Salmon's 11th and final War Patrol was a wild one...never knew this.

[Bubblehead1980]

From the wiki, never knew this, battle surface on an escort, thought you could only do that in stock SH 4 lol but Salmon pulled it off in RL, out of desperation of course

1944
The ninth war patrol for Salmon was conducted between 15 December and on 25 February 1944. She succeeded in damaging one freighter on 22 January.
On 1 April, Salmon departed from Pearl Harbor en route to Johnston Island in company with submarine Seadragon (SS-194). She was assigned a special photo reconnaissance mission for her tenth patrol which would assist in preparing plans for gaining control of the Caroline Islands. She conducted a reconnaissance of Ulithi from 15 April to 20 April; Yap from 22 April to 26 April; and Woleai between 28 April and 9 May. She returned to Pearl Harbor on 21 May with much valuable information that was utilized in last-minute changes to the assault plans.

Salmon's eleventh and last war patrol was conducted in company with submarines Trigger (SS-237) and Sterlet (SS-392) as a coordinated attack group in the Ryukyu Islands. This patrol began on 24 September. On 30 October, Salmon attacked a large tanker that had been previously damaged by Trigger. This tanker was protected by four antisubmarine patrol vessels which were cruising back and forth around the stricken ship. Salmon fired four torpedoes and made two good hits, but was forced to dive deep under a severe depth charge attack by escort CD-29. She leveled off at 300 feet (91 m) but was soon forced to nearly 500 feet (150 m) due to damage and additional pounding of the depth charges. Unable to control leaking and maintain depth level, she battle surfaced to fight for survival on the surface.
Escorts CD-22 (the killer of USS Harder) and CD-33 (who would later help sink the USS Trigger on March 28, 1945) saw her surface and began to close. Salmon turned away to give her crew a few precious minutes to correct a bad list and to repair some of the damage. The vessels began to close, but Salmon showed an aggressive stance, turned on the attackers and passing within 50 yards down the side of CD-22, raked her with 20 mm gunfire and her deck gun. CD-22 suffered 4 killed and 24 wounded and was unable to reply because of the closeness of Salmon and her higher freeboard. Salmon began sending out plain language directions for all other subs in the vicinity to attack, giving the position of the action. This probably further discouraged the enemy who, fearing other submarines in the area, began milling around pinging on sound gear. Salmon took advantage of a rain squall and slipped away.
Other than the damage caused by depth charges, Salmon suffered only a few small caliber hits from the enemy vessels. Escorted by Sterlet, Trigger, and Silversides (SS-236), she made it to Saipan. She was given one-third credit for the 10,500-ton tanker, Jinei Maru which was eventually sunk by a torpedo from Sterlet. On 3 November, she moored alongside submarine tender Fulton (AS-11), in Tanapag Harbor, Saipan.

[Subnuts]

Here's the actual damage report for the Salmon:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...8/WDR58-7.html

[Rockin Robbins]

Audacity is a great defense posture! It works doubly well when there is no alternative.

Of course the sampling of results is biased by the fact that the ones who die don't get to report their failure and we never know what they tried.

[Armistead]

Those men carried some big nads back then. I hadn't read that one yet..nice post.

[Bothersome]

Yes, great post and a good read. I always find the true stuff most interesting.

[JoeCorrado]

In TMO, she would have been sank by the tanker alone while the escorts stood off and filmed the mismatch.