Some Silent Hunter 4.
The date is August 30, 1942. The mission; to patrol south of the Japanese main island, Honshu, and engage and sink anything we come across.
It's a foggy day, as Pike and her crew approaches the hunting grounds. Visibility is decent, yet low enough to stay on the surface during the day, despite being close to enemy patrol areas.
The sonar man calls out two merchant contacts, apparently without any escorts. I mark their position to guesstimate their heading, and I move to intercept what looks to be the first catch of the patrol.
I mark where their course intersects mine, and draw a circle indicating my desired engagement range. My "attack bubble", so to say.
However, by now the weather has deteriorated a lot, and I wonder if I'll even be able to engage my targets.
Closing on my desired attack position, my crew are all on battle stations. Deck gunner is not amused by the weather.
It appears that my course prediction was decent, but slightly off. I'll have to adjust my intercept point.
Approaching my attack position, I dive to be 100% sure to avoid detection.
I'm in position, and the targets are on course. The wait begins.
They should be right there, but I can't see anything in this weather.
Then suddenly.. Jackpot. A large troop carrier. That's some easy tonnage right there.
But I'm too slow, and he slips back into the fog before I have time to set and fire my torpedoes. Luckily, the second ship appears just afterwards. As seen here I mistakenly identify it as the same type of ship as the first one as I rush to fire a salvo before it disappears like the other one.
Because I rushed the torpedo calculations, all torpedoes miss. Slightly pissed off I surface the boat to pursue them. Since I now know their ship types, I know that they do not carry any defensive guns at all.
They must have seen my torpedoes and gone evasive, because even though I'm at flank speed I can barely catch up. After a few minutes I'm around 700m behind them.
Can't see shit captain.
Aha! I finally catch up, and begin targeting my torpedoes.
Success!
It appears that my torpedoes were quite effective.
The ship burns for a little while, until..
While she sinks in the background, I check the tonnage. Not a bad catch at all. Now for the second ship.
After catching up to the second ship, I start plinking away with my deck gun.
Against a ship this big, the deck gun isn't the most effective weapon. So I check my torpedo reload progress. Y U NO reload faster?!
Then I realize I still have a full compliment loaded and ready to go in the aft. So I devise a brilliant plan to overtake the ship and use those instead.
However, before I have time execute my plan, this happens;
After a job well done, I head back below to make sure everything is in order. Yep, creepy ear-dude has got that wall covered.
I sail on for a while, until I come across another unescorted merchant. This is almost too good.
I intercept, and given the conditions, decide to go straight at it with the deck gun. This one gets a little mad and tries to shoot back with an AA gun.
It has little effect though when it comes to saving his ship.
There we go.
Oh, don't mind me. Just passing by.
As I surface the following morning the storm has passed. Since my patrol is completed, I set a course back home.
On my way back I encounter a patrol consisting of two destroyers. I don't want to push my luck, so I hide and let them slip by.
From there on out, it's smooth sailing all the way, apart from the occasional scout plane. The USS Pike arrives back home at Pearl Harbour, and lives to fight another day.
Total tonnage for this trip; 31333.