Destroyers

[IsVenge]

Are easy to sink in the early 40s.
Just get them chasing you while you are at periscope depth, either head on or right on your tail. Helps to be lined right up for a perfect 0 gyro shot. If you uise electric eels then you can afford to shoot earlier than if you use steamies. Electric I let loose around 800 meters, steamies I hold off as long as I can, usually once they start trying to shoot at my periscope.
Make sure to set the depth of the torp at about 1 meter under the keel of the destroyer.
It gets tense as the magnetic trigger does not go off until it reaches the aft of the destroyer, but seems to get a kill everytime. Sucks when you get a dud and you only have one aft torp. Much better to go head on if you can, that way you can shoot an electric at 900 and if that misses hit em with a steamie from about 500.
Hope it is not this easy later on in the war. That, or there are so many you can afford to try this. My record is 3 destroyers in one convoy. I got lucky and don't think I would try to take 3 again. They were so spread apart that I only had to deal with one at a time. But still, one is enough.

[Venge]

Oops, forgot to sign in ...

[Dominico Baggio]

This is all good, but do you have enough torps to waste on destroyers?

I mean if it takes 2 torps thats 500 tons of shipping a torp. Pretty bad But the good thing is then the conoy is unescorted. Are you doing this on full auto shots??

Man if you get a dud you must be in trouble lol has it ever left you in a really bad situation because of it? You would be shallow, if there are more then one destroyers i would guess you would be in bad trouble!

[Stryker]

DD in this game are not at all realistic, if you spit at them they sink, Ive watched a torpedo bounce off one and it blow up after the torpedo fell away, I missed one totally and the next thing I see is it go down by the bow, and these 0 degree bow shots are totally bogus ..

During WWII only 18 DD were sunk by Uboats in the N Atlantic Theater, another 11 in the Med ..

In the game England would have no DD left by 1940

To play with a bit more realism I just stay away from them .. Uboats did NOT hunt DD be like you hunting a lion with a stick

[Venge]

I do play with auto targetting, except when doing this. I line my sub up so you just have to shoot straight in front or behind.
And ya, a torp or two is plenty worth it because then you have an unescorted convoy of 14 ish ships.
As far as bouncing off the hulls, I dont aim for the hulls, I aim 1 meter underneath so as long as the torp gets close, it goes off

Ya, been caught out once by doing this, but managed to get away. Was an aft shot and it missed or was a dud.
It is not really somethine I set out to do, I got detected and figured what the hell, give it a go, and it worked great.
It is starting to feel like cheating though, as it should not be this easy. But it is hard to not do it too, especially when there is only opne lowly destroyer and a dozen or more juicy ships ....

[Dominico Baggio]

I dont think its cheating, i think that in real life they didnt do it for the plain reason if they missed they would be pretty much in bad trouble.

I think with full realism on you would be hard pressed to sink destroyers. I have only ever got 1, but i just dive when detected. If they are tramming on at 25 knots and your torp is doing 40 or so, its a combined speed of about 50+ miles an hour, so if its on target there is no way they are avoiding it!

I just wouldnt dare risk it because i know on dead is dead i could get damage which would make sinking the destroyer not worth it in the long run. I try just to stay safe, apart from the one in the other thread i got at night

Cool that you can do it though, i used to do it in aces of the deep and it sometimes didnt work.

[dagamecat]

I'm with Stryker, I never try to sink destroyers in the game, just go deep and sneak away.


I tell a half truth, I did sink a couple of destroyers (or maybe corvettes) at Scapa Flow, but they were stationary, so I was allowed to

[GT182]

If you know you've got a dead on shot on a Destroyer, then sink it. Then the Merchants are easy pickings and you don't have to worry about depthcharges.

[Venge]

thats the whole point though. it is real easy to get a dead on shot. Just let them hear you, the run either straight at them or straight away from them. It becomes a no brainer shot that way, straight ahead or straight behind. They happily fall right in behind you and give chase. It is just a matter of tweaking your run to speed up the time it takes the destroyer to get right behind you and on the same heading.
All this is really worth the effort if you have weather that allows the deck gun. With a few more torps and all your deck gun ammo you can sink entire convoys. I put a torp into the biggies and use the deck gun finishing off and of the biggies that are still floating. Then use the deck gun to sink the rest. And still have enough torps to finish your patrol.