Convoy attack…featuring a psychic British Frigate!
 

It's March of 1945 in the North Atlantic on a rather stormy night. I'm in my trusty Type XXI submarine on my 5th patrol in it. I had just cut a swathe through a huge Allied convoy, sinking a large cargo, an ore carrier, a pair of large merchants, and a whale factory ship. And the escorts struggled to find me amongst all the chaos. For awhile, at least.

I was extremely happy with the results. Those ships totaled roughly 50,000 tons. Unfortunately, the escorts were not happy at all about this, and they proceeded to try and hunt me down. Being the cocky idiot I was, I just thought to myself. "Oh, I have plenty of acoustic torpedoes! I can sink them all no problem!"

Well, one of the escorts, a frigate, passed right over me and destroyed all the systems in the watchtower except the radar warning receiver: the snorkel, the radar, both periscopes, and the radio antenna. Not to mention that attack also took out my port side electric motor.

So now, I was dealing with 4 escorts all searching for me on 74% realism (no manual targeting, external view still enabled, weapon officer assistance enabled), no ability to defend myself with both periscopes destroyed, and one electric motor destroyed.

So for a good hour of real time, because I had not saved and was so determined to keep my tonnage, I desperately tried to shake them off. At one point, I managed to put about half a mile or so of distance between myself and the escorts. Three of the four gave up and went back to the convoy, but the frigate that had picked me up initially and depth charged me, somehow, someway, from HALF A MILE AWAY managed to make a beeline straight for me (I guess he heard the engines running at flank somehow) when I had my stern pointed directly at him (I was going 13 knots with one engine out, surprisingly) and he just kept hounding me and hounding me until dawn in the game. Well, by now, one of his friends had joined the hunt. Thankfully, however, right about that time, he lost contact with me. I was so nervous he was going to establish contact for about the 4th time, but thankfully he didn't, and I sped away. I managed to limp all the way back to Bergen from the southwestern tip of England without further incident. The total patrol tonnage came to roughly 78,000.

Thoughts, anyone?

...you were very very lucky - greed nearly got the better of you and your hard working crew. next time, bite your lip - to slink away and save you and your crew.:salute:

welcome to subsim and a happy new year...lets keep it that way:woot:

...nice report by the way.

Even in a Type XXI, you're going to make a hell of a lot of racket running at ahead flank. In my experience with the game, half a mile away is certainly close enough to hear most subs running at anything above ahead slow.

It's best to go ahead flank when the escort is practically on top of you. You'll avoid the depth charges without drawing more attention to yourself. Not to mention all the battery power you'll save!

Honestly, I figured I was so far away, they'd never hear me. I was extremely far away and I thought I was safe.

My sonar guy can hear merchants out to 20,000 meters. Why do you think their sonar guys can't hear flank speed subs out to equal distances?

Well technically you would be at a bit of an advantage - your sonar guys usually operate their sensor well under the surface, at lower speed, and you're still a quieter target than a noisy merchant.

That said, yup, distance will not save you if you're making too much noise. Worse, at somewhere between 4-6kt (a bit more if you're very deep), your submarine hull starts cavitating - and then it's not engine noise but the bubbles you're making that they're going to hear. At that point, a submarine doing 20kt on the surface is actually going to be "quieter" (or rather harder to pick up by hydrophone) than one doing 8kt underwater. Basically, any submarine - even the most modern ones today - are a loud target as soon as they start cavitating, and there's not much that can be done to combat that except to stay quiet and deep.

I guess I was just so desperate to get away from them, I figured I'd try to hightail it outta there ASAP. I really didn't think he'd hear me because I was pretty far down and the Type XXI is immensely quiet.

Safe at halve of a (nautical)mile, about 1 km, away? Nah, I don't think so. 10 times that .... maybe. Going at flank speed?... forget stealth anyway. Go slow, deep and be patient. Even if they are circling above you, it doesn't mean they have you pinpointed. They might just be doing their search dance for a while, or forever if they are tenacious veterans. If you move far away from the general location and they keep stuck on you then you can assume that they keep getting fixes on you.