What a patrol!

[maillemaker]

100% realism under GWX 3.0 here, folks. Only thing I have turned on is map contacts.

My patrol grid was AN24, off the coat of Bergen. I'm in a brand new Type IX, so this is a very, very short distance for my boat.

So I cut west out of Wilhelmshaven and hit the mouth of the English Channel, and then cut up the east coast of England.

I hit a convoy in AN01. 12 ships, 4 escorts. I picked off all the escorts with magnetics. Two I nailed as they came straight in. Two others I had to duel with at periscope depth, but I nailed them. I'm getting damn good at dialing in the TDC. Took a little DC damage on the AA guns but nothing major.

Then I moved in on the defenseless convoy. They were moving NNE along the coast in two columns of 6 ships. Nothing big unfortunately, mostly Granvilles. I put a torpedo into each ship on the starboard column as they went by. Then I surfaced at the end of the convoy, and sailed right up the middle of the two columns in broad daylight with a mirror-calm sea. The boys on those unarmed merchant ships must have been crapping their pants (early 1940 here, no guns on the merchies). So then I started laying into them with my 105mm deck gun, and cut them to shreds.

In the end, I wiped out the entire convoy. 12 merchant ships, and 4 destroyers.

My crew was absolutely exhausted. So I set full speed ahead to hit the cost of Norway and tag my patrol grid off Bergen. I got to it, made my 24 hours, got my crew all rested up and pulled in all the external eels.

I still had 8 torpedoes, so I decided to try it again! I headed west so as to cruise south down the east cost of Britain.

In nearly the same place as the last convoy, I hit another! My thought was not to try and pick off destroyers this time, since I was low on torpedoes, but rather a sneak attack. But unfortunately, in the perfect weather I was spotted, and a destroyer headed my way.

I nailed one with a magnetic. But then there were two coming at me at the same time! I missed with a few magnetics while dueling with them, but managed to nail crossing my bow, and then nailed the other in the same fashion! Like I said, I'm getting really good and dialing in the TDC manually with enough lead to get them.

Then the fourth escort was coming down on me. I tried for a down-the-throat magnetic shot, but missed. In his run over my head, he hit pay dirt, and nearly blew the conning tower off the boat. I had lost both periscopes, the radio antenna, and the AA guns! And I could not see anymore to fight!

Down to my last 2 torpedoes, I decided to try to attack by hydrophone only. I watched the mark on the TDC map, dialed in some lead, and fired! A miss. Only one torpedo left. I watched the hydrophone mark on the map, confirmed it on the actual hydrophone, dialed in a little lead in the TDC, and fired again.

A HIT!!!!. I nailed the bastard while BLIND!

So that was four escorts for the SECOND convoy. I surfaced, and debated whether to try and hit the convoy again. This one had some big merchies in it, but I was out of torpedoes and only had 16 shells left for the deck gun.

I decided what the hell, make a strafing run.

So I'm charging at the helpless convoy, watching them through my binoculars, when, uh-oh, another destroyer comes into view from behind a merchant! I immediately when to flak speed and pointed my ass at him to try and run. I was only making 15 knots (should have turned off the battery charging; forgot), and could not get away. I ran until he got to within about 2000 meters, trying to make it to some deeper water. Finally I crash dived. Only 64 meters of water under the keel.

But I survived! The final escort made perhaps 5 runs on me before I hit the deeper water and pushed down another 15 meters, and then I lost him! Boy was I lucky. Greed had almost done me in!

I crawled along until the destroyer and the convoy left, and then surfaced and flank-speeded for home.

In the end, it was 9 warships sunk (I hit a patrol boat somewhere along the way), and 22 merchants ships. 51947 tons of merchants, 13588 tons of warships.

Got the gold-leaf-diamond-sword thingy for that one.

A pretty unrealistic patrol, but pretty bad-ass game playing, anyways!

Steve