[Story] GWX 2.0 Operation Overlord

[Woof1701]

Hi there,

Today I gave myself a little treat and took advantage of my historical knowledge. Playing in February 1944 I was stationed at Penang in my Typ IX-D2 but had myself transferred to Bergen and the 11th flotilla. There I took command of a brand new Typ XXI. Having modified the training time for the XXI boat down to just 28 days I got the additional advantage to pay a visit to the Normandie coast. I sailed around England (even in a XXI I deemed going through the channel too risky) and lay in wait east of Cherbourg for a few days and waited for the invasion. And let me tell you folks, I wasn't disappointed in the least.

In the evening of June 5, 1944 my sonar man notified me of several contacts coming southward directly my way. Fortunately I had resurfaced and charged batteries (snorkel was destroyed because of a little run-in with a destroyer on my way to France) a few hours before, so the boat was ready for my attack. The waves were pretty high, but the sky was more or less clear and I had a good view as long as my scope was above the water line. The waves bounced the boat up and down a lot so I had to be careful not to let the conning tower breach the surface while still being able to use the scope. Coming in from the west at full speed I picked out two culumns with several overlapping landing ships and two auxilliary cruisers.

The first two eels went straight for the two landing ships fartherst away, while two each went towards the aux cruisers. I misculculated a little and the cruisers were hit first. The forward cruiser took two eels and already started to go down at the bow. The second one was also hit by both eels but didn't show much effect and steamed on. The remaining two torpedoes hit both landing ships which sank quickly. Keeping my speed up and having my crew reload the tubes I penetrated the convoy. Over the next half hour I picked out several more of the landing ships which all sank pretty quickly. Turning starboard, working myself forward in the convoy I spotted two Fiji class light cruisers and immediately went in for the kill. The first torpedo hit squarely, but I missed with the second one and had to make another attack run. While turning to port I set my depth too high and my tower breached the surface between two waves. A DD spotted me and fired forcing me to dive deeper. I took the daring approach and went after him. I was really pissed being the hunted all the time by these guys, and still had a T-V ready in my No 6 tube. Turning away from the DD, I fired at an impossible angle and the torpedo missed. So I still had the DD on my tail and was going flat out for the Fiji with the DD right behind me getting close and throwing ashcans. With not much room to maneuver (couldn't go deeper than 40 meters) and the information given to me by my sonar guy I managed to dive right below the Fiji while the DD had to make a detour around it. As I came out below the Fiji I expected the DD to close up quickly, but instead heard an explosion. With all the maneuvering done by me and the DD, the T-V must've picked up on the DD and blew it's tail section off. It sank within minutes leaving me enough time to finish the Fiji.

After that I only had four eels left and decided to finish the auxilliary cruiser I damaged early in the attack. Remembering the position in the convoy I set course and to my delight found that another of those auxiliaries was right on the way. This is too easy. But I was too fast and closed the distance to the nearer cruiser so quickly that I didn't have enough chance to fire both torpedoes before I got closer than 300 meters. So instead I fired one on the already damaged cruiser and one on the undamaged one and turned starboard when my torpedo hit and finished the damaged cruiser. I started a U-turn, fired at the second auxiliary and was again picked up by a DD. But my high speed made it difficult for him to close up. Before he did I again had a chance to dive below the auxiliary cruiser shortly after it was hit by my eel and the DD lost me when I passed below the cruiser and then changed course away from the DD at silent running and 2 knots. Lucky for me the auxiliary sank very slowly or I might've hit it ...

With just one torpedo left and a feeling that I should stop pushing my luck I set off to the north west, leaving the convoy behind. All in all I had sunk three auxilliary cruisers, five landing ships and one Fiji and contemplated what a wolfpack of 15 Typ XXI boats might've done to Operation Overlord.

On my way towards Cherbourg my sonar man picked up a second task force and I took the liberty to scan the ships with the external camera and was pretty astonished at what I saw: massive number of landing ships, Nevada class BB, Escort carrier and a good number of smaller warships. Of course in reality there would've have been much more ships, but the number displayed here gives a nice impression of what it must've been like. The BB would've been a nice prize. Next time perhaps.
Suffice it too say I had a real good time. :-)