I think that it got home with this damage without sinking because it didnt breach the pressure hull. (Ill see what else I can find out on Uboat.net, or the web.)

[Brag]

The damage to that boat is on the casing, not the pressure hull.

As far as me. If I have something like 20% estimated damage, this seriously diminshes the depth one can dive to. Time to go home.

[meduza]

Isn't 20%, or 30% too much damage to continue patrol? I guess that would mean that the crush depth is somewhere around 50m.

[Silverleaf]

If I can stay at Periscope depth and have 1 torpedo tube and 1 periscope working, I'll continue to fight.

If I lose either of the latter, and repairs can't fix it at sea - it's RTB

[A Very Super Market]

Honestly, I've never been in a situation where I could go home. I either take no damage at all (or very little), or get Depth Charged to bits.

[Weiss Pinguin]

If I lose my scopes, part of my engine capability (Especially any damage to batteries), or steerage/depth control, well, game over - I'm headed home. Unless there's a carrier/battleship right on top of me, and then I'm going to take her down or die trying.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Task Force

I think that it got home with this damage without sinking because it didnt breach the pressure hull. (Ill see what else I can find out on Uboat.net, or the web.)

I took this from U-333 captain Peter Cremer's book U-Boat Commander:

Seen in daylight, things were bad enough for us and we lost no time in effecting jury repairs with whatever lay to hand. In the National Socialist state, 1 May was known as Tag der Arbeit (Work Day) which it had certainly become for U-333. While the sun shone down on us and a fresh breeze aired the surfaced boat my people toiled away until sweat ran down their naked chests. Two thirds of the conning tower casing, which had crumpled like paper, was burned off, the rotating direction finder was made watertight with wooden pegs and cement, the conduit in the conning tower was welded together, and various other repairs carried out. In our area of operations we hardly needed net cutters, direction finding off the Spanish coast lay a long time ahead and by then I would have thought of something. In place of the underwater aiming sight I set some binoculars on top facing forward, meaning to aim with the whole boat and hoping that the greater accuracy would enable me to get within a stone's throw of the enemy.

Although the crew's manual abilities proved themselves once again and we were fully optimistic, a subsequent test dive produced an uncontrollable leak. From somewhere there was a continual trickle which collected below in the bilges and required constant pumping, without which it would have built up dangerously-and increased the weight of the boat. We could hardly think of lengthy passages underwater or lying on the bottom, and at greater depths the pumps would barely be able to work against the outside pressure. On top of this, we had only three torpedo tubes in working order, numbers one, three and five. The other two refused to budge.

Strictly speaking, we were operational to a limited extent. No one would have reproached me if I had broken off the patrol and turned back. It had not been my fault. All the same, in war one may count on some luck and I had already heard so much about the Straits of Florida that I hoped to recapture it there. This was the summary of my thoughts and I wrote briefly in the log: "Intention - ahead into the Straits of Florida. Surfaced by day and in no circumstances return home without steamer."

I think it's safe to say that Peter Cremer had a set of brass balls.