IHW: Pigboats First Session

I ran a playtest of IHW: Pigboats tonight, and we had a blast! It is November of 1941, and the officers of the USS Thresher are invited to the admiral's Thanksgiving ball. The Skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Leonard Markakas, tells Lt. Will Montgomery, Lt. Lamarr Bullock, and Lt. jg Beauregard Tambeaux to get on their dress whites and their dancing shoes. The Skipper meets a Japanese girl, the daughter of a professor of Philology. Lamarr meets the Admiral's wife and gets her to do the two step. Will meets a young lady breaking up with her boyfriend, and gets into a fight with him. the Skipper cancels all his liberty and sends him back to the ship. Beau dances with half a dozen girls, and excites Will's envy and hatred - it turns out Beau is a spectacular dancer, like a young Fred Astaire.

During the ball, the Admiral takes the skipper aside and tells him he has to take a "passenger", an Australian man named Mr. Graves, and land him in a quiet spot on the Celebes coast of the Makassar Strait - without, of course, informing the Dutch of his presence. They are scheduled to leave on the 28th. Lamarr barely makes the departure, as he was entertaining a young lady named Cindy Lou. They set off to the Dutch East Indies.

As they are on their way, Lamarr notices the sound of twin screws paralleling the Thresher. The skipper ordered a course change, and the tailing ship soon copied the new course. The Officer of the Deck, Lt. Montgomery, sees a submarine's conning tower on the tailing ship's bearing, and Lt. Bullock confirmed it was not American, whatever it was. The Skipper orders a crash dive with a sharp turn to port, and silent running immediately after, creating a knuckle in the water.

Will sends the lookouts down below, and follows immediately, but mis-dogs the bridge hatch, so that there is a thin crack. Lamarr and Beau get up into the conning tower to help. Beau can't budge it, so he dogs the hatch to the Control Room, so the sub won't sink, whatever happens. Lamarr, who is quite a bit stronger than Beau and Will, is able to force the bridge hatch open, then shut it, leaving water knee deep in the conning tower. In silent mode, they cannot pump the conning tower dry, so they stay wet.

The Skipper orders the sub down to its test depth of 250 feet, and the other sub goes right over it, circles back, and eventually leaves. With the AC and ventilation off, the sub rapidly heats up to Death Vally hot with high humidity, except for the conning tower with its big-ass salt water heat sink. The Thresher continues running silent, hoping they have thrown the enemy off their trail.

The session ends there.

-clash