Still in the middle of my next Patrol in April '41, and no sign of a convoy up North. I was heading back South when the weather turned crap, really crap.

Anyhow, SW of Ireland my Sonar gets a Merchant contact, but it's 8pm and dark and miserable out, so I wouldn't even try to take him on. Instead I shadow him during the night, getting a good sense of his heading etc., and wait for light and hopefully better weather.

Morning comes but the weather is still terrible. I line up my first attack run on the Merchant, but by the time I can finally see him in my scope he's only 300m away, and I'm pretty sure that's not enough time for my torpedo to arm. I finally find out he's a C2 though. At about 350m he disappears from view into the crap weather.

Not really sure what to do, as I don't want to just shadow him until the weather improves, I decide to take a chance. Using what I know of his heading etc., I line up ahead of him again for a 90 degree shot, listening as my Sonar reels of the decreasing heading of the contact. I set Tube 1 for 4.5m and Impact Detonator (I normally use Magnetic, but not in these waves!) and open the tube door. When he's about 12 degrees off my starboard bow, I just fire, blind.

And what do you know, I get a hit! Not only a hit, but right in mid-ships and he breaks in two immediately and I've got a kill. I surface and go on my way again, very happy with myself for a blind kill... :)

J.

Captain's log U-110/VIIC

Departed St. Nazaire, April 30th, 1943 at 19:45hrs for interdiction patrol of grid AM19. This makes the 33rd patrol for this captain and crew. It makes me suspicious the amount of time it's taking to blockade England. Donitz estimated that if we can sink 750,000 tons a month, for 12 months, Britain will be defeated, but so far we haven't put nearly enough tons to the bottom. We've commissioned 100 new boats, and yet we are sinking now less tonnage overall. I worry that this war will drag on for some time still...

Traversed Bay of Biscay with no aircraft sightings

May 1, 1943. 2147hrs. Grid BF45. Sky and seas: clear, calm. Surfaced attack against lone small merchant. 1 torpedo. 2407 tons.

May 2, 1943. 1311hrs. Grid BE63. Sky and seas: degrading, choppy. Submerged attack against lone small merchant. 1 torpedo prematurely detonated, target seemed not to have noticed. 2nd torpedo hit. 2343 tons.

May 2, 1943, Evening, 2231hrs Grid BE39 Sky and seas: clear, calm. Intercepted Large convoy, bound for England. 1 torpedo hit on large (T3) tanker, sunk for 11,564 tons. 1 torpedo missed on attempted shot on trailing T3 tanker, but the attempt with the stern tube was a hit. 2nd T3 tanker sunk for 11,653 tons. Evaded pursuit by escorts, some damage. Am continuing into operations area.

Patrol of AM19 completed with no enemy shipping sighted.
Trip to American waters planned and plotted.

May 6th, 1943. Late evening. Grid AL23 Sky and seas: clear, calm. Large tanker convoy. 20 tankers estimated.
A gold mine inside a diamond mine! Avg speed, 14 kts. Sunk 3 escorts. 1 River DE, 1 Sommers DD, 1 Flower Corvette. 2 Fletcher DD remain as escorts. Enemy actions make approach difficult. Depth charged by the Sommers destroyer, damage serious now and silent running makes repairs difficult. Have returned to periscope depth and have tracked the median course of the convoy. Despite damages and only 2 torpedos left, am continuing pursuit.

U-Konig, Out.

Total Annhilation
 

I used to play TA. Now I sink ships.

It's late march 1943. We set out from St. Nazaire heading for DE66.
Halfway to the Azores We run into a small convoy, mostly small merchants and coastals but also a juicy liner and a C2. It's stormy and wild and night has fallen as we crash into the port flank of the convoy. It's protected by 2 corvettes and an armed trawler. They don't seem to know what they're doing. We don't get pinged and we're able to go in at ahead standard. The exec picks off the C2 with 2 eels and the liner with one. As they're going down we take out a merchant with the stern tube and another off our bow as it tries to snake past the burning hulk of the liner. I go to flank speed and turn south west in the middle of the convoy , running through it as the tubes are reloaded. The escorts are fussing at the back with two freighters that have ground to a halt. It's futile, they're dead in the water and it's only a matter of time before they join their comrades in Davy Jones locker. Meanwhile I'm free to roam at the front of the convoy.We take out the remaining four ships. We've sunk all ten merchants and we go deep and head nor'west at a creep, effortlessly outflanking the escorts to the east. I give the command surface and tidy up. There's only minor damage from some lucky pot shots we took when accidentally broaching the surface. I'll have to talk to the chief about ballasting the boat better- she can pop up like a cork after the tubes are emptied.
We're down to one eel in external reserves, an acoustic homer and about 100 rounds of HE. I decide to head south to Gelting and reload before moving to our designated square. We cruise on through the dawn and then suddenly pick up the 3 escorts still running before us. We go to flank and I see how close I can stern chase them. At 3.5 clicks we drop to 7 meters and run with decks awash. Two thousand yards off the nearest corvette we blow the tanks and I scramble the deck gun crew. Before the corvette knows it she's taken 3 direct hits from astern and she staggers about to engage us. Her sister is about 3 thousand yards off and comes about sharpish, opening fire with her 4 incher and I drop down to dead slow and we duke it out for a few rounds. The corvette is belching black smoke from a couple of hits amidships but coming at us like an express train. She's taken the bait. We turn tail and run like hell. The stern tube hisses and the homer shoots towards her passing close at 1500 yards. The corvette sprints at us as she tries to position for an attack run but I'm already 140 meters down and racing to pass crush depth - I figure the boat can take it after the light hits she's taken. I order a dog leg and hear the gratifying rip and thunder of the corvette as she's shredded by the homer from the stern. We come up astern the second corvette who is listing stern down and lame in the water and finish her off with the deck gun. We get a peppering from her machine gun but all the fights gone out of her and she goes down spitting and burning. The armed trawler piles in from the south intent on revenge. We go under and keep quiet. She faffs about for a bit and heads south again. Out boat rises and the chase is on again. After an hour we pull within range. The gun crew know the drill by now, systematically taking her apart. I struggle to hold the boat down and bow on to the trawler. If she manages to come about we're in trouble from the long barrelled heavy calibre she has mounted on the bow. But it never happens, she explodes and goes down in a flash. As we head for Gelting I suddenly realise that for the first time in my career I have destroyed an entire small convoy with no survivors - 13 vessels for around 43,000 Gross tonnes. We never spotted a single life boat or raft in that ferocious sea and there is subdued silence and grief amongst the crew as we think their families and the enormity of what we have done in the heat of battle.. But by by the time we arrive at Gelting on the 3rd of April we are happy and flushed with our success. The brass have read our triumphant signal and it's beer and medals all round. Surely now with such overwhelming successes we cannot fail to bring England to her knees?

SHIII Patrol logs and stories
 

May, 1944: 3 days into my patrol to CN63 I get a radar contact. After having several previously unsuccessful patrols, I figured I would take a look to see if I had a convoy. Soon my radioman notifies me of two more radar contacts. At this point the crew and I are excited, we finally have something to shoot at! I order a change of course to 180 to intercept at ahead flank. Tracking by radar, we determined that the contacts were on a course of 270 at 8 kts. About 10km away, and ahead of the convoy I ordered to periscope depth and ahead 1/3. After a few minutes the sonarman advises me of three sound contacts. At this point the crew grew silent. The sound contacts were warships, approaching fast. Soon after our sonarman lit up and started calling out merchant contacts. Everyone was reassured once we found out that we had come across a taskforce! We began setting up for a torpedo attack, keeping an ear on the warships. They appeared to be turning back to the TF so we pressed our attack. Coming up to periscope depth we set our sights on an ammunition ship, while lining up the shot everyone froze as we were hit with a sonar ping. I spun the scope around and found a DD turning on us. I ordered tubes 1, 2, and 3 fired, and sounded the alarm for emergency dive. The first set of depth charges hit us hard and destroyed the periscopes. We had severe flooding, but the crew managed to stop it. For 12 hours we were forced deeper and deeper until we had enough. One DD stayed behind keeping us under so we decided to test our luck and returned to periscope depth. Tracking him with hydrophones and getting ranges with sonar, we lined up a hail mary shot, let tube 4 loose, and waited an agonizing 25 seconds. Right on cue, we were rewarded with an explosion and the sounds of bulkheads collapsing! After waiting an hour to make sure we were clear, we surfaced to assess the damage then made a speedy return trip to Toulon to repair, rearm, and refuel. Final tally was 1 Destroyer down, and 3 misses on an ammunition ship.

Ill probably screw this whole thread up, but..... Im currently getting shot to death.... always find DD to screw my day..... Might as well call me the idiot of the Sub sim fleet.. lol

Hello bud.

What boat you in, what year, gunfire or depth charges....?

Riccardo

An old dog returns to sail the seas.

Just leaving Kiel, so there is little to tell. I hope to give more news soon.

Leutnant z. S. HEINZ DÜBLER
U19 (IIA) Unterseebootsflotille Weddigen

Orders to patrol AN81

01SEP39 0322: We sailed to the assigned patrol area, with good weather.

http://i963.photobucket.com/albums/a...b.jpg~original
Bye bye Kiel...

-------------------------------------

Mods
NYGM 3.6D
Realism and gameplay related hardcode fixes V16B1
Hitman's GUI
SH5 Water for SH3 Ultimate V10 16Km
SH3Commander
Opt.:100%Realism
House rule: Iron man

Welcome back!
 

Yes, it has been a long time in dry-dock :Kaleun_Sleep:

Type XIIC i think. i try to start in 39. havnt made it past Jan of 40.
Im just to damn agressive.


Yesterday for instance: I found a convoy in the middle of knowhere.. 16 ships i think. I didnt know about the 17th. The 17th was a DD....or was it 14 ships?? i cant remember.. Before i knew about him it was already too late. Put a couple of shells through my bow. it was sinky sink after that.. LOL I love this game!!

Ive taken time out from playing the steelsharks GWX3 new SCR Campaign due to writing the next instalment that will take our campaign to the end of February 1941 or hopefully end of may 1941 ill work on it until end of November just now im putting in convoy HX-58 by November 30th I should have 200 plus convoys in the campaign also found good info on Coastal Command Squadrons & aircraft used airbases 48sqd Avro Anson Hooton park Liverpool
502sqd Whitley Aldergrove Belfast other air bases Leuchars Fife Delting Kent

regards blackswan

Well, I almost bought it last night. I was following a small convoy consisting of three cargo ships and a patrol craft when I started picking up confusing hydrophone contacts heading in a new direction. I believed that the convoy had changed headings.

Wrong. Two convoys were involved, and they were very near each other. I popped the scope up to take a look, drew a rough line through the convoy ships to determine its new course and popped the scope back down. I swear it was no more than 3 seconds.

Then I got the first ping. I crash dived immediately, but I took a close depth charge at 40 meters hitting near the front of the boat. I immediately started to take on water. I loaded my repair specialist onto damage control and sent him to fix the fore quarters. He informed me 7:49 seconds to flood recovery in the front and then amended that to 7:50 then 7:51.

And the fore torpedo area was in worse shape.

So I loaded every officer I could find into the damage control team. Yes, even the hydrophone officer, and set them to work. That dropped my time to 2:50 and slowly ticking down. I could see that the forward torpedo tube area was flooded to the ceiling. I checked the depth gauge and got the bad news. I was at 120 meters and going down fast.

So I ordered that the boat be surfaced, but this did almost nothing to stop the rapid descent. Fortunately the pinging had stopped so I couldn't do much except hope for the best and root for the damage control team. I kicked TC up to 8 and that held for a few seconds until my crew informed me that we were nearing critical depth. I checked the gauges and saw us at 164 meters and still heading down.

Ausblasen!

I heard the comforting hiss of air, but I gave the order twice more to be sure. Ausblasen! Ausblasen! Then I checked on the damage control team. Flooding control in 43 seconds... in the fore quarters. The tube area was a whole different thing. Keep going guys!

That's when they called me back to the bridge. "We are diving too deep," they informed me. 189 meters and sinking fast.

Ausblasen!!!!

At 207 meters we got the fore quarters flooding stopped and I sent the team to work on the fore torpedo area. They must have been swimming in there. I have no idea how they were doing anything with that much water. It was hard to tell, but I think we were diving more slowly. I could hear the groaning of the metal around me in my soon-to-be coffin. So I hurried back to the bridge and checked our depth. We were at 217 meters. No, scratch that... 218.

Ausblasen!

That's when they informed me that we were at 10 percent compressed air. There was only one thing to say: Ausblasen! Then I checked the gauges. We were at 216 meters. My God. We're going to live.

"Your orders captain?"
"Ausblasen."

I ditched the destroyer-patrolled convoy in a hurry and went back to the first one where I sank a large cargo ship for 10,000 tons and a medium for 5,000. The patrol craft was helpless to stop me. Then I headed north. It's going to be a long trip around England to Wilhelmshaven.

At least we're alive.

Wow. Lucky to get two convoys and lucky to get the flooding under control. Great stuff. Someone on here said fill the damage control station then also the affected compartment to control wild flooding. Looks like it works! :p

Last time I tried was after hitting a mine off Hartlepool in 1941(I think)but we all drowned inside 2minutes... :(

I needed a mod to abandon ship I think. :D

Riccardo U-501

Amazing Zosimus! :salute: