(remark: i split the AAR into 3 separate posts in this thread to make it easier to read. Enjoy!)


Welcome abord the USS Boise. Have a seat and i will give you a report on what happened yesterday during our participation of Exercise Malabar. As you might already know Exercise Malabar is an annual multilateral naval exercise we hold with the Navys of India, Japan, Australia and Singapore to sharpen our and their skills. It's a valuable learning experience since we can encounter a wide range of naval assests in a short amount of time. If you like to read up on past exercises i recommend you read this wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Malabar


So lets get right into the action. Our mission was spilt up into three phases. In the first phase we were tasked to hunt an Indian Kilo-class submarine. As you might recall the Chinese also use Kilos, which made this exercise very valuable for a possible future engagement with the Chinese. Here are our orders in detail:




First thing we did was to get a general assesment of the situation. As you can see OPAREA ALPHA was fairly big, so i decided to head right into the middle, so that our sensors could achieve maximum coverage of the area:




An hour into the mission our sonar picked up the Indian Kilo. It must have run on its diesel engines to charge the batteries, which is one of the major drawbacks of the Kilo class, or else we would have never been able to pick it up this early. A dived Kilo on batteries is really really hard to detect:





It became very clear after a minute that the Kilo was close to finish charging, as the contact suddenly turned weak. I knew that once the Kilo switched to batteries it would take me a long time to find it again and time was not on my side this time, as you might recall from the briefing two US warship are close behind and have permission to engage me. So with the need to be fast i turned to something that we subdrivers usually avoid like the plague. Active Sonar. I already had the bearing towards the Kilo and only needed the range for an accurate torpedo attack. I prepared the torpedo and send out a single ping (and one ping only!). You can not really see it on the screenshot, but i got a return 25k yards out:




Time to fire!




The Indian Kilo captain proved to be very capable as he managed to evade my torpedo on the first pass and the torpedo overshot its target. Thanks to the wireguide i turned the Torpedo around and send it back to the enemy sub:





This time the Indian sub wasn't so lucky and my torpedo hit its target smack on as you can see by the washout on the sonar. My XO was overjoyed:




With phase 1 of the excersise completed i decided to dive below the sound layer to mask my noise and then sneak out north outside OPAREA ALPHA and head full speed to my next area:





Head to the next post for phase 2!

Well that was the plan. But as we learned really fast you should never underestimate the perseverence of our surface guys. On my way towards OPAREA SIERRA one of the cruisers tasked to hunt us catched up with us:




And what a trigger happy captain this guy was. Not soon after we picked him up on our sonar he already shot the first torpedos:




But we also had some aces up our sleeves and managed to avoid the torpedos with ease and got some distance between us and the cruiser. Overall the cruiser shot four torpedos at us but neither were able to pick us up and hone in. Lucky us:




With the cruiser out of the picture we were able to finally focus on phase 2 of the excersise. For phase 2 we were tasked to sink an Indian taskforce consisting of three ships before they can exit the oparea. And sure enough i picked up their active sonar pinging half an hour befire the start of the excersise. Maybe we should tell the Indians not to be so ping happy if they are about to be on the recieving end of a submarine, as it makes my job a lot easier:




At this point i only picked up 2 of the 3 contacts, so i decided to come up to perisope depth and try to get a better picture with our ESM mast, which is able to pick up radar emissions. And sure enough i found all three north of me. I also picked up 2 ASW helicopters in the east. I have to watch out for them. You can also see our current orders in the top left:




At this point i was sure that the three targets were still quite a distance out and since i was already at periscope depth i decided to take a look through the periscope. Can you spot the frigate?




After identifying all three contacts (A frigate V02, a destroyer V03 and an auxilliary ship V01) and calculating their distance, i got this picture:




I waited for another 15 minutes to let them come closer and then fired three torpedos at the group:




Torpedo 1 was able to sink the auxilliary ship with ease, but Torpedos 2 and 4 were not so fortunate. Torpedo 4 did explodes, but must have hit a decoy from the destroyer. Torpedo 2 was outmanouvered and outrunned by the frigate and shutdown after an extensive chase:




I quickly ordered my crew to reload the tubes for another attack run. While they were busy, i raised the periscope again to get an overview over the situation. I noticed that both targets left have recovered from my attack and now came back towards me to hunt me down. So it was time to shoot the second salvo. This time i opted to stay on the perisope to help guide the torpedos in as i reckoned i would not have time for a third try. And this time my torpedos hit the mark. First was the frigate:




And 15 minutes later the destroyer:




My XO was screaming with joy again. I'm starting to suspect that he takes some kind of drugs:




This concludes phase 2 of our mission. Not long after we sank we recieved the orders for phase 3 which you can read about in the last post.

For the last part of the exercise we were tasked to photograph an Indian Aircraft carrier the INS Viraat.Orders are in the top left:





I cleared the board and plotted a course towards the harbor. I decided to approach from the northwest, since there were quite some ASW assests to my east that i was hoping to avoid:





Halfway on my way i suddenly picked up the ping of sonar buoys. Looks like i attracted the attention of those two ASW helicpoters i noticed earlier. But it became pretty obviously after some pings that they were looking for me in the wrong spot, so i decided to continue without worries:





At my first waypoint i took a quick check of the harbor with my sonar. Quite a lot of traffic there:





Shortly after i got a first peak at the harbor through my periscope:





As i continued to crawl my way towards the destination, i decided to check up on my target, since i guessed that i would have not much time to stay undetected once inside the harbor. The INS Viraat is a modified Centaur-class light fleet carrier which was sold to the Indian by the British in 1986. It ran as the HMS Hermes during its service in the British navy. Here is a picture of it:




An hour after the my first look at the harbor, i finally spotted the carrier through my persicope:





Now all that was left to do is was to get close enough to get some good picture for the admiral. Another hour later my XO informed me that we should be close enough now:





We took the the pictures and with that completed our mission for the day. I plotted a course out of the harbor into deeper water and from there back to base:






I hope you enjoyed our little action and maybe i was able to show the great strength of a modern day submarine. Maybe soon you will command your own boat and make us all proud.

Really Nice AAR!

I live in that city called Kochi!

kaRadi

What sim is this? Great AAR, by the way.

It's Dangerous Waters with the LWAMI mod

I soooo wish someone would take DW and update the GFX, make it widescreen compatible.

The technologies are much more interesting to me than SHIV, but I can't deal with these minimum GFX anymore. It will not even run windowed on a 32bit color desktop...