Urgent Flash! Convoy must be sunk..what would you do?

[Armistead]

Date: September 29, 1943

Flash:
Convoy consisting of lage Euro Liner and large tanker, leaving Shantou harbor, proceeding NNE @ 17kts hugging the China Coast. Expected to port at Fuzhou late 10/2/44. Euro liner suspected to be carrying over 3000 elite Japanese marines and filled with ammo, tanker rinding low, suspect full cargo of fuel oil. Expect heavy escort protection including radar DE Matsu with radar. Aircover expected heavy around this group. Minefields suspected!


I order flank. My guess is the convoy will pass somewhere near Xiamen. We arrive on stations with the view of Xiamen lighthouse off the coast. There is a small island, I'm guessing the convoy will pass between it and the China coast. We're forced to dive 5 times due to plane coverage.

Conditions:
Light fog
Partail Clouds
250-350 ft deep water at our location, water more shallow along convoys suspect route.
Wind- 6-8meters

Finally, radar contact, we have two large contacts and multiple small contacts. This could be our group.

The situation...


At about 17:00 hours we ID large Euro liner.

Sonar reports 5-6 Escorts, We finally visually ID 2 DD's, 1 DE Matsu and 1 Type AB, cannot ID other escorts.
Wow...they're guarding this group with everything but the kitchen sink...

Group is turning ENE heading in our general direction.



What would you do? Just so you know this is one of the groups I added to RSRD which really contains no convoys hugging the China Coast, it contains 6 escorts, 4 with veteran crew ratings, 2 with elite ratings, both liner and tanker set to elite rating.

[I'm goin' down]

I would hop on the tele, and call the famous warrior/submariner armistead. He always knows what to do when the heat is on.

[EricW]

You've got some chop on the water.....but not enough to evade at higher submerged speeds, they will hear you.

You've got some depth....but probably not enough to evade deep and silent.

Recommend maintaining contact for a night surface attack. If you can avoid air patrols, you can wipe out the entire convoy after dark.

Base out

[Rooster]

I’m not the go to guy in knowing what to do, but what I might do is tuck in behind them follow them until they port or I have a chance to snap shoot one or two of them.

[Hinrich Schwab]

Had these missions before both in the American and German missions. The destroyers are at least veterans. They are bad boys. Expect detection.

Speaking from experience, the best option is a night submerged attack. Position yourself windward enough of the convoy to ensure that you are inside the destroyer formation when they pass by. You want to position yourself to unload all of your front tubes at around 500-700 yards as close to zero gyroangle as possible. When in initial position, go silent and wait. If you are detected, go ahead and take the shots as soon as practicable. Odds are in favor of a kill if you take your shots at no more than 1500 yards despite detection. Crash dive under the wreck and drop a decoy. Go deep, get skinny, get quiet and let the escorts bumble about while you slip away. The transport should be the only kill in this engagement. The rest of the convoy and the escorts are not worth the risk.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Looks like the time on the clock says 1629 hours. Not sure cause of my eyesight. If that is correct, darkness should be approaching soon. I'd shadow the convoy until then and conduct a night attack.

[Rockin Robbins]

Agree 100% with Hinrich. Night submerged attack. Get in close. Unload all you have on the main target. Wide spread, twice the length of the target to ensure hits. Begin evasion before the fish even get to the target. You'll get no second chance anyway. Then evade.

[Bubblehead1980]

Night surface would be your best option.Are you running the radar mod by tater that makes japanese radar more historical? You can get in pretty close(as in RL)

[Armistead]

My guess is dark is around 18:00 hours, by then they will have past the deepest part you can attack, after that water is aboout 50-100 ft deep, so if you do a night surface and got caught or seen that's all you would have to dive in. Since I made this group since it will turn back N to NNE going through shallows and port about 40 NM's up.

I decided to attack hoping 300ft plus depth and medium seas would protect me. It's course has it comin through the more shallows, but I can remain in the deeper part and shoot at around 4000 yards.

I was decks awash, for reality decks awash my crew stays on deck, but somehow got spotted at 5nms, course I'm using TMO2.2 with the strong visuals, but I assume it was radar, 3 escort came fast, I dived and flanked east away then south to another postion away from where radar got me, got about 3000 yards away and went silent, they hunted near where I dived, but I was in about 230 ft deep water now and closer to the convoys track. I stay below the thermal layer until time to attack.

I make it to scope depth, 3 escorts behind me 2-3000 yards, TDC was still old setup, I start hearing soft pings.



Cam is above my sub looking aft at 3 behind me.



I could see escorts stern heading my way, it was hard to get speed, no time for 3 minute markings, the group was still 4000 yards or so away, hard stads, but best I could and guessed speed and shoot a wide spread of 5 at the liner, one at the tanker, you can barely see my last torp leaving, 5 are on the way, but an escort in hauling up my stern, I head flank deep as I can and hard port.



Liner is zigging, spread of 5 looks like it will miss, may have slown down.



But I get lucky, the last torp angled right in the spread hits, loaded with ammo he explodes and later sinks.



I evaded the first attack and was working my way back to deeper water, well 350 ft anyway, but 4 escorts boxed me in. Escorts with elite ratings are brutal hunters, the Matsu and Type AB throwing over 20 charges per run. What's amazing is how well they hunt, one will make a stern run, the other will come right in after from a flank, one will come in from the front.



The escorts attack.








The dreaded Matsu, 4 y guns and double roll offs.



I bet I counted over 140 charges, I evaded the best I could using flank and turns when they made runs, problem was they come in from every angle one after the other. I take minor damage, but finally one scores a good hit. Damage is now 65%, one compartment flooded, but I live for a bit. Seems I'm holding depth at about 200ft, I'm scared to go much deeper with that damage. I can only hold sub depth with some speed, but as battery damage is severe I start going down a lil, I think I only went 10ft deeper when my sub imploded, just as I was about to blow tanks to come up some and go into submerged yo yo tactics to control my out of control dive.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Bubblehead1980

Night surface would be your best option.Are you running the radar mod by tater that makes japanese radar more historical? You can get in pretty close(as in RL)

I actually have a save point, playing cams and saves this patrol, so will try a night suface when I play again, group should be easy to find, but I may have designed it with loops. Was using the radar fix, not sure how they got me at 5nms, it maybe that my decks awash I stay up enough to keep engines on and crew on deck, yea, I know I could go a lil deeper and take advantage of the bug where I can still use binocs, but I feel if the crew is off decks, then I should be.

Think I will try a long range night surface attacks, maybe 7000 yards, but it will be in no more than 100 ft of water. Course I could also dive knowing it's course, not get found on radar and shoot from the deeper water about 6000 yards. My main interest is watching how different elite rated escorts attack.

I included a lot of China coast traffic like this for the challange, the hard part is each group contains elite rated escorts. I also reworked several settings, thermals are a tad more in my favor as is silent running, but just a tad, but my boat is more fragile to damage, plus I think I have the escorts hunt time changed to 1.5 hours instead of 30 minutes.

[Bubblehead1980]

Ahh, this is making me itch for the PTO and TMO but enjoying my career with U boats in OM.1942 off American coast and next mission is to attack the tankers off Aruba(which was a real mission in Feb 1942)

[Platapus]

Battle Surface and take them with the deck gun. It's the last thing they will expect.

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Battle Surface and take them with the deck gun. It's the last thing they will expect.

The last time I tried that tactic...


We blew ballast and surfaced in a New York minute. The escorts caught our scent almost right off the bat and we were in for it. I put a few of my guys on the 4-inch and a few more on the forties, and told them sumbitches to thunder away till dawn. The only problem is that we had cracked open my private reserve the previous afternoon, and somewhere along the line we had burned all our ammo trying to catch fish. We didn't even have cartridges for our small arms! So the only option we had left was to throw our stockpile of jelly donuts at the escorts as they made sweeping passes at our boat.

The hull was full of holes from one end to the other, the deck was awash in blood, and we were as sure as dead. I kid you not. But then the dangdest thing happened... all those jelly donuts we had chucked into the ocean? It turns out that seabirds are suckers for those ungodly things. All of a sudden this HUGE swarm of gulls and geese and sparrows and penguins... you name it... every bird you can think of dove in on us and surrounded the boat and prevented the enemy from getting a clear shot at us! We all ducked down below decks and started cramming everything we could find into the holes, even our underwear! When I went back up for a peek a few minutes later the birds were all gone. They had eaten every donut we had thrown out, and what's more is that they had picked the decks of the destroyers clean. Not a Nip in sight on those ships!


God's honest truth.

[DrBeast]

So, um, what exactly was in your private reserve, krashkart?

[krashkart]

O'Doul's...