kamikaze destroyers?

[minsc_tdp]

I haven't played much, but last night I went after a convoy. This was my first time playing with manual targeting, man it is hard! So I fire off one shot to a merchant, it misses wildly but luckily hits another merchant. My next shot is good and hits the intended merchant. A third misses only slightly and around this point I have two destroyers bearing down on me.

They DC me and I start sinking. I must say the damage model is great - it's awesome to see a DC slam your propeller and then hear "propeller damaged!" right on cue. I start sinking uncontrollably since I'm not moving, so I figure my dive planes might get me out of this mess. Amazingly, only while traveling at 2/3 or better do I gain depth - any slower and I'm sinking. I try to hobble out of there, I take another DC right to the propeller - it comes apart and I hear "propeller destroyed!" At this point I have to blow ballast.

I surface, knowing I'm a dead man, so I start shooting destroyers with my deck gun. I managed to destroy two destroyers. With my deck gun? No - with good solid american boat engineering. The two destroyers crash into my boat on their pass and are subsequently destroyed. If it hadn't been for a third destroyer doing enough damage from afar with its guns, I might have actually lived. It was funny but I thought it was a little odd that A.) they would hit me like that and B.) be destroyed so easily as a result.