Ducimus -- Again!!!

[I'm goin' down]

Up in Alaska in '42 playing TMO 2.0. Easy prey! A lone freighter doing 4 kts. Using Easy AoB I unleash two torpedoes at 3,600 yds. Both miss the nose of the target. No problem!! I am patient. At 1,500 yds., a second salvo of four torpedoes is unleashed. 4 Direct Hits. All DUDS!!! I turn off silent running so my forward torpedoes, which are now empty, will be loaded by a pissed off crew. Meanwhile, I swing the Barbarinna around for aft shots. Fire all four. Four hits! ALL DUDS!! Jesus (pardon my French)!! My second in command interrupts my screaming epithets to advise that the crew has reloaded one forward torpedo. At 800 yds., I fire it. CONTACT Amidships, immediately followed by a big explosion! Whoppee; Hee Haw!... braying like a jackass. (11 shots, 2 misses, 8 dud torpedoes, and one hit/explosion! That is a percentage so low I don't want to calculate it.)

With the target vulnerable and listing to starboard, the Barbarinna surfaces and attacks with her deck gun. Several hits, but what's this? The Nagara Maru is returning fire, and with extreme accuracy. Almost all crew are down on the deck and inside the boat, and the entire gun crew is dead at their battle stations. Replacements, all injured, scramble topside and man the deck gun. The bulkhead has been breached and we are taking on water in four compartments. The repair crew are all injured. Finally, I pull out of the fight, hoping the Nagara Maru, listing heavily and low in the water, will go down. But it is too late for me...my remaining crew who are all injured... and our boat. We go under before our target does. Game Over!

Ducimus cautioned that his freighters in 2.0 won't roll over without a fight. He wasn't kidding. (And this was my first mission since being released from my cell which I shared with Rockin Robbins, after I had accidentally sunk a US carrier at Midway!) Nice, huh?

2.0 will kick your ass one way or the other.