OK mikesn9, all six objectives, and therefore, mission completed:
The Marshalls were hopping while I was there, encountering a small convoy/task force about 1700 several days out of Pearl, apparently delivering goods for one of the bases. We found them about a hundred miles east of Eniwetok, headed southeast. Could NOT close for an attack... between the DE and the planes that showed about 2 hours later, we never did manage an end-around, and then lost them completely in a storm after about 0100 hours that next morning. Gave up and continued to Eniwetok, receiving the "Rumor has it that you have a camera onboard..." message, and then closed on Engebi for that. Objective completed just after 0500 hours the day of receiving that (one day after losing the convoy). There were sonar reports from the north lagoon in the atoll, so we backed straight to align with one, and did a sonar ping for range. Set the torpedo for 10 foot, magnetic, slow speed, and let fly... "BOOM!!!" I forgot that I neglected to turn off the Duds in the gameplay options... Took damage to the forward torpedo room, and lost all of the tubes... So that settled that...
- Several hours later, while at the limit of the patrol area to the north, the tubes were "repaired", no more leaking, no more wounded, but unable to use the Forward tubes. nutz... Finished the patrol, avoiding contacts with the patrolling DD / DE, ~and~ two airplanes, which were both H6K. So 2nd Objective completed, and on to Guam. Enroute, we received a message that Wake had fallen...
So we got the "Foto if possible" message while coming into the area, and a little while later, we saw a small Task Force coming our way as we went between Rota and Tinian. We turned to attack and submerged, only there was one of the Fubuki that was apparently related to superman, and he hound-dogged us the entire day... but we did finally manage to shake him about 0200 hours, and of course, no sign of the CL and CA and their escorts... long gone... so at 0730 that morning, just to spice things up, we decided to let an H6K find us on the surface as he flew out of the sun... yeesh!!! Thankfully, he missed us with his first set of bombs dropped, and we were deep enough and going in another direction by the time he turned and dropped again... Waited a while, and then continued on the surface, only to have a couple of Zeroes do similar. Nutz. Thankfully, again, no damage. But that's what happens when a plane spots you... they swarm... We ended up having four plane contacts just west of Guam that day, but we did manage to close the shore for our foto-op the next morning...
Beautiful sunrise, eh? Got our pics about 1300 and took off to the northwest to finish our patrol time. Had four more plane contacts over the next few days, with this "seagull" being the most common:
Objective three and four now completed, we headed for our destiny at Wake. We closed on the south side first, and hit the area for a foto op right at about 0900, getting a couple of good pix. Headed to the south and west to clear that area, surfaced and then headed north to round the west side of the island, where we again found two Zeroes coming out of the midday sun... Thankfully, they were about as competent as the previous set near Guam, and missed us. A course change to the East, and then a resumption of closing on the mouth of the harbor for the sound contact we had, which turned-out to be a 2nd foto op, and not a ship... Got our pic after coming in real close, turned and dove deeper from PD just in time to have another set of bombs splash close by... slight percussive damage to the hull, and engine room bulkhead on the port side... Stern batteries then showed their mettle and failed... then we had a leak and had to come back up some, trying to hold 90 foot and failing... Several hours later, most of the damage repaired, except a bow-up list to the boat, and the sun setting with us over 6nm out from the northern shores, we went ahead and surfaced... ~BIG~ mistake... Shell splashes all around, and the shore guns that took out a couple of ships on the eleventh, tried to take us out, and nearly succeeded!. We had three near-misses, one of which landed near the port side of the stern, again resulting in damage to the engine room & after battery, only not just a little - plus the after torpedo room breached and all tubes damaged... we ended up with a 51% hull damage and almost went down, but then almost breached... then almost went down again, then almost breached again, finally hanging on to 78 foot, but with the tail down and bow up, conning tower partially out of the water... not cool... I lost the last few hours of my life on this damage, and nursing the boat back to as good of "health" as we could manage, which was all parts "repaired", though no AA gun, and none, zero, zilch, nada torpedo tubes working... All crewmen in the aft torpedo room and the engine room were wounded, some rather severely, some barely, and all did survive... 47 hours later:
all is peaceful and idyllic, except for all the planes buzzing about... but we did manage to complete the patrol also, hence the first pic above... I do not know if we would have made if back to Pearl though. We spent all of the daylight hours submerged at PD at Ahead One Third, with the Observation scope up, and watched as the airplanes kept coming into sight every two to three hours that first day, thankfully never getting closer than 4.8nm from us. I don't know what would have happened if we would have had to have dove below 100 foot... except maybe kiss the posterior and say "goodbye"...
Other than that, nothin' to it, easy peasy... and part of that is from what happens when you use Time Compression while patrolling...
