I've joined the 100K Patrol Club!

[sunvalleyslim]

Congrats Predavolk, Greatness comes early but one must learn to survive ones ultimate fate...................greatness comes with survival in the end.......end the war alive and I will salute Kaleun............Great Hunting and Remember Honor the Fatherland

[predavolk]

Oh, absolutely. I'm really pleased to be racking up these big scores now, but I don't expect them to last forever. I'm rather dreading the later years of the war, and may end up switching boats to a VII-41, then a XXI when it's available. At least, that's my plan. For the moment though, I plan on smashing and grabbing as much tonnage and renown as I can while the gettings good. Because as I commented in my Florida thread, it's already getting nasty in the air. I made it back from this patrol with only 35% hull integrity!

And for anyone else who is in, or who joins the club, I'd love to hear about your 100K patrols. I always enjoy learning from the best!

[predavolk]

OK, this is almost too easy. I appreciate that I'm away from the North Atlantic, which presumably helps a LOT. But once again, I've banged in another 100K+ patrol- November-December 1942 (GWX 2.1, 100%)! 114.5K tons of shipping- 1 destroyer, 6 tankers, 11 merchants. Once again, it was in the Caribbean, with most of my kills coming from around good ol' ED98- the North entrance to Trinidad. Hey, when you've got a good thing, milk it! Some highlights and tips:

1- The cruise was off to a slow start when I tried to lay in wait and ambush the Torch convoy to Casablanca. Man, was it ever huge!!! Fortunately, I wasn't detected and launched two torps (I only load two elecs, and then two steams, up front). One missed a troop transport, the other, much more tragically, HIT a troop transport. Tragic because I was aiming at the Bogue/Casablanca? class carrier behind it. One the plus side, I managed to evade 3 rounds of depth charging from 2 boats as well as passive searches from 2 more. Tip: decoys work at deeper depths, and jimbuna's tactic of running up to flank, releasing the decoy, the shortly slowing to Slow worked well. Three or four decoy releases, and I was out of their web.

2- Barbados was empty, which is a shame because it's so easy to sneak into. I did nail a destroyer though! And at Coraco (another easy, deep port, just hug the north west shore), I sank a large tanker. Tip: if your torpedoes are exploding prematurely in harbors. I'd presume your hitting a net or underwater wall. Torpedoes set at 1M will go over them. The harbor escorts didn't seem to react to premature explosions- thankfully!

3- After wasting a whole spread of torpedos, I finally sank the large tanker, but I had made some other misses and was below half my torps and "only" sitting at 18K tons. Then, two really cool things happened. First, I ran into what looked like a giant ocean liner! Turns out it was only a smaller one, but it was a raging storm, and a visual sighting, which meant that I had only seconds to react. Two torps nailed it! Then, a couple of days later, I bagged a 24K large passenger ship!!

4- Tip: WOW, is radar detection ever worth it! It does not differentiate between surface and air contacts (at least not in '42). You'll find out shortly which one if you don't dive soon! I'd recommend at least flooding the decks if not diving outright. Fortunately, I was chased by single-engine float planes that were too slow to get to me in time.

5- Tip: Neutral ships can call in enemy planes on you! Those bastard Venezualens did it repeatedly to me. Bastards!

6- I got 5 kills using my deck gun. Including my last two, which were a wounded ore carrier and a small merchant travelling together. Tip: Later in the war, be sure you inspect merchants before engaging them to know what guns they have. Attacking from the front is usually safer than attacking from the rear. Aim 200-300M closer than the range of the target to hit below the waterline (I use my watch officer's ranges generally- I figure he's manning the UZO). If you are taking heavy fire, you can try and eliminate merchant gun positions by firing about 1000M further than the boat and right on the gun. Better to attack defenseless boats though! My preferred tactic later in the war is to get ahead of the boats, go to PD, put your bow right on theirs. When they are 1500M away, go ahead normal-full, blow balast, man your guns, and blast away at their unprotected front! Once surfaced, go to back emergency to maintain your position, and try to match and move of the enemy to turn their stern toward you. You don't want to give them a shot, so keep the rest of their boat between you and their stern gun! It can take as few as 2-5 waterline shots to sink any ship, but I usually give 20-30 because I want to end the engagement quickly. They will be calling reinforcements!!

7- The area still had some nice Yankee tankers, but most tankers were Venezuelan (maybe I sank all the Yanks last time I was here?). I did run into several varieties of troop and passenger ships beyond the ones I mentioned above. Very odd. They, along with that huge 24K beast, may be the reason why this is the highest renown-scoring cruise I've done- 4160 IIRC.

So that's my patrol. Number 17 or 18 I believe. The air cover was hot, but the radar detector made ALL the difference. I was only surprised once, and I think that was because of the neutral ships calling it in. And to leave you with some historical food for thought, apparently, the highest scoring U-Boat mission of all time comes from WW1. Lothar von Arnauld de la Periere, in U-35, between July 26 and August 20 sank 54 ships totaling 91,950 tons, expending 900 shells and only 4 torpedoes in the process! The gentlemanly ace generally let crews leave their ships before scuttling them with exlosive charges. By the time he left U-35, he had a staggering 195 ships to his credit- two warships, one armed merchant cruiser, five troopships, 125 steamers, and 62 sailing ships. By the end of the war he had more than 200 ships to his credit and nearly 500,000 tons!

[Jimbuna]

http://www.uboat.net/history/wwi/part4.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothar_...a_Peri%C3%A8re

[Sailor Steve]

There it is again! I've e-mailed U-boat.net's owner and had the discussion, but it's still there! According to Edwin Grey's U-Boat War: 1914-1918, Lothar von Arnauld de la Periere fired a lot more than four torpedoes during his career. It was on that record patrol that he only fired four (still quite an accomplishment). He explains how he did it in the article. On his last patrol he fired at least eight torpedoes at one convoy, and one of the ships he sank landed on top of his u-boat, very nearly ending his career in a bad way.