A tale of greed and downfall.

[maillemaker]

So it's January 1940.

I'm to patrol the Rockall Bank, leaving from Wilhelmshaven. As usual, I hit the southern end of England and start my way up the west coast before cutting between Scapa and Lerwick to head over to the Bank.

I'm between Lowestoft and Hull when I get a convoy report. It's about midnight. I make the intercept. There are two large tankers in the convoy.

I'm playing 100% realism, so I manually target the two tankers, giving a spread of 2 eels to each. All four fish hit, and the tankers break in half and sink.

But there is only about 15 meters of water under my keel! I try to get out of there, but two escorts (I finally make them out to be a River class and a Black Swan) pound me. I go round and round with them, taking a fair amount of damage. At one point the bow flooding got so bad I hit the seabed, and when I blew ballast I broached on the surface and started to take surface fire!

The attack periscope was destroyed, but using the observation scope finally I managed a stern magnetic shot at the River class, and I nailed him dead! I circled with the Black Swan and fired two bow torpedoes at her (sterns were gone) and missed. Finally with a third torpedo I nailed the black swan, just barely, in her stern. She went down.

I surface and chased after the convoy.

Suddenly, another escort is bearing down on us! I man the guns, and duke it out with the escort. We took some damage (all the bow tubes were damaged) but I sunk the escort!

So I chased after the convoy.

After a bit, I caught them, and laid into them with the deck gun. I sank 3 ships, and there were only 3 left, and I had plenty of shells to do the job.

Suddenly, another warship is spotted - a torpedo boat!

I turn my deck gun to it, but I can't hit it!

And suddenly, with a volley of machine gun fire, THE MOTOR BOAT SANK MY UBOAT!

All that only to be sunk by a motorboat.

Steve

[krashkart]

Oh man, if only you could have fired a steam-propelled torpedo at them, it may have bought you enough time to submerge.

On a similar note, I got in too big a hurry chasing a convoy not long ago. We were pummeled down to 28% HI by armed freighters. Had to submerge and disengage entirely. The deck gun, conning tower, and flak guns were completely totalled. The bow torp compartment took on water, and the engine room was a disaster. I lost the WO, his entire watch staff, both the gun crew and AA crew. 11 dead and one wounded altogether. Eeeeyikes!

[Brag]

The route described is Suicide Alley.

[Fader_Berg]

Been there, done it. I've learned that attacking a convoy at shallow water like this, is a quite bad idea. For you, it was not bad luck that got you killed by the motorboat. You where lucky to make it that far.
Remarkable shots on the war ships, I must say. Be more aggressive.

[vergol]

Be more aggressive!