Battleship Attack Advice

[Reinhard Dietz]

So I'm limping home to Surabaya in late December 1941 after taking a pair of small-caliber hits to my boat courtesy of a watch crew that didn't quite understand the meaning implicit in a crash dive. Hull integrity's down by a third and I'm trying to avoid contact.

Meanwhile, I stumble into a surface action group consisting of two pagoda-masted vessels, several smaller vessels and what looks like a minimum of 4-5 destroyers heading NNW away from Borneo in the middle of the South China Sea. I haven't seen the far side of the group, so I'm assuming that there's more over there for a total of 6-8.

Given the damage to my boat, I'm inclined to run away. However, I'm an old U-boat hand, so the motto Angriff ran Versenken is nagging at me. I am therefore going in. My usual approach would be to boldly wade in and eliminate the destroyers one by one and then engage the capital ships while submerged. However, I don't have enough in the torpedo budget to do this, so I'm going to have to get clever.

I presume I can sneak into the group undetected by racing ahead on the surface---they're doing about 10-11 knots---and submerging upon a perpendicular course at a couple of knots and running silent. I'm intending to aim for the magazines with magnetic pistols---which have been strangely reliable thus far---and hope for the best on the battleships. Since they're Japanese, I presume I've got three primary magazines to shoot at. Is this true as far as the game is concerned?

Ideally, I can expend 4-6 torpedoes sinking the battleships and have 7-9 torpedoes left to pick off cruisers or pesky destroyers. I'm also assuming that I can kiss my ~250' safe depth goodbye courtesy of prior hull damage.

Wish me luck---or even better, advice on how to pull this off. I'd be a lot less concerned without the prior damage---totally worth it; there's a large European liner on the bottom due to that engagement---or if I had a VII or IX, but I don't, so anything's appreciated. Especially appreciated: What's the equivalent of the old 100RPM or less maneuver in a VII?

(To cheat the objectives system, I'm going to get in firing position, save and then call the SAG in; if it comes back with a feasible objective, I'll go forward; if not, it's reload time.)