LAST EDITED ON Jul-15-15 AT 07:48 PM (EDT)
 
>Funny you should mention U-2501, as the latest chapter has revealed a
>new wrinkle, courtesy of Lexington: she's actually built around the
>core of the destroyer Z1 Leberecht Maass, which means she
>shouldn't be able to operate even half the systems that she's equipped
>with.

Well, Z1934-class ships were bigger than Type XXI U-boats, at least (although still pretty small). Would explain why she's evidently got no dang luck at all, though. Poor old Lebe was sunk by the Luftwaffe (and then her sister ship, Z3 Max Schultz, hit a mine - very possibly a German mine - and sank with all hands while trying to rescue her crew). Meanwhile, one of the other destroyers in the flotilla depth-charged a submarine that wasn't there and jammed its own rudder, and a couple of the others nearly rammed each other in the course of executing panicked evasive maneuvers to escape the Heinkels and nonexistent British subs. Eventually the survivors all just called it a day and slunk back to port, never bothering to carry out their original mission, which had been - I'm not making this up - to harass British fishing boats on the Dogger Bank.

If you're keeping score at home, that means the German Navy undertook a destroyer expedition to shoot up some unarmed fishing vessels (which is like breaking up your neighbors' annoying game of pickup basketball with explosives), two of them sank, another was damaged, and at no time did they ever actually come into contact with enemy forces of any kind. The Royal Navy essentially managed to sink two German destroyers simply by existing. The whole affair reads like what a naval engagement would go like if, say, I were controlling it through an untranslated copy of the Russian version of World of Warships, couldn't find the other team or figure out the navigation system, and eventually decided to just start sandboxing to see what my weapons did.

(No wonder the KanColle versions of Lebe and Max seem so happy to be there. Based on what I've read about the game mechanics, even the shittiest Shitty Admiral would have to do actual work to fuck up a destroyer sortie that badly. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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