Lose Destroyers

[Bravo]

I always get through Straights of Dover fine BUT I do have it on unlimited battery lol.

Originally Posted by kishmeth

Hello . First post - and sorry for the necro .

I've gone through the same experience last night - I made the mistake of trying to run past Dover during daytime.

To my surprise I was detected while at periscope depth - And in less than 5 minutes I had 17! escorts happily pinging away at me , with a convoy and another taskforce with ~12 km range.

Battery was 85% but maximum depth was only 49 meters . CO2 was at 44%. Despite that , I was able to get away. Here's what I did to get away:

As soon as I had escorts overhead I crashdived , then ordered maintain depth once I was going past 30m . Did a 40 second full flank , then parked the sub on the bottom , near a small underwater rise . At this time DCs were starting to explode all around.

DDs didn't have a perfect solution on me , so they started circling in a 3 km radius . Ocassionaly they would come close and start dumping DCs . After about an hour they were joined by the other taskforce and I didn't feel confortable staying there anymore . Still 1-2 meters away from the bottom I started moving straight at the nearest escort , at around 1 knot . Had a dc blow up less than 10 meters above me , luckily only superficial damage.

Kept doing this ( go straight at an escort , do a full flank for 10 seconds then back to 1 kn ) until I was ~3km away from the murder of pingers . Headed towards the convoy . Thankfully I was out of fishes anyway . Had to blow balast twice and then quickly dive back in order to avoid a a few very well targeted DCs. Lost forward planes to it. At one time I manage to push my nose in the sand - lost forward torpedoes.

Once I got past the convoy I went to 2/3 speed for 5 minutes , paying attention to the lagging escort ( Gotta say , I never took as many 4-bearing fixes as I did yesterday ) .

Battery down to 16% , but night is coming . Drop to 1 knot and keep moving through the center , mindful of the mines towards calais and the dover cliffs. Around 2200 I climbed to periscope depth ( with 0 compressed air left ) and took a quick peak - smoke on the horizon behind , but nothing inside 7 km . Went to decks awash and got out of there by 2:30 AM . Spent the rest of the night on surface repairing and recharging batteries.

What I learned :
1: NEVER EVER go through Dover again.
2: Read 1
3: At the start of the war ASDIC is weak - but in shallow waters it WILL ping you if you show the wrong aspect to it .
4: Scrapping bottom works reasonably well but you risk grounding the sub and drowning.
5: Once past a critical number of escorts it actually goes in your favor since they can't maneuver freely .
6: With WoS 1.4 escorts will get a ASDIC fix a lot faster than stock or SH3 .
7: Going under a blazing escort will mask you from other ASDICs if you are <30m under it.
8: Always keep the battery above 60% .
9: Convoys can be used to mask your signal.
10: Thank God it was only december 1939
11. Don't bang your boat into things. It makes noise.
12. Point 1.