First GW2 Patrol: Success and Failure

[K-61]

I sailed out of Wilhelmshaven on Sept.1 '39 in a VIIB. West of Ireland my bridge watch spotted a warship moving from west to east off my port bow some distance. As it was dusk, I risked a high speed surface run to get closer and then dove for a submerged approach. The contact turned out to be three RN vessels in line formation: a Southampton cruiser followed by two auxiliary cruisers. Visions of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Weddigen danced in my head. Hoping it was dark enough that they would not see my steam torpedoes, I fired two at the lead cruiser. The first one sailed just past his bow, but the second one hit midships, setting it alight and listing about 10 degrees to starboard. The two behind began to zigzag, but I was able to hit both of them with my two remaining forward torpedoes and one stern tube which I was able to bring to bear with a high speed submerged turn. Both of them sank, rather quickly to my surprise. After letting the Southampton pull off a safe distance, I surfaced and made a high speed end around run, submerged and finished it off with one more torpedo. That was the success part.

I then immediately left the area and moved off to the southeast so that any aircraft appearing at dawn would only find an empty sea. The next day I spotted a lone warship which was making an irregular course. It was a destroyer; figuring he may be a perimeter guard for a convoy, I dove and then conducted a manual hydrophone sweep and picked up multiple screw sounds: a convoy! I then surfaced and approached closer before diving. The seas were fairly calm, so I knew I had to be quiet. The destroyer may have sniffed my scent and began to pound the area off to my starboard with several depth charges. When he was about 2000 metres aft of me I increased speed to 2-3 knots. Without warning, he made a high speed run on me and caught me too close to the surface. A well placed brace of charges sent me on a death plunge; my boat imploded at about 350 metres! Holy cow, could it dive that deep?

I'm guessing the sensors for the escorts have been tweaked? I've never before had an escort home in on me from such a distance prior to this. Looks like I have to pick up my game now that I'm running GWX 2! I conducted my own post-mortem and I know what got me killed: my complacency from playing earlier versions of SH3. The prudent thing would have been to dive deep, let him pass over me and then come up instead of letting him get into my baffles and blindside me like some kind of new guy on the job. I'm old enough to know better.