kaleun in distress

[Bosje]

Dear fellow kaleuns,

I am in dire straits, ambushed battleship nelson in narvik 13th april, got spotted but still went ahead with the attack. got rammed and depthcharged, massive damage, leaking, flooding, sank like a stone.

a scene pretty much exactly like the one from Das Boot ensued:

sank to the bottom and got stuck there at 181 meters (type VIIB, hull is holding together)
planes set on dive and engines stop, sit tight on the bottom while repairing. after about 15 minutes i repaired it all and got all the flooding out. Destroyers above very angry but they are not hurting me yet. blow ballast to get some ground clearance, then as the boat starts to rise, put some speed in her and order to surface

I thought that would see my boat rise a bit and from there i could get her leveled out at maybe 130 meters or so to start the cat and mouse game.

but...

she sank right down again!

so now I am stuck on the floor with little compressed air left. i have no damage, leaking or flooding whatsoever except that my hull integrity probably took a big plunge, but I cant see the exact % as it's GWX.

any ideas on how i can get my boat back up?

for now i'll just stick on the bottom to see if the DDs get tired but if they leave, I still need to come up.

[bigboywooly]

Do you still have water onboard ?
Even though flooding stopped you can still see water in some compartments which will weigh down the boat till pumped out

Any damage to any major systems ?

[Bosje]

all systems fully functional and not a drop of water in the boat

[Bosje]

i'm absolutely sure there is no damage or water shown on the F7 screen, but she still acts like she has a private pool party in the forecastle. does 3 knots at best and sinks a meter every couple seconds when i try to get her running

less than half of my compressed air left so i need to know the options before i blow it all. literally

edit: wait i'll show you

bottomside


topside (i think i count 8 mad tin cans but i dont think their depthcharges can reach my depth so i have about a day to come up with a solution, lol)

[bigboywooly]

:hmm:
Odd

Well you can try putting motors in reverse if the bow is down and heavy and set depth to PD without blowing ballast
MAY pull her up that way
Stern first
Have done it before
You may need to blow tanks in the end though if no go

Trouble is if you still have those DDs up top do you want to surface right now

After seeing that pic I would sit tight in silent running
Let them bugger off first before attempting to surface
World of hurt waiting up there

[Phaedrus]

Yikes!

I am reading this thread with a particular interest, because I am on my first patrol in a VIIC crossing through AM 22 heading to Narvik on April 4.

(My previous boat, an IXC, finally met it's end on patrol 13, May 1944 to a HK group south of Iceland.... I'm on to GWX career two.)

Perhaps I will think twice about taking on the task force.

Thats quite a situation you've got there.


The only thing I can think of is sit tight until the Co2 is about to give out.
(but will still enough left to make an underwater run if you have to)
Hopefully they will have moved on by then. If not... I guess its blow ballast, run slow and silent until you start to drop again, and then kick the engines up to keep you off the bottom and hope for the best.

[GoldenRivet]

sit tight, when you are sure there are no enemy boats about, order a 'surface the boat' with the "S" Key, when clear of the sea floor order ahead flank and blow ballast... all of it.

If the boat appears the be surfacing stern first, order back emergency. this might help.

your only options are to blow all ballast, get the planes set for an up angle and get as much momentum as you can.

good luck

Edit: learn the following lesson from this... No target is too big to let go of. never sacrifice the boat and crew chasing a "white whale"... it takes the SH3 kaleuns a lot of deaths to learn this lesson.... in real life however you only get one shot.

[Bosje]

the destroyers pissed off just now, they got bored after giving me some pretty screenshots

I did it, blew all ballast and gradually increased speed while planes are on rise

it worked, i just surfaced. here is the odd thing though: when i order flank ahead the engines stop. full speed is no problem but she wont do flank...

thats probably why i dropped back down, failed to notice the engine not going to flank what with all the stuff going on around me.

a nice (nasty) surprise from the damage model? engines so screwed up by damage they dont function properly anymore?

edit: pheadrus, take on the taskforce, its fun
i sank all 5 destroyers in the warburton group on the 9th/10th
this screenshot is the escort of the battleship on the 13th, i'm going back in there