Your first sub lost... Tragic Tales.

[Luno]

Well, I lost another uboat on a single mission. I really didn't mind, because I needed an excuse to leave the mission and go to bed.

So, I'm starting off in the stock "Sneak through Gibraltar" mission. Since there's still light, I proceed under the surface and listen. Once the sun finally sets, I surface the boat and proceed that way for as long as possible. After a while the watch spot a ship: destroyer. It too far away for a TII attack, so I order the engines to stop and dive.

But right then, it spots me. Searchlights fix on my position. Luckily I was down before it could start shelling me.

I dive, check the depth, and dive further. It starts pinging and DC'ing and I get rattled about, damaging the turm and fore-deck. Pipes inside start bursting and the compressed air is leaking, making a horribly annoying noise. I decide to use the engine RPM meters to make for a quieter silent speed than just "ahead slow".

This destroyer had side-launching wasser-bombs, and so I had to be especially careful with how I maneuvered. I am evading for around 15 minutes, still getting rocked from time to time when I hear bad news: "contact, kriegsschiffe, incoming, fast". There are now 4 enemy contacts after the first called for backup.

I took a deep breath...let's do this!

I was doing a pretty good job of avoiding the ships. I was getting rocked by the DC's, but I was slowly creeping away. My SO pipes up again....more contacts!

Long story short, I had 11, yes eleven(!) destroyers and and a few patrol boats circling overhead trying to DC me. I had to fight for hours to get away from them all, and I was still not even in the strait of Gibraltar yet!!

Eventually, I did get away, miraculously.

After an couple hours I surface and proceeded. We spotted a juicy C2, but there was destroyer right next to it. It was too far for a TI shot. So what was the only reasonable thing to do?

Get to the deck gun of course! I checked the range with the UZO and started shelling the destroyer. The second shot hit its mark at the bridge. I had cut off the head of the snake, and the rest was easy. No damage received. I proceeded to work on the C2 when...another warship. The first had called for help!

So, a half-hour later I had 14 (!!) ships on me. Here we go again...

So the tragic bit comes the next day. I was hugging the shore, surfaced, and hoping to charge the batteries a bit. I accelerated time and my Watch reported a contact when it was already shooting at me! This time I was stuck at the surface with a destroyer and PT boat. I did the only thing I could: took to the deck gun, and try to kill the destroyer first. I damaged it severely, but relentless peppering from the PT boats' 20 mm AA guns turned my hull into swiss cheese. I sank halfway though the strait. All hands lost

Ironically, I could survive DCing from 14 destroyers, but I was done in by a PT boat.... Now that's tragic!