Well it's over.

[Snuffy]

Last night (April 1945) while trying to complete a mission, the U.S.S. Balao under Capt'n Snuffy's command was knocked out of commision just outside Manila Bay in the Phillippines.

Our first attack came from Zero's as we were patroling around Formosa, we were adrift in the straight for a couple days as the crew worked to fix the boat damaged by a lucky drop. Scopes were completely destroyed and we were blind, so it was best determined to go home.

Once we were underway, and headed back home, things were going well, we weren't making good time but at least the boat was moving. On the way we tested PD and didn't seem to have a problem with the hull holding up so we had that assurance that we could dive if we needed.

Just south of Manila Bay the radar man calls out a boggie from the west. Its a small task force of 1 DD 2 gunboats and a sub chaser. So we do the PD thing, pop a couple decoys, cross our fingers and head for the thermal layer, and cut to 1/3 hoping to sneak out of the area, it wasn't to be so.

They homed in on us, the DD made one pass and lobbed the ashcans over board. Things went from bad to worse, the whole of the stern section was practically wiped off the boat. We did an emergency surface at flank in hopes of saving the boat from plunging to over 1000m of deep water.

We make the surface and are barrelling along at a brisk 5nm on the surface in flank. The gunners jump to their guns and before long they have taken out all of the task force, but not before we took a couple rounds that bent the drive shafts.

Shafts are completely destroyed. The props turn but the boat doesn't move. We've radioed for help.

(looks like my career is over. now to load a fresh install and put the 1.3 patch and TM 1.5 on and see what I can do with it.)