Finished First Patrol

[CanuckBoat]

Hello, I completed my first patrol yesterday (September 1939)
Went from Wilhelmshaven, rounded the north part of the British Isles and went to BF31. On the way out, I practiced my 100% realism tagetting an bagged 2 tramp steamers and a small freighter. On the way back, I decide to raid Scapa Flow. Yes... early war and I wanted to see who was in port (in vanilla SH3 back in 2005, I did the same thing and Scapa Flow was deserted. I wanted to see if GWX has changed that). So, I snuck in submerged late afternoon. I managed to scrape my hull a few times. The first time I got spotted it was already dark so the fire was not very accurate. Minor damage so I press on after moving a bit to get out of the flood lights. There were at least 3 destroyers moving out of Scapa at that time.

I managed to make it all the way to the dock. In residence:
a) a docked destroyer (not very exciting )
b) a troop ship (better)
c) small tanker (better)
d) a mordern large tanker (12,000 tons... wahoo).
e) a patrol boat (who was behind the docks and does not have line of fire on me)

Looking through the recognition manual for which ships can shoot back, I decided to go for the docked destroyer first. Even I cannot miss a stationary ship and she goes down immediately. I then manuevered to the troop ship and reloaded torpedos. Not wanting to take a chance with it firing back with its many guns, I gave it a 4 shot salvo with a spread angle of only 1. 3 of them hit. the last one sounded like it exploded before contact with the troop ship. Nets? shallow spot in the harbour? Other random occurencences?

Anyways, reloaded again and moved to the tankers. Stern shot one of them and decked gun the other. At this time, all hell was starting to break lose as the patrol boat starts firing on me but seems to be hitting a building. So I turned around and got the hell out of there on the surface. managed to squeeze through the small channel to the east and avoid 1 destroyer. Back in the open SEA!!!

So heading back to Wilhelmshaven, bumped into 1 trawler and 1 small freighter and I introduced the deck gun to them. The crew is exausted but made it back to Wilhelmshaven with very little fuel.

Crew earns promotions and medals, I get a promotion but no medal. The final tally is 33,000 tons and 1800 renown.

Any suggestions on who to give medals and specializations?

Any idea why no medal for me? (not even IC second class?)

Good tonnage for a VIIB?

I promise to post pictures later. I don't use external cam so it is "the captain's view" from the bridge.