Stories and Patrol Logs + Screenshots and Videos (merged)

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Akiti Oschiti.

:rotfl:

[mcf1]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Akiti Oschiti.

:rotfl: I'm having problems pronouncing it

[Falkirion]

Patrol number 2. With the addition of 4 new crew members the USS Grayling was set to ride the express way to Tokyo with orders to patrol off the south western portion of Honshu. Leaving Pearl there were contacts, some friendly, some unknown assumed friendly this close to a US port during the middle of a war. If they were Japanese, god help them. Our planes would be on them like flies on feces in the tropical sun.

The trip to Tokyo was uneventful, even more so as we passed into Japanese territory we followed standard procedure. Surfaced at ahead standard (Infinite fuel still) during the night, half an hour before dawn submerge and run at 2 or 3 knots for the day at 150 feet down, rising to periscope depth every now and then to see if any aircraft were around and willing to donate themselves for target practice.

We reached the patrol area and remained there for 3 days. Slipping outside the 200 mile circle on two seperate nights to check out the ports nearby. A Sampan donated itself as target practice for our deck gun during that time, with a beautiful piece of navigation work from our navigator that put us right in his path, in the middle of an inky black night it never stood a chance. It went down with all hands after 4 high explosive shells ripped it apart.

On our last day in the zone and after numerous calls of convoys transiting the nearby area a large oil split freighter decided it was time to come directly down our throats. Foolishly, and even with fog on our side limiting visibility we were spotted. I debated letting the target go and based on how quickly the Japanese could get an air response unit over to our position 300 miles off shore I was confident I could sink the target and be gone without them any the wiser. The merchant made a zig zag course towards my waiting kill zone. At 700-800 yards it was going to be hard to miss. Still covering off both avenues I set tube 1 to run at 15 feet, running 1 degree to starboard at fast. Tube 2 was set slow, 10 feet and 1 degree port. The waiting game was nearly the death of me. Just after I'd fired off the pair of torpedos a bomb exploded close behind the sub, rattling some teeth but leaving the sub completely unharmed. With the knowledge he'd come around for another pass, I took the sub down to 200 feet and turned north towards the Japanese coast. Assuming that the escorts thought we'd head south away from the danger zone. We heard the merchant go under and happily we ran deep for a couple of hours before chancing a quick run on the surface to get some distance the targets last position. Just as we broke the surface gunfire raced its way across the bow. A Zero was right in our path and radar didnt pick it up at all. Crash dive back to the safety of the inky black even as the jap dropped his load of bombs across the path of the Grayling. This time we went deeper, down to 220 feet. And remained there running slow, beneath the thermal layer at 194 feet. We only surfaced at night and put in the report to COMSUBPAC of the pair of kills we'd made over the past 4 days. Orders came back immediately to head for the south china sea again and harass enemy shipping. With the amount of enemy task forces passing through the area and the target rich environment. We're looking forward to sending some more Jap metal to the seabed.

South China sea. Middle of the night and my sonar man calls in a contact. Having a listen in it sounds like a Destroyer and at least one other ship. Not wanting to pass up a good opportunity we decide to go take a peek. Reaching a point 2000 yards from their projected course we stop dead in the water and sit at periscope depth, rigged for silent just in case we have to dive suddenly. The trails of smoke coming towards us resolve themselves into a group of three ships running line astern, a Matsuki destroyer, a subchaser and gunship. Deciding to take a risk and see what happens I call for tubes one through three to be set for fast, and angle the torps at 2 degree intervals heading left. Its a tense wait as the Matsuki I've targeted gets closer and closer. Finally it passes into the firing solution and I send out my three fish, hoping to score a hit, eyes glued to the destroyer as it glides past ready to call for a deep dive if they detect me or the fish. They detect the fish, go to flank and break to starboard. Not quickly enough though as tube threes fish strikes home on the number one screw. The other two went wide. At 33% it was foolish to think I'd actually manage to strike home on a destroyer running at 12 knots from 2000 yards. Still the hit leaves me less worried about the destroyer and I dive down to 250 and proceed on towards it at 1 knot. Its a slow and painful wait with all three ships trying to find me. The subchaser though is way off to my starboard and I'm heading towards the destroyer at 1 knot ready to finish it off. The destroyers speed keeps dropping off and as we come up to periscope depth to take another shot she's gradually sinking by the stern. Stuff her. If the japs love Bushido as much as the rest of the world do we're better off without them. Tubes 4 and 5 are prepped and fired, while we go down to 300 feet to slink away. When the torpedoes hit I could hear it even without the sonarman's confirmation. She was hit and hard. One of the torps must've caught a magazine or fuel reserve because it broke her back and split her right across the keel.

Deciding to have a shot at the subchaser we slip back up to periscope depth for another long range shot, this time with the stern tubes. The subchasers sitting at rest, waiting to see where we're going to pop up. Well good thing for us its far enough away we feel safe. Tubes 7 and 8 fired and we wait. The torps scream in and at the last second the subchaser fires up her engines an swings to starboard, even with tube 8 set turn run a little to port it goes wide and the subchaser steams in along the bearing the torpedos came in on. Ordering a dive back down to 300 the Grayling and her crew slip away to the south. Not coming up above 300 feet until four hours later at midday. After a quick check of the surface with the observation scope, the Grayling finally breaks the surface again after being below for the better part of 8 hours. We hung around for the next three days. Only getting a long range sound contact that we didnt feel the need to chase down. With one warship and two merchants under our belt and ever fearful of air attacks, we continue on closer towards China to get to the next zone COMSUBPAC assigned us.

One last objective and maybe we can get home. Damn 1.5 update just made me lose this career. Ah well luck was on my side as I was assigned the Grayling again when I started my 1.5 career.

[Gunfighter]

Action Shot 1

Action Shot 2

Action Shot 3

Almost Alpha 1

Almost Alpha 2

Almost alpha 3

Almost Alpha 4

[Gunfighter]

Don't you just love it when there Dead In The Water

Watch it

The colour of War
Testing PE4 looking great and I know there more to come

[Falkirion]

Look closely at the fire. This is what happens when you get 5 rounds of HE shells in your fishing boat mate

My last cargo ship from my first patrol. One fish hit the engine room. The second shot felt like a waste.

My current patrol after successfully downing a destroyer. Sitting on the surface at sunset.

[BlueFlames]

A little preliminary searching showed that on its third patrol, the real S-46 sank a grand total of zero tons. Leaving Brisbane in May and returning the following month, it shadowed a few convoys, but never got into position to engage. It was spotted by IJN destroyers, that all decided not to engage. It patrolled in choke-points along merchant shipping routes, but found no targets.

My third patrol in S-46 was slightly more lucrative. In fact, it would have been my first 100,000-ton patrol in any subsim, ever*, if it hadn't turned out being my first 200,000-ton patrol ever.

Three factors big played into this insane tonnage total....

First and foremost, I decided I was going to get at least one career done in stock SH4, before diving into the realm of supermods, so wow, is the Pacific target-rich, or what? Holy bejebus, I try to move away from sunken ships for an in-game hour, before saving after an encounter (to avoid sunken ships instantly refloating upon reload), but when I was on some of the major shipping lanes, I couldn't sail for an hour before getting some new contact on SJ radar or the hydrophone.

Second to that was the sub tender at Tulagi. My patrol lasted from September 24, 1942 until November 29, 1942, and it wouldn't have made sense to stay out that long without resupplying. The Tulagi resupply point let me go hunting, rearm, and get back to work without having to make any particularly long jaunts away from the warzone, where previously, I'd have to sail all the way back to Brisbane. During this patrol, I resupplied three times, using up all forty-eight torpedos and nearly 1,000 rounds for the deck gun.

Finally, I was dead-set on participating in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal**, and after finishing my initial objectives in mid-October, it was questionable as to whether or not I'd be able to get to Brisbane and back to the Solomons in time. Of course, I wasn't going to let a month of potential patroling go to waste, especially after finding a number of shipping lanes in the Bismark Sea and leading between Rabaul and the Solomons. Of course, because the battle occurs near Savo-island, inside radar range of Tulagi, why not resupply and have one more merry jaunt through the shipping lanes, after the fact? Yes, please.

***

The highlight of the patrol was the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Knowing that the Allied and Japanese fleets met in the sound between Guadalcanal and Savo, I wanted to try to catch the Japanese in a pincer move, letting friendly cruisers do their job, then catching the remaining Japanese during their retreat. Things went awry, the night of the battle, though....

ComSubPac sent warning that Allied naval forces were about to engage the Japanese, while I was resupplying for my second time at Tulagi on the evening of November 12. I set out at full speed, noting that fuel wouldn't be an issue this close to a resupply point. My initial search for the task force focused on "The Slot," right down the middle of the Solomon Islands. Crossing The Slot at its south-east edge, I detected nothing and made my way back toward Savo and Iron-Bottom Sound, maintaining twelve knots.

This time, I made radar contact a large taskforce coming around the western shallows off Guadalcanal. Thinking this to be the Japanese force, and with no sign of the Allied fleet, I plotted an intercept and ran the engines up to flank speed, with intent to attack. Thanks to the radar track, I got into a beautiful position to stop, let the escorts pass, and fire from within the taskforce. Problem was, I made visual contact just short of where I meant to dive....stars and stripes....and then a white ensign. Now, I'm as happy to see friendlies as the next guy, but after a choreographed intercept like this, the last things I wanted to see were US and Aussie ships.

Right, then.... Where are those IJN BB's? I dropped back to twelve knots and set course back to Savo. I figured, the Japanese were coming in from the northern approaches and would clash headlong into the Allied force or cause them to double-back after passing south of Savo. In either case, if I circled around the east and then the north side of Savo, with enough speed, I could catch the Japanese in retreat, as I had originally planned. The friendlies didn't do exactly what I had expected, going around Savo at twenty knots in the opposite direction and never meeting the Japanese.

In the wee hours of the morning on November 13, I made first contact with the Japanese task force on SJ radar. Again, I plotted an intercept, but the IJN force changed course. I was able to correct, but I wasn't as happy with the new angle of attack.

Then, something most unexpected happened.... Prior to this point, I had been able to approach several convoys with my SJ radar left on, with no reaction from escorts, unless they visually spotted me. This time, from miles outside of visual range, three destroyers peeled off of the task force and began steaming toward me, very quickly. I grumbled at length about this encounter, of all encounters, being the first one to include Japanese radar (or radar detection) equipment.

It was hairy few moments with these three destroyers, even after I got to one-hundred-ninety feet and went dead-silent, and it seemed like it was going to get really dicey, when all but three of the remaining warships began moving in my direction. Fortunately, after I gave the first three the slip, the remaining destroyers (I think they were destroyers, anyway) seemed to operate on the assumption that I was trying to escape to the south. I was quite hopeful that they'd come around the corner to an angry beehive of Allied cruisers, but irregardless of whether they would or not, they were past me.

That left three warships ahead of me, to the north, puttering about, without going anywhere and a mob behind me. I made a safe bet that the three ahead were battleships or cruisers, banking on the destroyers actually doing their job. Before I could really approach, though, the whole taskforce very suddenly decided to regroup. What I presumed to be the big ships began a slow move south, while the destroyers broke of their search, picked up some speed, and turned north.

If ever there was a time to act, this was it. One of the slowpokes was going to cross dead-ahead, inside 2,000 yards, probably before the destroyers got too close. I sped up to two knots† and began an ascent to periscope depth. I got up just in time for the nearest mystery ship to get into a decent (though admittedly not great) position from which to be attacked. Moments after raising the scope, I sent all four loaded torpedos at the Ise-class battleship that had wandered into my maw. The first was aimed to foul the screws; the following two sent with magnetic exploders at the BB's keel, and the final was overled, just in case the Ise managed the same epic acceleration that destroyers manage in SHIV.

After firing, I immediately began another dive to 190 feet, securing from silent running (to allow torpedo reloading), but remaining slow. One of the destroyers began searching for me, southeast of my actual position, and while a few of the others got close, none detected me before splitting again to the south. On my way down, I heard two torpedo impacts and lost hydrophone contact with the Ise, albeit without any indication of it sinking. While I was running deep and reloading, the sun was rising, and the rest of the taskforce split into two groups. The bulk of the force headed due south, and a smaller detachment headed west by southwest. Only the Ise and the one destroyer actively searching for me stayed behind.

Once I had tubes one and two reloaded, I was getting into position to fire at a ninety-degree AOB inside 1,100 yards. Again, I ascended to periscope depth. Once there, I got to assess the damage from those first three hits. It looked like my first torpedo had been the one that missed, as there was no visible damage to the rear of the ship, so I assumed that instead of fouling the screws with that first torp, I fouled the boilers with my second two. From that near-perfect firing position, I sent another pair of magnetic torpedos at the Ise, one under the superstructure, and the other under the number two turret. Both hit their marks, though I had been hoping to hear a secondary fuel/ammunition explosion, which never happened. The response to my action was tepid, with two destroyers pulling off the back of the main force to join the remaining search ship. The lot of them wound up queuing up and circling the same area, three nautical miles southeast of my actual position.

Not particularly bothered with their activities, at such range, I turned my hydrophone to the battle, or I would have, if there was much of a battle to be heard. The Allied and Japanese forces did cross paths, but my actions delayed the Japanese just long enough that the two forces could only fire from extreme range. I don't know how my hydrophone operator identified the nationality, but the gun battle resulted in one Japanese ship sunk before a mutual withdrawl began.

Before that happened, though, I popped back up one more time to fire off another pair of torpedos. This time, the Ise was listing heavily to starboard, so I fired shallow-runners with contact triggers at the foredeck and midship. If that battleship tilted any further, I'd have been able to put holes in the top of the turrets, and since there were already four chunks taken out of the keel, I figured there wasn't much left to be done with more magnetic torpedos. Again, both torpedos hit, and this time, the Ise finally rolled over. The three destroyers, still three miles away, did not react, maintaining their search pattern.

Once I had put enough distance between myself and the destroyers, I surfaced. I made a half-hearted attempt to put some torpedos into another battleship in the retreating Japanese force, but I made my attack from much too far away, and my salvo of four torpedos all came up short. Nobody seemed interested in responding, and S-46 was totally void of torpedos now, so I broke contact and made one more trip over to Tulagi....and didn't turn my radar back on until I got there. *Grumble*

That is, incidentally, how you turn a major engagement between surface forces into a tiny scuffle. I don't know exactly what the standard IJN ASW strategy was, but in this instance, it seemed like they had the big ships drop everything and stop, while the destroyers proceeded to ignore the threat.


* -- This is a list consisting of Silent Service 1 (NES-version), Silent Service 2 (DOS-version), and the Silent Hunter series, starting at II.

** -- What kind of sucker goes sailing to a Japanese port, when the IJN is perfectly willing to send their Battleships to you? Not this kind of sucker! Wait a second....

*** -- Also playing into this is my realism setting of 59%, kept so low by leaving dud torpedos and manual targeting turned off, either of which could have easily sliced my tonnage in half. I'm a casual subsimmer, and always have been, so this is really just me being bubbly about achieving a personal best; I've still the greatest respect for people who can sink a quarter of this patrol tonnage at or near 100% realism.

† -- Careful, there. Speed kills!

And as a final summary, I transcribed my patrol log into Excel and did a little analysis. (Screenshot)

[kylania]

Shooting down a fighter just before crash diving:

[mcf1]

Playing hide n' seek under the moonlight

[Ivan Putski]

[Seminole]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Oh no! The Japs have discovered Krazy Glue!

(or maybe VTOL)

...or these could be those new Jap vertical takeoff fighters we heard were in development...

[kriller2]

[Falkirion]

Ah Kriller you're killing me. Those shots of PE4 look great! But here's a couple more from me, taken last night
Lurking beneath the pacific.

Running silent and as deep as I dare

Sunrise/Sunset (I cant remember!) surface/dive, I'm guessing surface though.

And a funny one I took before I installed U-Boat expansion. Check out what this DD is doing!

I'd call that around 25-30 knots, going backwards lol

[ReallyDedPoet]

Nice pics Falkirion


RDP

[U-46 Commander]

Look what I found in the pacific!



The Flying Dutchman! What a suprise!