First Patrol, after action report

So I have to say Im pretty pleased. This is U-19's first official patrol (as in im going to try and stay alive as long as possible) Enjoy the read I hope guys I would like to say Im using very low realism for now and intend to work my way up (I am using unlimited fuel, batt, etc, but I have real load times, and repair times, and vulnerability as well as duds)

PS: This is kind of a long read so bear with it and please read guys and let me know what you think, it wasnt meant to be detailed, I just wanted to let you all know about my patrol which excited me alot, first time Ive ever had a real succesful patrol and not died either!
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2nd Flotilla, Wilhelmshaven

U-19

Herr Kaulen Casey "Aces" Smith

Order: Patrol BE29

Date: August 8th, 1939
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I had my orders to patrol BE29 and seeing as how the war hadn'started I figured I'd take the Dover strait, pretty uneventful clear weather the whole way but as soon as I cross through the strait, then a wind storm hits (I say wind storm because I had no rain.. yet) the seas began to get incredibly choppy so I dove down to periscope depth for the remainder of the trip.

As I got to BE29 the weather seemed to die down a bit so I was in high spirits, seeing as how the war hadnt started I stayed on surface for the 24 hours of my patrol then decided to head more up between Ireland and England and wait until the war started, I had every intention of not going home until I'd expended every torp I had, which was around 10 or so since I was using my type VIIB U-boat.

September 3, 1939
I got news over the radio that Britain was fair game and man I didnt know it yet but I was in for one great patrol. The weather was really clear, and where I was (Just outside of the dover strait by a few hundered kilometers but up closer to Ireland) was buzzing with the activity I wanted. After a while at P depth I picked up a merchant contact SW of me and closing, so I take off in that direction. I pick up the contact visually within a few hours and set up a surface night attack. One hour and 2 eel later, I make my first sinking of the war.

Diving back to periscope depth I immediately get another merchant contact just NE of me, man my luck couldnt be this good could it??
As I am enroute, I visually pick up my second contact and set up another surface night attack. Again, one hour and 3 torps later, I've made my second kill of the war. Things were looking up for me finally after all the practiced tactics, headaches with mods, being sunk, and tinkering that I had done before this career.

I cruise decks awash for the rest of the night until daytime and then went to P depth, at about 13:00 I pick up another merchant contact NE of me, this is turning out to be a great patrol!!So I head off in that direction, carefully using my hydrophones to pinpoint the position of the merchant and get ahead of it. Suddenly, I hear warship bearing xxx, it was running with the merchant this whole time and my sonar man hadnt picked it up!

I used my free cam and confirm my worst fear, a destroyer, and not only was there one, but he knew I was there as he was headed straight at me. Time to test my metal with my first real destroyer encounter in GWX, I knew from timely checks before that I had about 130 M below keel at P depth so I dove down to 100 with the destroyer coming head on and rigged for silent running, as well as set my speed to one knot. (I was far enough out that I could get to depth before he even came near me, my guess is he heard me because I was running full ahead before hand)
He made a pass over me and I watched in free cam as depth charges dropped from their racks well this is it I thought to myself. But lucky for me, I was around 50m under where they were exploding, he thought me to be at a completely different depth! (funny enough I noticed the DCs disappearing after getting no more than 20m down in the water? but I still heard explosions and saw them on surface, not under water though. any one have this problem) So I bit my nails and watched as he came back around for a second pass. Again I watched in horror as depthcharges were dropped right over me. I figured I may as well get used to playing without free cam and I jumped into sub cam (inside the sub) to listen to the sound of the destroyer overhead if I could or the DCs exploding (the GWX/game itself does an awesome job of recreating getting depthcharged btw, hats off to you guys ) Fortunately, after about 6 runs, he gave up and took off NW, I wanted to follow to sink her but I didnt.

September 6, 1939
I cruised around all day at P depth and got a single small merchant contact, I moved in and fired from P depth since it was day, lucky for me, the seas werent rough so I brought her down with one magnetic straight in the center of the keel

A few hours later I got a second merchant contact and headed off in the direction. I made visual contact then plotted a course to set me up for a good firing position and went ahead flank and set up. As the juicy bits crossed my scope, I fired an impact torp seeing as how the weather again went foul on me. around 20 seconds later I watched an explosion, she stopped since I hit her boiler room but she did not go down, seeing as how she was a larger ship, I decided to give her some extra.. "encouragement" to sink, with another well aimed torp in her bow. Finally she went down bringing my tally to 4 merchants! With what I thought was plenty of torpedos left

September 8, 1939
After going back to P depth and some still choppy seas I finally got another merchant contacts NE of me, so I decided to intercept, I wanted to go directly North to make it easy as the merchant was faarrr out and I did not want to mess up my intercept so I figured I would just get there and wait at P depth until I picked her up on the hydros. On my way, I notice another merchant to the west of me steaming NNE, goood I thought to myself, maybe 2 ships will be sunk tonight?? I decide to try a real intercept with the merchant NE of me (it was heading west at slow) and see if I cant wait in the area and bag both of them. Well as luck would have it, the one going west came in range first, so I set up into a firing postion and surfaced (As luck would have it, it was night, again) and waited till she crossed the bow and "los!" 20 seconds later I watched a beautiful explosion light up the night sky. However, for another hour I watched as she just listed and would not slow down or go down even though I put one right into her, so I fired again this expended all my forward tubes (sorry but earlier I must have not got the # torps I used right, forgive me ) I watched as she finally went down. (I had to use my torps because I made the mistake of putting my men on the Deck Gun when I got closer and used TC and by the time I got close enough to shoot, they shot all the ammo already )

Then if things couldnt get any better, I made visual contact with the 5th and final ship!! Now since Id expended my torps in my bow, Id have to line up for a stern shot, which wasnt easy because I had to run parrallel with her (she was a pretty fast merchant) for a while before I could get well enough ahead to set up. But I had it all set up for my stern shot when she crossed, I fired. But as soon as I pressed the red fire button, I realized I made a mistake. Id forgot to open the torp door before hand, throwing my shot off enough to miss her!! (She was quite small in length and the smoke stack was right at the back end) So I immediately turned parrallel to her again and ran ahead and set up, this time I wouldnt make the same mistake. As I had plenty of time, I opened my stern torpedo door and double checked all my TDC settings (just switch type (i or m) and depth since I have auto targetting) Her smoke stack crossed my crosshairs. "Los!" Since this was my last torp, this had to do it, I had set it for magnetic a half meter below the keel and within 30 seconds I watch as an explosion rocks the boat. I immediately get a "Shes going down!" message and am overcome with joy!. Seeing as how the war had started already and I had unlimited battery and air on, I decided for most of the journey home I would remain at P depth or deeper (At least until I got to Norway and Finland) and I set a course for up and around England.

September 19, 1939

I finally arrive in port at Wilamshaven, all in all the patrol was about a month and 10 days. I realized on the way back though that it took me 9 days to go up and around England (thats just getting to Norway/Sweeden) where as it took me one to cross through the Dover Strait (I was submerged then too to stop the annoying "Ship Spotted!" messages)

After all action, I returned with a hull integerity of 100% (the DCs never even came close enough to hurt me) and with 20,165 GRT sunk. A fine patrol for my first even though Im on low realism, I cant help but get excited about my next one and even better yet, when I up the realism bit by bit.

Sorry for the long post guys, I just wanted to share

USN SR Casey Smith

[timmy41]

haha, the first few times of getting depth charged are always nail biting scary. youll get used to it.

and then theyll start using hedgehogs

Wow if you read that that quick Im impressed

[frau kaleun]

I suspect that early in the war the RN's depth charges in-game reflect the historical record to some degree, in that one doesn't have to go as deep to stay under them. 100m seems to have been plenty deep enough on my first few patrols and even as late as summer 1940 I've avoided damage just by dropping to 70m and going silent.

Apparently British pre-war intelligence had underestimated how deep German u-boats could safely go, and their ASW weapons reflected this. Consequently the depth charges they had simply weren't designed to detonate as deep as they needed to in order to be effective against a u-boat running at its own maximum safe depth (or anywhere close to it).

I don't think the Brits fully realized how off their intelligence was until they actually captured a u-boat and found out what it was capable of.

Lol so this explains them dissapearing??

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

Lol so this explains them dissapearing??

I've never had them just disappear - although I don't watch them descend through the water on the external cam. But if they're dropped, I always hear them explode even if they're not close enough to be a real threat. And if I watch the surface I can see the commotion up top when they detonate.

[Abd_von_Mumit]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

I don't think the Brits fully realized how off their intelligence was until they actually captured a u-boat and found out what it was capable of.

As far as I remember they didn't "find it out" (at least not any time soon after capturing it) - they just had a glance at the depth dial, and then they stood there with their jaws dropped and stared, and stared... and then they called some more engineers too, so that they join the staring fest. And then they did some calculations out of disbelief, to find out that the dial is not exaggerated.

[frau kaleun]

IIRC I've seen reference to ~90 meters being the maximum dive depth of the British T-class, and I'm assuming that's the real maximum depth and not the "shipyard warranty" version. Slightly more for some of the later S-class boats.

I think the depth charges in use by the RN at the very start of the war had a max depth of 100 meters or so? Plenty deep enough to take out one of their own subs, but not a u-boat if it could escape to anywhere near its max depth.

Wikipedia says that after capture of the U-570 (aka HMS Graph) in Aug 1941,

Her safe diving depth was discovered to be 230 metres (750 ft)... At the time, Royal Navy depth charges had a maximum depth setting of 170 metres (560 ft)

So yeah I can see why the depth dial would've been a rather unpleasant shock.

Its German engineering, V-dub haha

[JokerOfFate]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

Its German engineering, V-dub haha

Well, you got to give the Americans some credit they made a sub that could go down to 504m (Yep, it's was a game bug)

But other than that German engineering would be nothing with out the motto
"Germany, Building a better mouse trap"

[CherryHarbey]

Originally Posted by USNSRCaseySmith

So I head off in that direction, carefully using my hydrophones to pinpoint the position of the merchant and get ahead of it. Suddenly, I hear warship bearing xxx, it was running with the merchant this whole time and my sonar man hadnt picked it up!

I used my free cam and confirm my worst fear, a destroyer, and not only was there one, but he knew I was there as he was headed straight at me. Time to test my metal with my first real destroyer encounter in GWX, I knew from timely checks before that I had about 130 M below keel at P depth so I dove down to 100 with the destroyer coming head on and rigged for silent running, as well as set my speed to one knot. (I was far enough out that I could get to depth before he even came near me,

Good work! Sounds like you he lost you once you slowed up and dived, he was just depth charging your last known position.

And be careful of travelling at periscope depth as I believe aircraft can still spot your wake in good conditions (certainly true in real life). So if you are going to make use your unlimiteds for long distance transits, I'd go a bit deeper if I were you.