Survived this one by the skin of my teeth

[1Sherman]

In the last 5 minutes of the match, the enemy Benson, Hatsuharu, New Orleans, Iowa, and Taiho were all gunning me down while I desperately retreated from the south end with 30-something thousand HP left at the blisteringly fast speed of 21 knots (ikr?).

After missing the New Orleans all game, I finally got a citadel on him and sunk him at 10km, whilst also dodging Benson/Hatsuharu torpedoes and trying to shoot down Taiho dive bombers.

I then sunk the Hatsuharu from 9 km with a well-placed salvo, leaving only the Iowa and the Benson vs me with only about 6k HP and 3 health packs left. I then began Crtl+F8'ing a bunch of times in chat, and the unthinkable happened: The friendly CVs actually came and helped me out.

While they attacked the Benson, I got off two good salvos on the Iowa from 11km left, citadelling him both times and sinking him. I got down to as low as 1k HP before healing up.

I then loaded HE and attacked the Benson from 8 km out. Thankfully, after two failed torpedo salvos, he didn't bother to use a third. The friendly Taiho sunk him with dive bombers. Between this point and the beginning of the engagement, I'd been harried by enemy DBs and escorted by friendly fighters.

By this point, I'd used my last health pack. There were two enemy ships left: The NC and the Taiho. I popped my spotter plane to try to get into range, but that was cut short by the arrival of the Taiho's TBs. Due to the Benson and Taiho's HE shells and bombs, I had very little AA guns left. With 30 seconds left, I began turning to avoid a torpedo strike, but I had been baited. While I focused on a single squad of TBs on my left, the other 2 squadrons came in on the right. I was on 12k HP with no health packs left. Just before the torpedoes hit me, the timer ran out. 

In short, I have never been that lucky before in my life.

 

 

Shoutout to AKiKaz and Blake_LIN for helping me out, and to Sweet_Vengeance, Magz, Poonany, Grump_Wagon, and ChungZon for making things interesting.

[Lert]

Just shy of that 100k. Very nice battle, mate.

[D_I_P_Scout]

Sounds like a hell of a battle and well done all around.

[1Sherman]

 

I forgot to mention that before the last 5 minutes, I had been missing and overpenning everything I'd shot at. I also didn't get citadelled once during the battle. All the damage was from fire or straight-up shell damage.