SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Stories and Patrol Logs + Screenshots and Videos (merged)

Lt. Commander Rhodes recieves his first mission as CO of the USS Grampus on December 9, 1941. His assigned task...photo recon of the harbor in Osaka, Japan!

"<bleep!> you, too, Admiral!"

Took my new Gar-class across the Pacific, encountering nothing until I neared the Japanese coast. Was getting ALL kinds of reports, but most were, predictably, far away. Then radio traffic indicates there's a Japanese convoy sailing southwest near my position. I begin my usual search routine, and don't find the convoy itself, but I do find three ships travelling unescorted. Could be stragglers, could be that the convoy split up and was heading to their individual ports of call. Either way, nighttime surface attack begins, and with an expenditure of four torpedos and 20 deck gun rounds, I sink all three of 'em. So far so good.

I managed to time it just right and started sailing into shallow, narrower waters just after nightfall, so I managed to get a good chunk of the way to Osaka on the surface...at least until a fishing boat comes out of the dark. I sink it since it's already seen me, but it's too late...lookouts spot a subchaser on the horizon, so I submerge, head down to about 60 meters (I'm not patched, alas, so it's still meters). He starts pinging, and despite all the lazy escorts I've encountered on this game, this son of a bitch turns out to be persistent. He finds me after I've evaded him at least twice. He DCs the general area until I decided to chance a few more meters...I'm using the periscope as a depth reference since I don't wanna get his attention by pinging. There's a thermal layer at 65 meters, and I finally lose him.

Creep through the narrow straights just south of Osaka, and the whole time my hydrophones are picking stuff up. Small craft, mostly. Fishing boats. Tugboats. There are some bigger merchants mixed in though, and I have to resist attacking...not what I'm here for, and I don't want a destroyer on my ass in water that's gotten so shallow my keel is scraping at periscope depth Batteries are starting to get low, so I reduce speed to 1 knot and crawl along for the rest of the daylight hours.

Nightfall comes and I'm well out of the straights. Still picking up lots of traffic. I do a periscope check, see a gunboat, wait till he cruises out of sight, then surface. I come within sight of a merchie, couple of trawlers and such, but they don't see me, and since I'm still going along at 1 knot, my batteries recharge fast. I decide to run on the surface for the time being, as I want my batteries full if I have to dive.

Turns out, I cruise all the way to Osaka on the surface. It's a moonless night. A variety of ships are sitting quietly in the harbor, including two large tankers.

I take my pictures, but then I think to myself, 'self, there's two 10,000 ton tankers sitting there completely stationary'. Why would I pass that up? So the Grampus' begins her daring raid of Osaka harbor. I put four torpedos into one of the tankers, another four into a large freighter. I manuever down to the Southern area of the harbor and put another quartet of fish into the other large tanker, but it doesn't catch fire or even appear to be that damaged. Teach me to fire into a merchie's bow, I s'pose.

I use my sole loaded fish on a smaller ship out in the bay and wait for my stern tubes to reload. When they do, I put one into the tanker, then another. It explodes. I fire a spread into a medium sized freighter, sinking it, and then notice there's one ship making a break for it. I pursue, and sink her with a single torpedo. As I leave Osaka, five ships are burning and sinking, and one, the large freighter, is damaged. Have no torpedos left, and while I did entertain notions of inflicting carnage with the deck gun, there were three gunboats two subchasers, and several coastal batteries in the area, so I decided firing off the gun would be a bad idea.

I retire, moving on the surface back the way I came until my lookouts yell 'warship sighted!'. I dive, since I'm in deeper waters at the moment, but I jump to the bridge to see what I'm facing. I'm thinking there's a subchaser bearing down on me, or, if I've really pissed off the All Mighty, a destroyer. But instead I see, huge and utterly unescorted, a Shokaku-class carrier. I blink a couple of times, since I've never seen an unescorted capital ship before, curse that I have no more torpedos, and my sub dives. Oh well. Heard the Drum got her a few days later.

Sneaking out takes a lot of time compression. Again, lots of traffic, but more warships this time. I don't see any, as visibility isn't so hot and I'm trying to keep the periscope down. I get out of the shallow water and start back for Pearl, though I do sink another fishing boat on the way out.

I have no torpedos left, but on the way back, I do get a report of a single ship near me, and plot an interception course. It's daytime, though, and Japanese level bombers find me. At first I try and fend them off with my single AA gun, but a lucky bomb damages it, and more planes are congregating, so I dive. The lone merchie eludes me. I'll survive.

It's a long uneventful run back to Pearl. Final Tally: 10 ships sunk for 36,000 tons.

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Game Details: Silent Hunter IV, unpatched, Realism 77 or so (all diff. settings save for manual targeting).