#@%&#%& destroyer in the #@%&#%& fog......and #@%&#%& Bernard too!!!

[Madman]

Playing GWX (thanks to all involved in the creation of this mod, you guys rock!!! ) and trying manual targeting for the first time, started in Sept. 1939 in a VIIB; patrolled West of England until the weather got bad and I ran low on torpedoes. Figured I'd finish up my patrol in the North Sea.....get there and the weather is vile (15 m/s winds, heavy fog, rain on and off)! Spent over 2 weeks sailing around in that crap and didn't see anything, until one day near the South-East tip of England my WO starts yelling about a ship bearing 013 at close range so I pop up to the bridge to see what's going on just in time to nearly get my hair parted by a shell from a British destroyer. I order hard to port (we nearly got rammed) and periscope depth because we're in about 30 meters of water and I don't want to end up stuck like a harpoon in the bottom by ordering a crash dive. Little did I know that while I was on the bridge, Bernard had taken over the dive planes.......it took us 2 minutes to get underwater....well, at least it felt that way as that destroyer beat us like a rented mule. I finally figured out what was going and shoved Bernard away from the plane controls so that someone else could take over and we finally got down. I popped the scope up and started setting up for a quick shot from the stern tube (we had 2 torpedoes left, 1 bow and 1 stern) as he circled to come back for us. The destroyer was crossing our stern from left to right....we fired.....and the torpedo immediately turned left and headed for parts unknown. I looked over to the TDC and who do I see merrily spinning all the dials......Bernard. I shoved him away from the TDC as the destroyer made a pass and luckily for us did only minor damage. I set up a quick snap shot with our remaining bow torpedo........500 meters...angle on the bow 90 degrees.....speed 14 knots......and fired. This one tracked straight and true and I'm thinking I own you......your my biatch now......who's your daddy......you guys get the idea........it's going to hit him just aft of the middle of his hull at about an 85 degree angle....1 meter deep.....he's gonna blow up like a bomb......and a big wave lifts his stern up........and the torpedo glances off the bottom of his hul and then explodes when it hits the bottom. Son of a......luckily we were able to get into his baffles and creep away, then surface and limp home.......radio antenna, observation scope, and port diesel destroyed. When we got back to port I found that the hull integrity was down to 18%.....good thing we didn't have to dive deep. Surprisingly though, we got through this without losing a single man.....except for Bernard......I put him up on the bridge on watch one night and nobody saw him after that.