First GWX patrol is in the books!

[GraylingSTS(SS)]

Thanks to the GWX team for a mod well worth waiting for!

I just finished my first patrol with GWX and it's really amazing!

I left port in '39 with orders to patrol BE31. "What the hell!", I thought and I took off at ahead full for the English Channel. I usually avoid it like the plague but I just couldn't resist.

Just as I was entering the channel, I get the radio message that the war has begun with Brittain. Great timing. So I am slinking along, trying to be as covert as possible and as I near Dover, my sonarman starts having a stroke and reporting warship contacts in just about every direction. The little u-boat symbol looked like a spider crawling through the channel with sonar contact bearing lines everywhere! I'm pretty sure they didn't have my location locked down, but I think they knew I was there. I set my depth to 2o meters, speed 2 knots and creep along with about 10 meters under the keel.

Everything was going along fine, and the majority of the warship contacts were off to the northeast and I was opening range, when all hell breaks loose! I thought I hit a mine, KA-BLAAM! I have flooding in the forward compartments. Then the sonarman reports a warship contact, short range. Now he tells me...

I dispatch the damage control team to stop the flooding and while they're working on that, I notice that I am at all stop. I didn't ORDER all stop. I should still be doing 2 knots...except for apparently the explosion and/or the extra weight of the water in the bow has caused my Type VII to take a mud sample on the bottom of the channel.


So I order all stop...and wait until the guys get the flooding under control, while the little %$@!# on the surface circles, pinging and dropping charges (thankfully not quite close enough to finish me off but still close enough to keep my undivided attention).


So finally, with the flooding under control, I order back slow and pull my bow out of the mud and I try to creep away. Nothing doing...another round of charges, this time more damage, nothing too severe, and no flooding. I managed to keep it out of the dirt this time and now I'm pissed!


I make my way to PD and on the way up I get tubes 1 & 5 ready to go, since he's fairly close and I don't know where he's going to be when the scope breaks the surface.

When the scope cleared, I was in luck...there he was, a Hunt destroyer about 580 meters right of the bow and I'm looking pretty much dead at his port side. Fire tube 1 and order depth 25 meters. I am one lucky son of a gun...torpedo impact and she's going down. I crept away with batteries at 25% and the whole dang British fleet bearing down on me.

After I had opened range from the kill, I came back up to PD and looked back in that direction. The view was incredible as 6 warships were conducting a search, with spotlights and star shells. I couldn't resist using the external camera to go in and take a look at the action...they were depth charging the hell out of that little piece of the channel...2 destroyers would sit dead in the water listening, while the others would make their run.

As I made my way through the channel, I passed up 3 or 4 "opportunities" in the form of single merchants, but there was just too much warship traffic nearby and I didn't want to push my luck.

I finally made it through the channel and was rewarded with 1 medium and 1 large merchant in my patrol grid. It took most of my fish to sink these two, I had some "dud" issues. The crew was really tired, to the point I was having to decide between loading torpedoes or manning the engine room.

I decided to head home and return to fight another day.

GWX is awesome. Thanks again!