Pucker Factor 10

Spartan112 · 12-22-12, 06:17 AM

Not sure if this is the right place for stories, but oh well.
I have been playing SH4 TMO for a while now. So far, my experience has been great, but nothing really exciting... until today. I love the "New Construction" campaign in TMO because it allows me to get a Gato pretty early and I love me some Gato. In this particular campaign, I had been doing some routine deep water merchant raiding and one supply drop mission. I was getting a bit bored with it but then I got a new mission. I saw the mission objective area and it looked like the star was directly on Tokyo so I started getting excited. It was a Merchant raid just outside of Tokyo bay. I left San Fran and refueled at Pearl. On the way in, i ran into a couple aerial patrols, but thank God nothing spotted me. I finally made my way into the mission area and parked up near the shore. I waited a few hours and made first contact. There were two of the Huge 18,700 tonne freighters and two escorts. They were about 3750 yards out when i got into my final attack position, and moving at a slow 7 knots. I got all my data put in for the first ship and fired three torps, i set the next three tubes for fast speed and fired those after all of the data was in. Then it was down scope and listen. I never actually saw any of this, but im guessing the first volley had two duds and one hit, and the second was two hits and a dud. The first ship was not phased by the one torpedo when I raised my scope to check, but the second was mortally wounded. The seas were a bit rough, so until now I had not noticed that there was a third escort. Evading the three escorts was going to be tough because I was somewhat backed into a corner, but I thought I could do it. I dove down to 100 ft and made my way north towards the entrance of the bay. The escorts were way off on their search and I thought I was going to get away scott free, boy was I wrong. about 15 minutes into my trek north, my hydrophone man starts calling out warships, and does not stop until 10 more contacts had been found. I thought for sure there was some glitch. I slowly popped up to periscope depth to get a quick visual and I realized that it was no glitch. A huge Jap task-force was headed home to Tokyo and I just happened to pick the wrong time to be there. There were 3 Battleships, 3 or 4 Cruisers and 4 or 5 destroyers, added to the other 3 destroyers actively looking for me, and all of the ships are blinking Morse to each other. There may have been more, but it was dark and stormy and I couldn't see anything else. At this point I thought I had no chance. I didn't want to continue moving because a single destroyer can pick up engine noise when they are close... 8 would find me in a second. I knew I had to dive deep and wait. The problem was that I had no idea where the bottom was. I started my dive and kept my ear open for the sub hitting the bottom. 100ft... 200ft... 300ft... at this point I am only diving at about a third a foot a second, and I was pretty confident that hitting the bottom would not damage me so I continued the dive. at about 350 I hear us hit the bottom. So now I have no solid plan. There is a damn fleet looking for me and I am stuck in the sand Das Boot style. As I keep my eye on our breathing air, I hear the SONAR pings from all of the ships. The worst is when the pings speed up... then stop, because then you know they have you. The one time I thought they had me, luckily they did not. After several minutes on the bottom, I was worried about suffocating down there helpless. I picked the ship up to 300ft and started creeping out, I had to take the risk of being heard because It was either die there on the bottom, or risk the depth-charges. We started moving and all was well for a couple minutes, then the SONAR pings picked up speed and stopped... the splashes of the depth charges followed... then the booms. They missed us! I kicked the motor up to standard and kept trucking. We got depth-charged a couple more times, but they never hit. It was stormy when I launched my initial attack so I assumed it would still be stormy, and it was about midnight by now, so when I felt confident, I started coming up from the depths, The pings were getting less frequent and the contacts were moving away. I surfaced and went to Flank speed. Luckily, the dark and the storm made it tough for the enemy to see us, and the Battleships never once fired on us. Somehow, we slipped out of the search area and made our way home. Stopped again at Pearl, and booked it back to San Fran. For all of that effort I only got 1 kill, but it was a cool 18,700 tonnes, and I was happy to be alive.

12-22-12, 06:17 AM	#1
Spartan112 Swabbie Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: Colorado USA Posts: 6 Downloads: 50 Uploads: 0	Pucker Factor 10 Not sure if this is the right place for stories, but oh well. I have been playing SH4 TMO for a while now. So far, my experience has been great, but nothing really exciting... until today. I love the "New Construction" campaign in TMO because it allows me to get a Gato pretty early and I love me some Gato. In this particular campaign, I had been doing some routine deep water merchant raiding and one supply drop mission. I was getting a bit bored with it but then I got a new mission. I saw the mission objective area and it looked like the star was directly on Tokyo so I started getting excited. It was a Merchant raid just outside of Tokyo bay. I left San Fran and refueled at Pearl. On the way in, i ran into a couple aerial patrols, but thank God nothing spotted me. I finally made my way into the mission area and parked up near the shore. I waited a few hours and made first contact. There were two of the Huge 18,700 tonne freighters and two escorts. They were about 3750 yards out when i got into my final attack position, and moving at a slow 7 knots. I got all my data put in for the first ship and fired three torps, i set the next three tubes for fast speed and fired those after all of the data was in. Then it was down scope and listen. I never actually saw any of this, but im guessing the first volley had two duds and one hit, and the second was two hits and a dud. The first ship was not phased by the one torpedo when I raised my scope to check, but the second was mortally wounded. The seas were a bit rough, so until now I had not noticed that there was a third escort. Evading the three escorts was going to be tough because I was somewhat backed into a corner, but I thought I could do it. I dove down to 100 ft and made my way north towards the entrance of the bay. The escorts were way off on their search and I thought I was going to get away scott free, boy was I wrong. about 15 minutes into my trek north, my hydrophone man starts calling out warships, and does not stop until 10 more contacts had been found. I thought for sure there was some glitch. I slowly popped up to periscope depth to get a quick visual and I realized that it was no glitch. A huge Jap task-force was headed home to Tokyo and I just happened to pick the wrong time to be there. There were 3 Battleships, 3 or 4 Cruisers and 4 or 5 destroyers, added to the other 3 destroyers actively looking for me, and all of the ships are blinking Morse to each other. There may have been more, but it was dark and stormy and I couldn't see anything else. At this point I thought I had no chance. I didn't want to continue moving because a single destroyer can pick up engine noise when they are close... 8 would find me in a second. I knew I had to dive deep and wait. The problem was that I had no idea where the bottom was. I started my dive and kept my ear open for the sub hitting the bottom. 100ft... 200ft... 300ft... at this point I am only diving at about a third a foot a second, and I was pretty confident that hitting the bottom would not damage me so I continued the dive. at about 350 I hear us hit the bottom. So now I have no solid plan. There is a damn fleet looking for me and I am stuck in the sand Das Boot style. As I keep my eye on our breathing air, I hear the SONAR pings from all of the ships. The worst is when the pings speed up... then stop, because then you know they have you. The one time I thought they had me, luckily they did not. After several minutes on the bottom, I was worried about suffocating down there helpless. I picked the ship up to 300ft and started creeping out, I had to take the risk of being heard because It was either die there on the bottom, or risk the depth-charges. We started moving and all was well for a couple minutes, then the SONAR pings picked up speed and stopped... the splashes of the depth charges followed... then the booms. They missed us! I kicked the motor up to standard and kept trucking. We got depth-charged a couple more times, but they never hit. It was stormy when I launched my initial attack so I assumed it would still be stormy, and it was about midnight by now, so when I felt confident, I started coming up from the depths, The pings were getting less frequent and the contacts were moving away. I surfaced and went to Flank speed. Luckily, the dark and the storm made it tough for the enemy to see us, and the Battleships never once fired on us. Somehow, we slipped out of the search area and made our way home. Stopped again at Pearl, and booked it back to San Fran. For all of that effort I only got 1 kill, but it was a cool 18,700 tonnes, and I was happy to be alive.