Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Erkki]

Is there any reason you can't use the aft torpedoes on the bow tubes?

Because they are physically impossible to transfer from aft to bow or the other way around - the torpedoes are after all pretty big and weight a ton a piece.

AFAIK it was done at least on one boat IRL by tying every life vest and inflatable rubber boat on a submarine around the torpedo, submerging the boat itself partially, towing the now floating torpedo from aft to front and fully surfacing the sub again. It required pretty much flat water, daylight and several hours. I'll have to look it up from the book.

[Sheb]

I'm digging through some old family papers for All-Saints and my great-grandfather, Hans Worms actually served in the Kriegsmarine, serving as eutnant on the SMS Friedrich der Grosse and Prinzregent Luitpold from October 1916 till the end of the war. He then fought again in WWII, first with the grade of Kaleun then Korvettenkapitän. In 1942 till the end of the war he was in charge of communication supplies for the big U-boot base in St Nazaire.

Sadly, his handwriting is a piece of crap, so I'm sitting on 3 big folders of letters I can't read, even though they'd help me fill in the blank.

[Erkki]

I'm digging through some old family papers for All-Saints and my great-grandfather, Hans Worms actually served in the Kriegsmarine, serving as eutnant on the SMS Friedrich der Grosse and Prinzregent Luitpold from October 1916 till the end of the war. He then fought again in WWII, first with the grade of Kaleun then Korvettenkapitän. In 1942 till the end of the war he was in charge of communication supplies for the big U-boot base in St Nazaire.

Sadly, his handwriting is a piece of crap, so I'm sitting on 3 big folders of letters I can't read, even though they'd help me fill in the blank.

Wow! I'm sure that you'll find someone both interested in the letters and able to figure out whats written on them(an official maybe, though if you're German, perhaps not even museums, judging by what I know and have heard of their relationship with their past(or more of a cultural lobotomy?)). A museum, collector, historian, someone doing historical research etc.

Myself, I dont know if my great-grandfathers took part to any wars, but my grandfather was in service for pretty much the entire duration of the WW2 from Summer 1939 to some time in Spring or Summer of 1945, fighting in 3 wars(Winter War, Continuation War, Lapland War), as a mechanic and truck driver in artillery and infantry.

[Sheb]

I dunno, it's just his handwriting is... terrible. More letter from his stint in St-Nazaire are typed (I guess with greater rank came access to a secretary or something) but I haven't read those yet.

Most annoyingly is a letter that was written the day after the fleet got its order for operation Albion, but I cannot read anything but the date.

Anyway, when can we hope for more news of our own, fictional Kaleun?

[Zrk2]

This is awesome, I always love Erkki's AARs.

[Erkki]

Another update! Sorry about the delay, but I want to keep the campaign well ahead of the AAR to not run out of material even if I update just once a week. 

We'll go through a sinking more closely this time.


August 18, 1940

Soon 2 days after the latest encounter with the enemy, a lone sound contact is picked up again at 0600 hours. A slow merchantman, eastbound.

It takes 2 hours to get ahead of the target and intercept it. Preferably, the submarine lies submerged to ambush its prey, positioning itself along the target's path well beyond visual range. That is seldom possible nor even needed.

0801, smoke on the horizon! U-35 submerges.

0813: Closer now, the target is more or less identifiable.

Spoiler: Freighter sighted (click to show/hide)

That actually is not the type of the ship, but rather what I thought it was.

Again, the Kaleun decides to use a G7a steam torpedo. The 2 electric torpedoes on board will be spared for a possible warship target, or convoys, and are to be shot last.

Spoiler: The submarine sneaks closer... (click to show/hide)

0818: A single torpedo is launched with impact warhead - the weather is good, target identified(lol!!!). There has been plenty of time to estimate the range accurately with the periscope's stadimeter(target's known mast height is used with the visually estimated angle from waterline to the top of the mast to get the range), the angle-on-bow is just perfect. Yet again we're lacking an accurate speed for the target ship; its simply guessed to be 6 knots.

Spoiler: 5 seconds before the estimated hit time (click to show/hide)

1 minute and 34 seconds come and go... No hit. The captain gives new values to be input to the torpedo calculator, when finally, 20 seconds overdue, the torpedo goes off:

Spoiler: boom! (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Target hit in the aft, it starts to slow down (click to show/hide)

Uhh... There seems to have been a GROSS underestimation in the range to target, which is thanks to the initial misidentification. Below are the TDC parameters used for the shot:

Spoiler: TDC settings (click to show/hide)

The explosion was so far aft that there must be just 1 compartment being flooded - perhaps it even hit the rudder, and theres none?

Spoiler: The torpedo before the hit (click to show/hide)

20 minutes after the hit the ship has all but stopped. The Kaleun orders the boat to turn starboard parallel to the freighter's course for a rear torpedo shot.

The values are put into the TDC. "Open tube four!" "Opening tube 4 herr Kaleun!" "Los!" "Nummer vier los herr Kaleun!" - What, isnt rear tube the number 5 and not 4? Yeh, a wasted torpedo. The target is off by more than 90 degrees, and the electric torpedo G7e is a miss.

The rear torpedo is fired, resulting in a hit a bit ahead of where aimed(target slowed down more than was estimated):

Spoiler: Firing the rear tube (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Second hit (click to show/hide)

As an added insult, well, you can see how much its sunk already. Most likely it'd have gone down any way, so again we wasted 3 torpedoes when 1 would have been sufficient.

The sinking log so far:


The merchant goes down BOW FIRST, but I still think the second torpedo was unnecessary.

Spoiler: Scratch another Tommy! (click to show/hide)

U-35 then remains submerged, listening, until the next dawn. Just before the sunset, the boat briefly surfaces to reload the second externally storaged torpedo, this time the aft one.

Patrol day 16 behind, position circa 100 nm SSW of the SW-most point of Ireland, the U-35 remains on station.


PS. There was actually no mast height difference. I just screw it up with the stadimeter. 

[Erkki]

Hey everyone - update coming as soon as my upload web space's UI is up again. 

[Sheb]

For images? Is there a reason why you don't use imgur or something?

[Erkki]

August 19 - 21


The weather remained great, and U-35 patrolled on North-South line, SW of Ireland, sailing across the inbound routes to southern Britain. Unfortunately no contacts were seen or heard... There was some disbelief among the crew about the enemy perhaps knowing about the boat and eluding it somehow, about whether the hydrophones actually worked of if the operator was half deaf, and about whether the boat even was where the navigator thought it to be. Days went slow, without contacts.

On the evening of the 21st, the weather started worsening. No rain, but the wind speed increased to 15 m/s and the waves grew.


August 22

At approximately 11.30, during one of the 2-hourly routine listening dives, a contact is finally heard! This is an inbound freighter, and nearby.

11.55 Visual contact!! The enemy is sighted by the tower watch, and an emergency dive is sounded!!! The cameraman is too slow to grab a photo. The boat needs to submerge ASAP.

The very high waves make the submerged attack difficult, but at least the periscope will be difficult to see. U-35 is in a near-perfect position for an attack, and finally a torpedo is fired at the distance of 2,5 km. The clock is 12.03

12.06: The torpedo is due to the hit(yet another time when the distance is under estimated!), and the Kaleun thinks that he may have slightly overestimated the target's speed in the heavy waves... New values are feed into the TDC and a second torpedo is fired.

20 seconds later, the first torpedo hits:

Spoiler: Its a hit! (click to show/hide)

The target is an oil or fuel tanker, 5000 tons type T05X!

Spoiler: The tanker (click to show/hide)

The second torpedo is also a hit, and the poor tanker goes down pretty much immediately:

Spoiler: Glug glug glug! (click to show/hide)

Just to be safe, U-35 remains submerged for 12 hours after the attack, and reloads torpedoes. Not many of them left now, and the crew is starting waiting for the return already.

[Anvilfolk]

You're making me want to go back to SH

Good kill!

[Sheb]

Awesome.

[Parsely]

ptw