I was sent to patrol just west of Ireland and as usual a boring trip there, did my 24 hours and sank a small coastal and a small merchant.........yippie.......woppie.......**YAWN**

So I set course south in hopes for some better hunting.............I plot course and head to the cabin for a nap.
2 days sailing and nothing.............this is getting ridiculous!!

3rd day...................**SHIP SPOTTED!!** I get up from the bunk thinking "YIPPIE........another small merchant to sink"........I climb the ladder to the bridge where I'm greeted my the sun and choppy seas........the watch office points out the contact and I train the bino's on the bearing...........**HOLY SWEET MOTHER!!!!**.......Its a 26,000t cruise ship turned troop transport making 21 knots.

"AHEAD FLANK!!!" Plot cut off course so she doesn't get away.
"Solution to target........FIRE 1, 2, 3, 4!!"

All hits but this only slows this monster to 4 knots.........I work into position.......180 degree "FIRE 5!!".........Hit and she's dead in the water.

"LOAD MY PRETTIES.........LOAD!!"

Fire tube 1 at her and that did her in.

6 torps later she sank like the Titanic did in the movies!!!

An otherwise boring patrol turned exciting!!!

Congrats!
Feels good, doesn't it?

In my last patrol I just saw a liner sail off smoking into the sunset

congrats!

Congrats! I finally ran into and sunk one of these babies after some 26 odd patrols... very satisfying indeed!

Never seen one - but I'm sure I'll fall off my chair when I finally do

Mind you it'll probably be heading away @ 20 knots

Nice one.....

Congrats on the Troop Transport, saw one on my last patrol, but the escorts kept me from getting into a good firing position, had to settle for a fat C-3. Puts

Lucky son of a gun. Biggest merchant I've seen so far in my patrols is the occasional C2. Got all the Small Merchants and Coastals I could ever want though.

2nd patrol GS AM24

Get a report of a task force coming right at me
Oh boy, finally get to see some of the real heavies. Turns out to be a very well protected convoy

I got the auxillary cruiser 13850
Two T2 tankers 11000
and one hunter destroyer 1000
(not sure how that happened , he must have blundered into one of my tanker shots)

All in all, a most satisfiying patrol.

I was lucky.............its mid 41 and this Passenger Liner was all by its self........no escorts and was relying on speed for protection.

It was a pucker factor when after 5 torps she didn't sink and I was reloading.......I was waiting for the DD's to come charging in at any moment!!!

You sure your not watching too much of the Wizard of Oz?


Good JOB!

LOL........... I should have put a YARRRR!!!! at the end of it!!!

If it ever shows 80000+ tons, you'll never see an escort.

The Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth carried entire divisions without escort -- because they ran at 28 knots plus and no escort could keep up with them.

They were seen by U-Boats during the war, but nobody could ever complete the intercept.

Congrats mate, Im on my 4th patrol yet, and so far the biggest thin I´ve encouter was a Costal Transport,

Oh yes, out of torps , out of fuel I run across a HUGE convoy headind into Dover... C2´s Tankers, Evry kind of cargo ship there is (No, no liberty´s (its still 1939 here). and GEE!!!, all I could do was to transmit its position to H.Q. and hope some other lucky B. gets it.

Had to wait for my 24th patrol in 1944 to finally intercept a Cruise Liner. Due to all luck she was on a course that brought her within 2000m at ~90 AoB. Fired a 2 torpedo salvo, first just missed the bow but the second slammed into her fuel bunker. She detonated and sank in under a minute.

HammFist.. Some years ago I was told by my father about my great-uncle (Col Mathew Robb) who was Senior British Officer (SBO) onboard the `Queens` during their troop carrying days (he spent time on both).

I was told stories about the `Grey ladies` and their mad dash journeys across the Atlantic, un-escorted as nothing could keep up with them.

I remember being told that one of the Queens DID in fact get struck by a torpedo (can`t remember which one) - but "The lady never broke stride" were the words I remember being told.

My great-uncle kept a lot of his old war-time documents and I`m sure one of his surviving dependents must have them. I`ll try and do an a bit of investigating and see what I can find out, but it may take a while as I know a lot of that side of the family emigrated to Canada and Australia - Scotland`s greatest export is still its people !

I've read that the German's claimed to have hit one of the Queens (the Queen Elizabeth I think), but had never heard any verification from the British side. That would be interesting.

The only major incident I've heard about with the wartime Queens was the collision between the Queen Mary and Light Cruiser HMS Curacao. The Curacao was serving as AAA escort for the final leg of one of the Queen Mary's "mad dashes". It was having trouble keeping up since the QM was going 28 knots in a random zig zag pattern and the Curacao was only capable of 26 knots. The Curacoa passed in front of the QM with insufficient space, and the resulting collision cut the stern off the Curacao, which unfortunately sank very quickly with the loss of most of her crew. The Queen was under orders not to stop or break radio silence, so nothing could be done to help save the Curacoa's crew. Escorting Destroyers picked up 102 of the survivors, but 338 men had died.

The QM had a 40 foot gash in her bow, but was able to continue on to port. Cunard and the Royal Navy fought each other over who was to blame for the accident for years, and finally decided that both ships were at fault.

Salute Everyone!
I was reading the post hear about Queen Mary Luxury liner. Which i saw at Riverside California when i was kid. They where restoring her. I believe they were making a huge resturant out of her.
Also i got to remembering a Luxury Liner that did get sunk by a sub.
Lusitania: Leaving New York To Liverpool in 1915.
Sunk by u-boat U20
Kapitan-leutnant Schwieger and his crew.
Took 18 minutes to sink with one torpedoe.
There was a second explosion that wasn`t buy a torpedoe.
They fiqured she was carrying amunition for the troops in WW1 that caused the second explosion.
I don`t know the tonage of the ship, but 1.153 passengers and crew drowned.
She had to be big for those days.
Take Care!

... and sometimes the liners retaliate quite effectively. In 1918 a U-Boat took a shot at the RMS Olympic, sister-ship to the Titanic and then serving as a troop ship. The torpedoes missed, and the Olympic then changed course and rammed the U-Boat, sinking it with all hands.

Lusitania was built by John Brown & Co. of Clydebank and was launched in 1906. The first British four-stacker, Lusitania was also the world's first quadruple screw steamer and the first ship to exceed 30,000 tons. Substantial modifications were made to the Liverpool Landing Stage to accommodate her great size. Lusitania made her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York on 7 September 1907. She was at that time the largest ship in the world, a distinction she would hold until her sister Mauretania entered service two months later.
Holder of both Blue Ribands, Lusitania set westbound crossing records in October 1907, July 1908, August 1908 and September 1909 and an eastbound record in October 1907.

At sea when World War I broke out, Lusitania arrived home safely, and unlike Mauretania was kept in her regular service during the war, making monthly sailings between Liverpool and New York. However, on 7 May 1915, while heading east off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland (see the card, below), Lusitania was torpedoed without warning by U-20 and sank within 18 minutes. (Two explosions rocked the ship. The first was clearly caused by a torpedo from U-20. The cause of the second explosion has never been definitively determined and remains the source of much controversy.)

Of those on board, 761 were rescued, while 1,198 perished. Lusitania's sinking, and the sinking of White Star's Arabic a few months later, vividly demonstrated that prior concepts of the rules of war no longer prevailed, and that unarmed merchant ships were no longer safe from attack