vozzek6969
02-26-2006, 01:07 PM
Playing this game for three weeks and encountering nothing bigger than a T3 tanker, I was getting very discouraged. Especially after drooling over countless screenshots of capital ships on fire. For 28 patrols, I was unlucky. But patrol 29? Well that was a much, much different story...
Left Bordeaux on the eve of 9 May, 1943 heading south for the patrol zone. I found a nice little convoy and had picked off the lead destroyer and sunk a chubby little tanker when my radio man received message of an inbound task force off to the northwest of us. A task force moving fast. (Now I was the one with the chubby).
I bolted from the convoy and after some creative manuevering into proper position I poked the tip of my periscope above the lapping waves. And silhouetted against a beautiful moonlit sky, I see this:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/battleship1.jpg
My first battleship! British Revenge class. Got within 1800m of her and launched a 4-shot spread before she could chug past me. Two torpedoes went wide left, but the other two smashed the hull right beneath her main tower:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/battleship2.jpg
She blew up fast and sank bow-first, must've hit her in a good spot as I heard it can take 3-4 torps to take down a ship that big. Dove deep, ran silent, skulked away as my crew high-fived each other in all parts of the sub, but they had to stop short of actually touching hands (remember the silent running thing and all...) so it was more of an air-clap.
Woke the next morning and the air was crisper. My breakfast tasted better. The world seemed brighter now that my first battleship rested on the bottom of the Atlantic even though it was raining horrendously outside. And that's when I took a good look at my watchman and decided that maybe he'd been moonlighting:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/gortons.jpg
No WONDER we'd never spotted capital ships before: the guy's been ***-dragging tired from doing all those fishsticks ads. When I checked my radioman I noticed another, if not similar, distraction:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/radio.jpg
Yup. That's right. . . my radioman's been skimming through the first-ever issue of PLAYBOY. And yes, I know Playboy wasn't published until about a decade later, but hey, he must've got an advanced copy. Explains why I'm not notified about planes until the bombs hit the deck.
Crusing around a day or so I encounter better weather and a few C2's and a C3, all of which fell victim to the stern torpedo tubes:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/c3.jpg
We also happened upon a pair of coastal merchants and broke their backs with our deck gun. Here's a shot of my very photogenic gun-crew posing with one of the two victims:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/deckguncrew.jpg
It was right around this time that I realized I had a good amount of torpedoes left... and that maybe, just maybe, I could take a run at joining the 100k CLUB.
Headed up toward Loch Ewe and had to dive several times to avoid air patrols. One bad thing about this mission: I'd lost all three flak guns battling that first destroyer (lucky hit).
Sneaking into Loch Ewe took a long LONG time, but I did it silently and painstakingly. I thought maybe there would be enough merchant shipping to push me closer to that illustrious 100k mark. When I finally arrived I soon realized I was wrong about the merchant ships. But I wasn't wrong when I had used the word 'illustrious'...
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/illustrious1.jpg
An Illustrious fleet carrier! I had no clue how many tons it would give me, but I knew I had to try. Sneaking even closer, I noticed another ship moored a few hundred yards out in the water, just northeast of the docks:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/escort1.jpg
A British Bogue Escort Carrier, with what looked to be American Hellcats(?) on it's deck. TWO carriers, both stationary, and me with 10 torpedoes...
Took the Escort down first. Three hits out of four and it rolled over in the water:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/escort2.jpg
So there I am, taking cool screenshots with the free camera and sweating out three destroyers and an elco torpedo boat as I stood down from silent running so my tubes could reload. And then I fired a 'test' torpedo at the Illustrious, just to see if the angle would deflect the shot or allow it to detonate. Here's the result:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/illustrious2.jpg
KA-BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This must've been a REAL lucky shot because I think the carrier was leaving the dock as the torpedo arrived. It had angled outward and my shot smashed it right beneath the tower, exploding everything at once. Instant kill.
Skulking out of Loch Ewe was just as hard, my boat scraping the mud in a mere 15m of water and my periscope retracted. Took nearly an hour or real time, but it was worth it. Looked at my logbook and did the math... 102K!!!!! I made it into the club!!!
Time to head home??? Nah. I still had four aft torpedoes left. So I decided once again to head toward the patrol zone.
Halfway there, I encountered this:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/convoy.jpg
DAMN. Where is this convoy when I have a full complement of torpedoes? Well, to make the best of it I parked deep, waited for the convoy to roll over me, then rose quickly and aimed the ***-end of my sub at a few ships. 4 shots later I'd downed another T3 and a C2. Not too shabby.
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/convoy2.jpg
In the end, I headed home after what I'd consider to be the PERFECT patrol... except for maybe the lack of air-kills. Still, I wasn't complaining.
So friends, buds, people who have helped me and given me advice these last three weeks... here is a screenshot of the log for this patrol:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/logbook.jpg
So do I get to add the 100k image to my sig? http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
Left Bordeaux on the eve of 9 May, 1943 heading south for the patrol zone. I found a nice little convoy and had picked off the lead destroyer and sunk a chubby little tanker when my radio man received message of an inbound task force off to the northwest of us. A task force moving fast. (Now I was the one with the chubby).
I bolted from the convoy and after some creative manuevering into proper position I poked the tip of my periscope above the lapping waves. And silhouetted against a beautiful moonlit sky, I see this:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/battleship1.jpg
My first battleship! British Revenge class. Got within 1800m of her and launched a 4-shot spread before she could chug past me. Two torpedoes went wide left, but the other two smashed the hull right beneath her main tower:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/battleship2.jpg
She blew up fast and sank bow-first, must've hit her in a good spot as I heard it can take 3-4 torps to take down a ship that big. Dove deep, ran silent, skulked away as my crew high-fived each other in all parts of the sub, but they had to stop short of actually touching hands (remember the silent running thing and all...) so it was more of an air-clap.
Woke the next morning and the air was crisper. My breakfast tasted better. The world seemed brighter now that my first battleship rested on the bottom of the Atlantic even though it was raining horrendously outside. And that's when I took a good look at my watchman and decided that maybe he'd been moonlighting:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/gortons.jpg
No WONDER we'd never spotted capital ships before: the guy's been ***-dragging tired from doing all those fishsticks ads. When I checked my radioman I noticed another, if not similar, distraction:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/radio.jpg
Yup. That's right. . . my radioman's been skimming through the first-ever issue of PLAYBOY. And yes, I know Playboy wasn't published until about a decade later, but hey, he must've got an advanced copy. Explains why I'm not notified about planes until the bombs hit the deck.
Crusing around a day or so I encounter better weather and a few C2's and a C3, all of which fell victim to the stern torpedo tubes:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/c3.jpg
We also happened upon a pair of coastal merchants and broke their backs with our deck gun. Here's a shot of my very photogenic gun-crew posing with one of the two victims:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/deckguncrew.jpg
It was right around this time that I realized I had a good amount of torpedoes left... and that maybe, just maybe, I could take a run at joining the 100k CLUB.
Headed up toward Loch Ewe and had to dive several times to avoid air patrols. One bad thing about this mission: I'd lost all three flak guns battling that first destroyer (lucky hit).
Sneaking into Loch Ewe took a long LONG time, but I did it silently and painstakingly. I thought maybe there would be enough merchant shipping to push me closer to that illustrious 100k mark. When I finally arrived I soon realized I was wrong about the merchant ships. But I wasn't wrong when I had used the word 'illustrious'...
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/illustrious1.jpg
An Illustrious fleet carrier! I had no clue how many tons it would give me, but I knew I had to try. Sneaking even closer, I noticed another ship moored a few hundred yards out in the water, just northeast of the docks:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/escort1.jpg
A British Bogue Escort Carrier, with what looked to be American Hellcats(?) on it's deck. TWO carriers, both stationary, and me with 10 torpedoes...
Took the Escort down first. Three hits out of four and it rolled over in the water:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/escort2.jpg
So there I am, taking cool screenshots with the free camera and sweating out three destroyers and an elco torpedo boat as I stood down from silent running so my tubes could reload. And then I fired a 'test' torpedo at the Illustrious, just to see if the angle would deflect the shot or allow it to detonate. Here's the result:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/illustrious2.jpg
KA-BOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This must've been a REAL lucky shot because I think the carrier was leaving the dock as the torpedo arrived. It had angled outward and my shot smashed it right beneath the tower, exploding everything at once. Instant kill.
Skulking out of Loch Ewe was just as hard, my boat scraping the mud in a mere 15m of water and my periscope retracted. Took nearly an hour or real time, but it was worth it. Looked at my logbook and did the math... 102K!!!!! I made it into the club!!!
Time to head home??? Nah. I still had four aft torpedoes left. So I decided once again to head toward the patrol zone.
Halfway there, I encountered this:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/convoy.jpg
DAMN. Where is this convoy when I have a full complement of torpedoes? Well, to make the best of it I parked deep, waited for the convoy to roll over me, then rose quickly and aimed the ***-end of my sub at a few ships. 4 shots later I'd downed another T3 and a C2. Not too shabby.
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/convoy2.jpg
In the end, I headed home after what I'd consider to be the PERFECT patrol... except for maybe the lack of air-kills. Still, I wasn't complaining.
So friends, buds, people who have helped me and given me advice these last three weeks... here is a screenshot of the log for this patrol:
http://www.shocknawehockey.com/pm/logbook.jpg
So do I get to add the 100k image to my sig? http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif