I got OWNED last night. Some insights, opinions and questions.

[vonCrandall]

A bit of a long read, but this happened last night in July 1940 and I am curious/confused/shaking my head at a few things.

First 'real' destroyer encounter for me in SH5. I've played SH3 alot and have had countless run ins with them there, but this was the first SH5 destroyer encounter where the DD didn't give up after a few mins and just went away.

We were heading to the patrol zone and while in transit somewhere off the southern shore of Ireland, I get a convoy report. I make the required calculations and can tell right away that we will be able to intercept. The only reservation I had in my mind was that the weather was absolutely beautiful with almost no clouds in the sky, no chop, no wind and visibility for miles - figuring we'd have a look at the convoy and go from there, I plot our intercept course and head off.

A few hours later we find the convoy with a hydrophone check and they seem to be slightly ahead of where I thought they would be. Apparently I estimated them to have a slower travel speed which has now eaten up my extra time to creep into optimal position ahead of their current path.

The convoy consists of 12 merchants and 1 lone destroyer riding shotgun in front of them all. Given this fact, I decide to engage them now rather than shadow them as they were traveling fairly fast and the lone destroyer shouldn't be too much of an issue as I would let a few torpedo's loose, go down to reload and be ready to fire again by the time he lost interest.

Here is where I was dead wrong.

I'm in position and am still undetected. Due to the angle of the convoy and how it's traveling, I decide to only engage 2 of the ships as it seems in my firing solutions that I had a high possibility of having the closest 2 ships screen the two beyond them and we could have ended up wasting 2 torpedo's. Fire 1. Fire 3.

Now for reference sake, I play on 87% realism but I had a mini cheat going in that I have the detection circles for surface detection, sonar and hydrophones on for my minimap as I am trying to gauge/learn them.

As the 2 torpedo's are heading to their targets, I am sitting, totally undetected at 14m with the attack periscope up and at All Stop. The torpedo's impact within seconds of each other and a muffled cheer could be heard in the control room. I pan the periscope over to see how the lone destroyer reacts to this; at this point he is almost 2k away from me.

First nothing. He just keeps chugging along, and then within 15-20 seconds, he makes a hard left and straightens out at what likes like DIRECTLY at me. First question: I did fire 2 of the steam torpedo's because of the speed and distance of the convoy; can a destroyer, that is not THAT far off the waterline see a small steam trail in the water from 2km away?? Is this what made him turn - he didn't have a 'good idea' where I was, he was literally aimed directly at me.

The sounding to the floor was 145m. Ahead 1/3, turn 90 degrees to starboard and go down to 100m. Silent running.

At this point I am watching the yellow detection circle. As the destroyer (Class A) is starting to do random circles in the area and I start hearing distant depth charge explosions. Question 2: Why does NOONE in my crew tell me when there are depth charges in the friggen water?

My tactic to get away is fairly simple. I pick a general direction I want to head to, in this case is was between North and East. I turn my rudder left or right at times, but keep within 00 and 090. Whenever the DD is close and there are depth charge explosions, I go flank ahead, I turn my rudder (keeping within N and E for this example) and go down another 10-20m. Whenever I think the last depth charge just went off, I go back to all slow and rudder amidships. Question 3: How long can the destroyer not 'hear' me after a depth charge goes off?

An hour passes. No damage and he barely, if at all, even got close. The problem is, he won't go away. I am almost on the bottom of the seafloor at this point. Anytime he drifts off and I have a good size distance gap between us, his sonar begins searching and almost always finds me even thought I am at an almost 180 degree slim profile and 3m from the ocean floor. Question 4: How do you get away from the sonar? Did I just have bad luck and 140m wasn't deep enough?

I cannot for the life of me evade this destroyer. After 2 hours I start with other tricks; make ALOT of noise and have him come to depth charge me only to pull a 180 and go totally silent in the other direction, sit on the floor at All Stop, try going multiple directions after being depth charged - nothing works. Question 5: If I am in the yellow detection circle on the minimap, does this mean I have a good chance of being detected, or that I WILL 100% be detected? This is what I am very curious about because he kept me in the yellow circle quite often. But then when I got out (or it shrank when his screws were facing me) I would go all stop and he would just turn around like he always knew where I was.

New sonar contact, warship, slow speed, long distance! Wait, what? What the hell is this?

Apparently I don't know if I just happened to be in the path of a DD patrol or if this pain in the ass destroyer phoned home for help but there are now FOUR (4) more destroyers heading directly to my location from about 10km away. How the hell did this happen?

Long story short, the 4 additional destroyers came right at me. This had to be intentional. I had no chance. 2 or 3 of them took turns depth charging while the rest sat and pinged me nonstop. I lasted another hour like this but there was ZERO chance of losing them, and the water was getting shallower. Once the damage started, it was over pretty quick.

Now besides the things I was curious about (Ill list them again), I have a few observations:

1) I did fire 2 of the steam torpedo's because of the speed and distance of the convoy; can a destroyer, that is not THAT far off the waterline see a small steam trail in the water from 2km away??

2) Why does NOONE in my crew tell me when there are depth charges in the friggen water?

3) How long can the destroyer not 'hear' me after a depth charge goes off? Can I go to flank during this, or is there a threshold as to what the charges will cover?

4) How do you get away from the sonar? Did I just have bad luck and 140m wasn't deep enough? I was at minimum profile and hugging the seafloor each time and was found almost every time.

5) If I am in the yellow detection circle on the minimap, does this mean I have a good chance of being detected, or that I WILL 100% be detected? This is what I am very curious about because he kept me in the yellow circle quite often. But then when I got out (or it shrank when his screws were facing me) I would go all stop and he would just turn around like he always knew where I was.

Some observations:

- I was disappointed that during my assbeating when half the sub was being flooded that all of my crew were simply standing around like nothing was going on. I would have thought there would be a script to where they would look panicky and be fixing ****. I mean, the forward compartment is under water and sparks are flying as Dieter is standing there shooting the **** with the hydrophone guy and 3 crew members are sleeping in their bunks. WHAT?!?

- Compartment hatch doors are there for decoration only.

- The damage control screen is confusing. Is there even a separate option to have the crew work on the flooding as opposed to fixing something that really doesn't matter at that moment? I had no clue what the hell was going on.

- Class A Destroyers are a pain in the ass.