Salvaged my career

The Butcher · 01-01-08, 11:25 PM

I thought for sure I was going to be demoted when I got back to port midway through this patrol.
I got another chance after my last very miserable patrol 3 Merchants for 5945 grt and 1 Warship (more like a warskiff) 480 grt.
I was supposed to patrol the SW coast of England but it is late May 1940 and so when I got to the Shetlands it was perpetual daylight so I went up and over to avoid the air patrols. Days had gone by with no contacts finally a Small Merchant, first eel was a dud, just able to squeeze off one more at a bad angle but she went down. Woohoo 1943 tons. Slim pickings all the way down. Out of position for a convoy intercept at the banks. Couple more small targets coming down the West side, more duds. Cruised my patrol zone, nothing and then it happened, right in my path a huge convoy. Five lanes with three and four ships each, lots of really big sounding targets. I'm 90 meters down waiting for the DD to pass everything is perfect (of course I forgot to save while I was on the surface). Destroyer passed my position I blow balast to rise to periscope depth. I get a little impatient so I hit it again DON'T DO THAT(

x1000) up I popped and almost imediately started taking fire. To make things worse I had hit the "A" key repeatedly trying in vain to stop so it didn't register my "ahead full" command. I'm getting pelted and all I can do is just let all my tubes go. Surely sitting in the middle of 18 big ships I could hit a couple. I did manage a bow hit on a Modern Tanker 12,092, it took and hour before it finally gave it up. The good thing was I did manage to evade the one Destroyer that came after me. All those ships and there were only two escorts. One of them never even swung by for a peek. I guess too many were taken up to Norway. Thank goodness. After that debacle I was sure I was canned. Things definately went much better after that. After I made my way to Vigo to resupply I had 50,150 tons, I think they'll let me keep my command.

One scary thing happened when I went dock at the supply ship, when I hit the escape key nothing happened, eeekkkk.

Fortunately I have a programmable keyboard so I popped out programmed one of the extras as an escape key (the esc keyed works fine) went back in hit it and was able to dock. Would have really sucked to have lost 50k tons.

01-01-08, 11:25 PM	#1
The Butcher Loader Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: U.S.A. Posts: 85 Downloads: 40 Uploads: 0	Salvaged my career I thought for sure I was going to be demoted when I got back to port midway through this patrol. I got another chance after my last very miserable patrol 3 Merchants for 5945 grt and 1 Warship (more like a warskiff) 480 grt. I was supposed to patrol the SW coast of England but it is late May 1940 and so when I got to the Shetlands it was perpetual daylight so I went up and over to avoid the air patrols. Days had gone by with no contacts finally a Small Merchant, first eel was a dud, just able to squeeze off one more at a bad angle but she went down. Woohoo 1943 tons. Slim pickings all the way down. Out of position for a convoy intercept at the banks. Couple more small targets coming down the West side, more duds. Cruised my patrol zone, nothing and then it happened, right in my path a huge convoy. Five lanes with three and four ships each, lots of really big sounding targets. I'm 90 meters down waiting for the DD to pass everything is perfect (of course I forgot to save while I was on the surface). Destroyer passed my position I blow balast to rise to periscope depth. I get a little impatient so I hit it again DON'T DO THAT( x1000) up I popped and almost imediately started taking fire. To make things worse I had hit the "A" key repeatedly trying in vain to stop so it didn't register my "ahead full" command. I'm getting pelted and all I can do is just let all my tubes go. Surely sitting in the middle of 18 big ships I could hit a couple. I did manage a bow hit on a Modern Tanker 12,092, it took and hour before it finally gave it up. The good thing was I did manage to evade the one Destroyer that came after me. All those ships and there were only two escorts. One of them never even swung by for a peek. I guess too many were taken up to Norway. Thank goodness. After that debacle I was sure I was canned. Things definately went much better after that. After I made my way to Vigo to resupply I had 50,150 tons, I think they'll let me keep my command. One scary thing happened when I went dock at the supply ship, when I hit the escape key nothing happened, eeekkkk. Fortunately I have a programmable keyboard so I popped out programmed one of the extras as an escape key (the esc keyed works fine) went back in hit it and was able to dock. Would have really sucked to have lost 50k tons.