Beautiful demise

[Markus Witt]

I just played the historical mission of the PQ17 convoy for some convoy attack training. Hadn’t played it before. It was quite interesting. Weather was pretty bad with medium fog. (not sure if weather is programmed specifically for this mission or if it is random). As I plotted an intercept point I stayed on the surface. As I approached the intercept point there was no sign of the convoy and I decided that I would dive to listen if I hadn’t spotted them in another 20 minutes. But before that my watch crew alerted me of smoke on the horizon. So I change course in the convoy direction and scan around with my binoculars. I can see smoke everywhere, convoy appears to be very large but the medium fog doesn’t allow me to see very much. As I continue to scan the horizon I see an escort at medium range behind me, too close for comfort. I immediately speed up to put some distance between us and after a few minutes it disappears into the fog until only a shadow is visible, lucky it didn’t spot me. The medium fog gives the whole thing a bit of a mysterious vibe, a few shadows are visible and some smoke columns but most details remain hidden from view.

After that I match course and speed with the escort shadow and start plotting it. After about 30 minutes I have decent data and start making an attack plan. It is evening and my plan is to wait for darkness and attack on the surface, my preferred method. As I check the time for sunset I notice that the same time is given for sunset and sunrise??? Then I realize that it is July and I’m at about 75 degrees north. There is no sunset!!! The sun never sets this time of the year in this part of the world, what is this nonsense!? Very unsporting if you ask me and to be seriously frowned upon.

At this point the escort, which must be the lead escort, has come out of the fog again and is quite close. It must have sped up, perhaps this is part of its search routine. Since a night surface attack is not possible anyway and I don’t want to spend too much time with this I decide to dive and manoeuvre into an attack position right away. At this point I have no idea of the exact convoy composition and the escort strength, but this is just an exercise, let’s see what happens. As I dive the lead escort is behind me a bit off to my SB quarter. So after diving I turn over PS, performing a U-turn that hopefully keeps me far enough away from the escort and allow me to slip past it. As I reach an opposite course to the convoy I listen on the hydrophone and pick up HE on a large arc. Most of the noise is coming from about 340, but there is also some HE on my SB side. I am positioned directly ahead of the convoy towards its PS shoulder.

I also pick up HE of various escorts. Besides the lead escort there are at least 4 more escorts, two of them almost directly ahead of me. I go to periscope depth to scan around and can see an escort a bit off to my PS, quite close and realise I might be in trouble. I go back to 30m and listen again on the hydrophones. The escort I just saw, is slowly passing on my PS at close range and another escort is heard at medium range just to my SB side. Then I hear Asdic from the closest escort. This is probably when I should have aborted and gone deep quickly to save myself. But since this is practice I press on. My hope is that despite the Asdic pulses heard the escort hasn’t actually detected me yet and I start turning towards it, hoping to pass astern and slipping in between it and the next closest escort. At this point the closest escort is heard on the hydrophone in the direction of about 290° and the second escort at 010°.

But of course this is hopeless and it becomes clear that the escort has detected me. Time to go deep and save myself. Pretty quickly the depth charges start exploding behind me, first without causing damage. But I am still too close to the surface in a vulnerable spot and pretty quickly they find their range and I suffer heavy damage with flooding everywhere.
The control room is filled with fog as we plummet down with electric engines not working. Checking the depth beneath our keel I realise water depth is only about 120m here. We can’t control our depth anymore and blowing ballast has no effect, we continue our descent. Normally this would have ended very quickly, but because of the water depth we settle on the bottom at 110m. Checking the damage I find our batteries are depleted 0%. Interestingly all the lights are still on! Fuel is also down to 0%, indicating a large leak. As I walk up and down the boat to inspect the damage I see that every compartment is flooded except the bow torpedo room. Framerate in the game is still very good, even in the control room, and the atmosphere in the boat is rather fitting to the predicament I’m in. As I make my way back to the control room I close all watertight doors.

It is obvious there is nothing we can do anymore but wait. In the meantime the depth charging continues relentlessly, barrage after barrage, causing more damage and leaks. At one point the water level in the control room starts rising quickly and pretty soon I am under water and begin to sink down into the floor, indicating imminent “game death”. As I sink down into the floor I see the hatch to the officers’ quarters next to me and try to open it. Hatch opens and I am able to get into the compartment. Immediately I am standing up again and am still alive! Very strange experience. After this, the water in the control room is back to ankle deep and I can enter it again normally, not sure what that was all about. Anyway, as there is nothing to do but wait I settle down at the dining table and wait for the inevitable end. As I wait I put on the gramophone. Fast forwarding through the playlist randomly it settles down on Barcarolle, an old German version of the song. A relaxing and soothing piece of music that adds to the overall atmosphere.

As I sit there listening, there is another depth charge barrage and it is all over. As my game soul starts rising up out of the water high into the sky, I can see about 5 or six escorts circling below me with search lights as various merchant are scattering past in all directions. During this time the Barcarolle continues playing in the background and as the “game over” screen appears everything turns quite. Only the song can be heard now as I sit there, listening and staring at the screen.