Nice trip to La Spezia

[Bertgang]

During my several careers in AOCD, I never was ordered to reach the Mediterranean sea.
Sometimes, when assigned to atlantic patrol areas close to Gibraltar in 1941 or 1942, I made an attempt to cross the strait, mainly to hunt some known convoy, but never had success; a quick death was the normal outcome, a difficult return to base on a crippled boat the best one (really similar to the nightmare described in “Das Boot�).

Trying to change that, I decided to give “secret orders� to my new character, a knight cross holder leading a VIIB, as soon as Italy joined the war.

The first attempt turned in a strange way; about 60.000 tons sunk just off Gibraltar, then back to base as out of torpedoes; I had the oak leaves, but with little pleasure.

The second attempt is a totally different tale.
It’s September 1940, I surface just off Gibraltar about two hours past sunfall, with enough time to make a (safe ?) flank speed race covered by darkness.
The sky is a bit too clear for my taste, fog or heavy clouds should be welcome, but I don’t want another delay; so, crossing my fingers, the adventure starts.
At the beginning, all runs fine; just a pair of escorts spotted by far, and easily evaded changing course.
Now I am close to African coast, and quite out of danger, when another one spots me and starts to approach at 30 knots; no way to avoid this one on surface, I have to dive in shallow waters!
A course to NE should give me a more comfortable depth, here the bottom is about 20 meters, but I couldn’t make a worst mistake; the bottom suddenly rise, and my boat is glued in the mood at 14 meters only.
Just few seconds have passed, when the boat is shaken and the propeller’s shaft damaged, but no sounds of wabos at all; our engines are stopped but, as it seems, we have a fast sliding movement port side.
What’s happening? Periscope up!
First things I can see are a rudder and a shaft swinging in the air; to understand more I have to toggle off the zoom, and the situation is nearly incredible.
The keel of a destroyer stays over our aft bridge, with the stern totally out of water; now we are used as a sort of surf board by the enemy boat.
Now our “guests� can’t do anything to damage us, as the launch of depth charges should be a suicide for them, and their guns are totally useless right now; on the other hand, obiouvsly, we can’t stay in such way simply waiting for a peace treaty.
Well, as outcome both of our desperate attempts and of the speed or weight of the “surfer�, after some minutes looking as the whole eternity the two boats break the contact; we are able to gain a minimum of speed, despite the damaged shaft, and hit the enemy by the stern tube.
End of story? Too simple!
The destroyers is only damaged, and starts a turn that I don’t like at all.
We are too slow to gain safer deep waters, too slow to turn in time for a shoot by stern tubes, too young (in this virtual life) to simply wait the incoming death.
So the desperate decision, surface, we will die fighting.
Firsts rounds of our gun duel are a nightmare; nobody, on both sides, can miss his target at 500 meters only; both boats are quickly reduced like swiss cheese; thanks to the flank speed, no more than 7 knots right now, we are able to aim the target by bow tubes too, and launch a full spread just before to be forced to abandon the boat.
Then the miracle!
One, two torpedoes hit, the destroyer disappears in a dirty column of fire, smoke, water and debris, all guns suddenly become silent.
We have barely survived the fight, but we are undoubtfull still afloat.
La Spezia is waiting for us, with a music band in black shirt to celebrate my promotion to Kapitanleutnant.

[Hitman]

The CAOD manual states that you will never be ordered into the Med, but you can sail into it and continue your career from there in La Spezia and Salamis So you have to "volunteer" for the Mediterranean, or imagine that you have been given that order...

Ahhh that lovely CAOD....may be one day we will get a CAOD II with the SH3 graphics (Except the stupid cyborg crew, which kills all inmersion )

[Bertgang]

The Mediterranean, as expected, looks like a very challenging area.

Plenty of warships of each type, usually travelling in fast and heavyly escorted battlegroups, very few merchant convoys or lone targets (best place to spot them, as I know, few miles East from Gibraltar).

I got the "swords" by sinking a Nelson battleship, left alone by escorts about two hours after my first spread damaged it.

Missed a fleet carrier, travelling with four cruisers, on the second patrol; apparently the ship was damaged by one of my fishes, but still too fast for a second strike.

Lot more warships spotted during the third patrol, but never had an opportunity to launch; bad moments with escorts; hopefully, the silly lone tankers credited me by 26.000 tons more.