(Unexpectedly) good job, Asashimo. Chasing the enemy subs into grounding themselves just with your active radar.

The actual story was Darter was being reckless and proceed tracking the damaged Takao. Darter got unlucky by accidentally grounding herself to the nearby shoals. Since it's already impossible for Darter to move and the threat of enemies nearby, Dace decided to rescue Darter's crew and scuttle the submarine, Dace fired her 3 inch gun and scored 21 hits on Darter but she failed, Dace leaves eventually. After escorting Takao, Naganami returned in the place and found Darter, Naganami salvaged Darter's AA gun and leave the submarine since towing is impossible. USS Rock SS-274 was called to scuttle Darter, she fired 10 torpedoes but she also failed. The USS Nautilus SS-168 arrived, she fired her 6 inch gun and scored 55 hits but she still remains.

As of 1998, this is the only thing that remains of Darter.

Lunatic6 said:

The actual story was Darter was being reckless and proceed tracking the damaged Takao. Darter got unlucky by accidentally grounding herself to the nearby shoals. Since it's already impossible for Darter to move and the threat of enemies nearby, Dace decided to rescue Darter's crew and scuttle the submarine, Dace fired her 3 inch gun and scored 21 hits on Darter but she failed, Dace leaves eventually. After escorting Takao, Naganami returned in the place and found Darter, Naganami salvaged Darter's AA gun and leave the submarine since towing is impossible. USS Rock SS-274 was called to scuttle Darter, she fired 10 torpedoes but she also failed. The USS Nautilus SS-168 arrived, she fired her 6 inch gun and scored 55 hits but she still remains.

As of 1998, this is the only thing that remains of Darter.

The 'recklessness' is debatable IMO. The charts of the area weren't great, but those that existed did show nominally open water at the site of the grounding. Beyond that by the size of the force they'd encountered alone it was blindly obvious a major naval battle was imminent, so aggressive action and risk taking beyond 'normal' operations was clearly called for. Neither ship had sustained any damage during the first spectacularly effective attack and the escorts appeared ineffective so they had little reason to flee the area on that front.

It was also unclear to the submarines at the time that they had functionally already sunk Takao. She was so damaged that repair was considered unfeasible and she would never put to see again after limping back. With no way of knowing this all they really saw as a damaged cruiser slipping away to possibly be a problem later. Within that context I would heavily dispute classifying the decision to continue stalking the damaged ship in search of an opening to assure it's sinking as 'reckless'. Indeed it's completely standard procedures.

Either way... Poor Darter, that's a rather bitter destiny -__-

Those are the cutest abyssal submarines though. It's nice to learn about history through Freddy's drawings, even if the content tends to be heavier than normal comic fare.

MD5 mismatch of http://seiga.nicovideo.jp/seiga/im4843276