Darn Weather

[GoldenRivet]

In pouring rain with zero visibility, november 1942, i moved to intercept a convoy in hopes that the weather would improve but it never did, instead i sat at 100 meters and listened to all those ships pass by

small ones, big ones, fat ones, tiny ones... there had to have been 6 or 8 lanes with of ships heavily escorted.

i cursed under my breath as i just listened to them all go sailing merrily along

weather is much better now that they are long gone

[the.terrabyte.pirate]

Originally Posted by GoldenRivet

In pouring rain with zero visibility, november 1942, i moved to intercept a convoy in hopes that the weather would improve but it never did, instead i sat at 100 meters and listened to all those ships pass by

small ones, big ones, fat ones, tiny ones... there had to have been 6 or 8 lanes with of ships heavily escorted.

i cursed under my breath as i just listened to them all go sailing merrily along

weather is much better now that they are long gone

100 meters, or 1000 meters?

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by the.terrabyte.pirate

100 meters, or 1000 meters?

100 meters.

depth

hehehe

[Wreford-Brown]

The weather worked the other way around for me - I received a convoy notification while surfaced in really cra**y weather. Tracked them on hydrophone, went to periscope depth and it had cleared enough for me to take the shots.

Thank you, GWX 2.1 weather guys.

[Tessa]

I've found that bad weather is often advantageous for the u-boat. Crappy weather on the other hand where you can't see more than 100m and you have 20+ foot waves makes it pretty much impossible.

When the weather's bad enough for the water to be rough but not a gale it seem to really help the ships sink a lot faster, often with just 1 hit (even on ships that would require multiple shots). Even if they don't go down, seems that the damage is magnified by the weather potentially killing their propulsion to leave them for easy pickin's later. Also its harder for the escorts to move around, so (ime) have found it a lot easier to move to evade or get under thermals and watch them miss grossly.

[GlassTrain]

Bad weather can be dangerous.

I was tracking a convoy in the worst conditions possible(at night) and misjudged it's track when I surfaced. Not too long after that, my watch officer is reporting a ship off the starboard bow at about 250m.

Forget about torpedoing the thing, it was all I could do to keep from ramming it. But, took a shot at it from the stern tube anyway as I passed in front of it. Suddenly as I swung around to look where we were going, another ship came into view and fast, since I was flank speed. The first ship had seen me and the whole convoy was now doing it's evasive manouvers. I spent about five minutes zig-zagging and taking pot shots at the now swerving convoy and decided that escorts had to be drawing a bead on me. Sure enough, a flare lit up directly overhead and we made a bee-line for the deep!

[Crosseye76]

So very, very true. Unless you skipper a submarine over in the "other" ocean, one that has a good Radar set feeding data to a TDC, a night attack in foul weather can be VERY heart-pounding experience !