Random snippets from skipper's log:
U-142 has entered the Mediterranean, our newest theatre of war. After braving the Girbraltar crossing, our career in these waters started relatively calmly - Hunting single merchants at South of Sardinia, using the narrowest chokepoint of that area to our advantage, basically covering the whole area coast-to-coast with our hydrophone. Very few British supply ships made the treck from Gibraltar to their theatre in Eastern Sahara desert. Mussolini's troops should have easier time fighting weakened enemy.
However, we did not have much time to get comfortable with routine - As a strangely deformed brainchild of an idea had morphed into orders on my desk once we returned to port: U-142 was to be used as convoy escort for Italian troop ships sailing from La Spezia to Tunis. In the idea's defense, first part of the grand plan was not bad: U-142 was to sail far in front of the Italian transports and use hydrophone to hear the approaching enemy warships before they are even in visual range. However, that's where the brilliance ended. After confirming advancing enemy warships, U-142 was to attack them. And it was far more than likely that the warships in this area would be British destroyers, vessels that are designed to destroy submarines.
As curious as that assignment was, it paled when compared to the next assignment to transfer a spy to British colony known as Palestine. We would sail not only far away from arguably friendly territory, we would be detrimentally close to Suez Canal, the third-most heavily guarded naval location by the Royal Navy, right after the Home Isles and Gibraltar. And would it not be the British to catch us, starvation would: Everything would have to proceed according to optimal travel speed without delay, as our modest coastal U-Boat was not so well blessed with volume for storing large amount of provisions.
There is a smoke spotted in the horizon, from its location and course we can determine it is a lone British merchant making a supply run from Gibraltar to Malta. From hyrdophone reading 10 minutes ago, we can determine there are no British surface vessels anywhere nearby and the setting sun prevents any British aerial crafts from performing security patrols. By the time we get within visual range of the merchant, the darkness will be close to total, giving the merchant next to no chance of spotting us, asuming we would even be on the surface when we are in engagement range.
There is a grim sense of inevitability to all this.
U-142 has completed her latest and most significant assignment on the Mediterranean, an attack on oil storages on coast of Syria, British territory. On her way back of this 34 day patrol, she managed to catch quite a few merchant ships as well, among them an oil tanker.
Although the return trip was a bitter pill to swallow... It is 1941 and I have a sinking feeling we might have bitten on a war that is more than we can chew. A month we have spent sinking British merchants where we have been able to find them. And it was not a small tally, 15 merchant ships in 34 days is nothing to sneeze at. But... One of those 15 was a tanker sailing in a convoy. A convoy consisting of more than 40 merchants. Whatever we might think about our achievements, that puts it into perspective.
If, when we are performing at the extreme limit of our submarine, which is as far as we know and what we have seen, the only submarine in the Mediterranean, we are able to sink 15 merchant ships in one month. The British were able to sail more than 40 past us in one day. How many other convoys might have been able to sail past us? Bigger convoys than 40? There is no question that we are making a dent in the Allied war effort... But how significant dent and to how big a plate is starting to be formed to something we were not promised.
Our Italian friends, despite our effort to weaken their adversaries as much as possible, still seem to be hell-bent on being bogged down against weakened enemy. Not that the recent lack of progress has been completely achieved by the Italians - Our leadership promised our airforces would make a quick work of the Royal Airforces around the White Cliffs of Dover - Which is something that also seems to have been mired down.
Meanwhile, we are committing vast amounts of manpower and resources to police over majority of European continent, an amount of territory that dwarves our homeland, something that is not a long-term solution. Not to mention, all this, everything, and everything supporting it, is fueled by oil, something that we have no natural access to and all has to be obtained from the dwindling countries still not blockading us.
But now, more and more I find Allied shipping sails in convoys, escorted, with deck guns even on merchant ships. Boarding them is no longer option, neither is sinking them with my puny Type II's "deck gun" - The freakin' merchant ships out-gun me. Even in optimal circumstances it would take ~1000 rounds from the 20mm to sink them, while it takes only 1 round of their deck gun to sink me.
What an underwater assassination that was... The final voyage of HMS Illustrious, with her crew now on eternal patrol. Shame it had to come to this. Had the time and place been different, my crew and her crew could have been downing beers in a tavern together, having a banter whose country produces better cars. We will accompany them on this final descent... Until 100 meters of depth, as that is the maximum tested depth U-142 is rated for. We will stay silent down there, hoping to avoid the retaliation from the destroyer screens, which we few moments ago sneaked past.
It is 1942, the third year of this war that should have been over in a month or two. U-142 starts the year in port of Brest, occupied France, from which we are supposed to make sail to the port of Bergen, occupied Norway.
In a way, it is understandable. The battle of Atlantic is of limited success rate for us. We have able to sneak past the British patrols into the "Black Pit", which is the area in which patrol aircraft from the UK and Canada cannot reach into. However, once there, we are limited to five torpedoes.
Operation Barbarossa has started two months ago, we received the news of this while in the Black Pit. It was not soon after this event that the British imperialists realized they could send material support to Soviet communists, both of whom had vehemently opposed each other just 3 years ago, almost to a point of declaration of war. But it appears enemy of my enemy makes bed-fellows.
U-142, now boasting one battleship, two escort carriers, one shore-based oil installation, countless tankers and freighters destroyed, with a fair share of scouting and espionage missions as well under the belt, takes on the new task of severing the British material support flowing to the Soviet Union. It will be a cold undertaking, sailing at north of Norway during december, in a steel tube with only source of heat being the warmth radiating from the two diesel engines. At least we do not need to worry about food spoilage.
(Played on 100% realism, playthrough has been going on on-and-off for 2 years)
