I noticed that too and had the same idea in my mind:hmmm:. I seem to be one and a half month behind you so I'll use SH3Commander at a convenient point to fast forward a week or two, so we'll be even closer timewise.

I have realistic career length on, so my career as Erich Scheide probably ends in 7 - 8 patrols (or sooner, if the enemy gets me before :dead:). But I do intend to continue with a new career with a VII -type sub starting from the month Scheide's career ends.

It would be very cool to have another skipper facing the same kind of environment my current Kaleun is. We could change experiences in the bar room after the patrols, and one day maybe even having a drink to celebrate surviving the war :()1:

This is a little sum-up of my carreer.

From sep'39 to may'45 I played with 7 kaleuns ( realistic carreer length)

Sep 39 to May 40:
Kptlt Heinrich Stolz
U-15 (IIA): 4 patrols 62 days at sea, 7 ships for 26.855 tons
U-53 (VIIB): 2 patrols 49 days at sea, 9 ships for 45.620 tons

Dismissed for having sunk a KM commerce raider...

May 40 to May 40:
Kptlt Ernst Bachmann ( former 1st WO)
U-53 ( VIIB): 1 patrol 1 day at sea, 0 ship

Lost with all hands near Heligoland ( british minefield)

Jun 40 to Jun 40:
Kptlt Wilhelm Bauer
U-48 ( VIIB): 1 patrol 13 days at sea, 2 ships for 2410 tons

Forced to surrender after heavy damages in celtic sea. POW

Jul 40 to Feb 42:
Kptlt Konrad Tietz
U-46 ( VIIB): 7 patrols 167 days at sea, 39 ships for 233452 tons
U-125 (IXC): 3 patrols for 148 days at sea, 23 ships for 150428 tons

In March 42 Tietz became commander of the 2nd flotilla in Lorient.

Mar 42 to Nov 43:
Kptlt Dieter Haguenau ( former Tietz' 1st WO)
U-125 (IXC): 10 patrols 341 days at sea, 53 ships for 301379 tons

Forced to surrender after heavy damages on his last patrol. POW

Nov 43 to Dec 43:
Kptlt Karl Schenk
U-702 (VIIC): 2 patrols 37 days at sea, 8 ships for 43541 tons

Lost with all hands in BE35 by escorts from HX convoy.

Jan 44 to May 45:
Kptlt Rudolf Eickmeyer
U-151 (IID): 4 patrols 57 days at sea, 12 ships for 55672 tons
U-1193 (VIIC): 2 patrols 69 days at sea, 5 ships for 34026 tons
U-2541 (XXI): 4 patrols 113 days at sea, 16 ships for 102838 tons


Total:

2 kaleuns lost, 2 POW, 1 dismissed, 2 survived

174 ships sunk (161/13) for 996.221 tons
1041 days at sea

1939: 5 ships
1940: 36 ships
1941: 39 ships
1942: 33 ships
1943: 22 ships
1944: 18 ships
1945: 15 ships

Dismissed is an understatement in this case.
He should have been shot on sight or even better sent to the Eastern front to meet his doom there!

Congartulations on seeing the end of the war.

I have a weird problem. Ive been hunted by a single DD for over 10 1/2 hours gametime 3 hours realtime!!!! It ran out of depth charges, but consistently locks on me with pings and just passes overhead not dropping depth charges. I think its a bug because its running a pretty consistent pattern. I cannot get away because of the constant contact i have silent running, been doing EVERYTHING but still constant contacty. The damN DD needs to go back to the convoy it was protecting. Or at least call in another hunter killer group.

U-518 IXC
 

Patrol No 2 (6th for the crew)
June 20 1940
11:33 hours
U-518 set out to sea.
Destination : Grid AL 11

June 25 1940 Grid AN14
05:37 hours A swordfish poped out of nowhere and attacked. The 20mm flak took care of this "minor" issue.
08:08 hours A second one came to finish the job. Again my flak gunner shot it down. He is to be promoted and decorated after those succeses.

July 7 1940 Grid AL11
18:21 Twin engined bomber shot down (Hudson)
21:07 An other air attack. This time U-518 crash dived but a lucky bomb exploded next to the forward deck. Flooding and damages to the bow torpedo room ,quarters and batteries. Fortunately the plane did not return.
Flooding and damages were taken care of , but the LI estimated that U-518 couldn't dive below 90 - 100m.

July 18 1940 Grid AM52
Two ship convoy attack in very bad weather
19:47 hours Empire type freighter sunk 2 bow + 2 stern torpedoes
20:07 hours Ore carrier sunk in a huge explosion 2 bow torpedoes

July 20 1940 Grid AM51
10:25 hours Great lakes freighter sunk with 1 bow torpedo

July 23 1940 Grid AM29
Convoy attack 4 bow torpedoes fired 2 hits scored
14:47 Small merchant sunk by 1 bow torpedo

Finally we had a break in the storms that were hitting us from the beginning of the patrol.
External torpedeos moved in and loaded with no problem.

July 28 1940 Grid AL38
Convoy attack.
This time the standard procedure was ignored. U-518 managed to penetrate the destroyer screen and attacked at close range
6 torpedoes fired 6 hits scored
02:20 hours Turbine tanker T-2 sunk by 2 bow torpedoes
02:23 hours Medium merchant 04 sunk by 2 stern torpedoes
Whale factory ship hit by 2 bow torpedeos but she survived
The enemy pinged us twice but no DCs were dropped.

August 4 1940
16:42 hours U-518 docked at Wilhelmshaven Germany
Hull intergity was 70%
6 ships sunk
35803 tons
3 aircrafts shot down
46 days at sea.
New base : Lorient France.

I guess you don't have any torpedoes left? If you have one left and he doesn't have depth charges, just sink the bastard.

Another trick might be just making your way away from the convoy at 1 knots. Given 12 hours or whatnot, it might eventually decide to join the convoy it should be protecting.

If it's a bug you're pretty much screwed, I think, so maybe you could even try saving when the other contacts are gone. If it happens to reload, the destroyer's routines are might be calculated again. But first I would really just keep on trying to lose him from your track until you absolutely need to surface.

patrol 7, U-451
 

29.3.1942
Ob.Lt. z S. Erich Scheide
U-451 ("die Elster"), VIIC, 7.th Flotilla, St.Nazaire
Orders: Patrol AL15
Location: Grid BE66
Weather: 0m/s, clear, no rain, visibility 11-13 kilometers

Raid on St.Nazaire. The start of the patrol was peaceful, no ships or aircraft sighted. However we just got a radio message from BDU, that that the British have made a raid at St.Nazaire. We were very lucky we sailed just a couple of days before the raid. It would have been no good facing a destroyer screen and probably air cover as well, in the shallow waters near the port.

Testing BOLD. During the trip I made two test runs with the new Bold canister we now have in our boat. The canister is active for a period of five minutes and seems to sink about 13 meters during the time it’s active. The canister could be seen from the periscope quite nicely when launched at periscope depth. In five minutes of silent running at 2 knots I can only advance 300 meters, so I think it would be better to launch the canister at flank speed, then return to silent running, change course and dive about 20 meters deeper.

Action report. Tried to intercept a reported convoy, but estimated it’s position just out of reach of our G7e torpedoes. Course 235, speed 8 knots., BE66. Four escorts one on each side. Found a Black Swan trailing the convoy, making 2 knots, heavily damaged by something. Sunk it with one torpedo. The ship noticed our periscope and shot at it, but luckily they fired too soon and too inaccurate to make me pay for my mistake. Surfaced and noticed an inbound Liberty frachter. Simultaneously we noticed two ships making their way north. Estimated their course while simultaneously attacking the Liberty frachter. The first torpedo destroyed the engine room, stopped it, but didn’t sink it. Two next ones were duds (shot at a bad angle) The fourth one worked (AOB still 0, but torpedo set to magnetic and depth setting 10 meters). Raced to intercept the two unknown ships and managed to sink them – a walfabriksschiff and an alter kleiner frachter. An extremely busy day from about 0300 to 1200, contacts here and there. There were even some dolphin sounds on the hydrophone!

Situation report. We got another radio report informing us that the convoy we tried to attack is now heading south. There’s five torpedoes left and we are now chasing the convoy – I'd rather face a weakly defended convoy than patrolling our assigned grid AL15 which is protected by airplanes flying from Iceland.

He damaged me pretty bad. All tubes destroyed, Hydrophones damaged and will take hours to fix. :(. THe convoy is long gone i have been trying to crawl to a shallow depth to sit and make repairs. All i wanna do is make it home. I reloaded but the pattern still persists. Never seen a bug like that.

However i will try 1 knot, see if he hears that.

I may have just ran into an "elite" destroyer. I keep thinking he is bringing up a hunter killer group, i hope not, because i am blind underwater! I did notice that numeours aircraft have arrived and patroled around the area. Dropping Depth charges (i am assuming where the DD directs them), then taking off. But i think if he called up a Killer group it would have came already. Maybe its the HMS Starling :ping:. :O: Lets hope not

If it is, you might end up having to either join the list of sunken U-boats by HMS Starling or to surrender.

If it is a bug, another thing you could try would be to surface and dive again as soon as possible - in hope that the bug routine interrupts that way.

There's always the possibility of trying to hit in a gun battle with the deck gun. Maybe you get lucky and damage it's sound locating capabilities and manage to dive back to safety before he gets your boat too damaged.

Good luck to you!

P.S. Oh this came to my mind too, you had the game on time compression during the destroyer tracking you. I think this might be a factor in him reacquiring you pretty clearly. Try not using any time compression. He doesn't have any depth charges, so you can leave him circling for around you for some hours in real time, get a snack or a break, come back and try to shake him off again.

Took a long break, trying to kick the rust off
 

I'm at the end of 1940, trying to camp out in the western approaches and harass convoys as much as possible. I got pretty comfortable with manual TDC on single merchants before taking a break, now it's time to climb the learning curve again.:know:

U-518 IXC
 

Patrol No3 (7th for the crew)
August 5 1940
21:41 hours
U-518 set out to sea with orders to patrol grid AL22 and return to Lorient

August 10 1940 Grid AN14
04:45 hours Small merchant sunk by 5 105mm rounds
Before she went down she called for help and a V&W destroyer showed up. A misjudge in the DDs course put U-518 in danger.
The first two DC attacks either missed or were avoided.
In his third run the DD scored a hit may be direct but sure a very close miss. Bow planes destroyed , hydrophones out of action and the port propeller damaged beyond repair. Flooding was controlled and U-518 was able to maitain depth at 68m at 1 kts despite the attacks.
For 10-11 hours game time (I don't know in real time) U-518 was trying to shake the DD off. He must have run out of charges since no more attacks were pressed.
As we couldn't hear a thing we continued straight at 1kt maintaining depth.
At that point we blew ballast and came to the surface. He was gone. U-518 was unable to dive any more.
Desicion : Return to Wilhelmshaven

18:15 hours Small trawler sunk with 13 105mm rounds targeted at long range.

August 12 1940
14:38 Docked at Wilhelmshaven with 68% hull intergity.
2 ships sunk
2494 tons

We survived this time.

Welcome back kaleun, and good hunting! :arrgh!:

Good work, :up:

Not a bug.

He knows you'll eventualy have to come up for air, or to recharge batteries.
If he can hold contact, he'll be looking forward to meeting you.

Good luck.

Hmmm. Guess they'll have to kill me first.
You won't be able to catch up to the dates any other way (unless we both survive). My IXC goes out for longer periods of time than your VIIC, and we consistently get 56 days in port between patrols.

Don't use Commander but, I run Boat Careers instead of Kaleun Careers. If one gets too many patrols, or has tonnage that's beginning to go beyond historicaly acceptable numbers, they get retired into school-boat status. (It only hurts when I have to retire a IXB, and climb into a IXC.)

U159 IXC. Patrol 2. Not too good.
 

Underway from Lorient on 28.jul.42.
Bound for patrol grid DC71, 150 miles W of Florida, USA.

Everything was going well until we got to DC67, on 27.aug.42.
It would seem that U159 is much more popular with american flyers, than with the RAF. They just couldn't wait to meet her, and shower her with gifts. By patrol's end the the Aircraft Alarm Game score will be USA 7 - England 1.

Did our grid without reward. No surface contacts, at all. We then worked our way northward, deciding on the scenic route, in search of targets.

U159 was finaly introduced to a whole convoy full of eligable merchants, BY ONE OF THE ESCORTS. He didn't make the introduction until after he tryed shooting her, and then drowning her. Both attemps failed, but not without "injuries" (damage).

U159 made her way home, and was again assaulted in The Bay, by an RAF pilot.

She docked on 17.okt.42 with 0 ships sunk, 20% Fuel Reserves, and 75% Hull Integrity.

U159's history to date:
2 war patrols completed between 11.apr.42 and 17.okt.42.
1 ship sunk for 11.654 GRT.

Glad you survived it.
They beat up my girl on her last patrol too.
She too headed for home, but empty handed.

Quite a patrol. It must have been a nervecracking experience. And then back to port with a sub that can't dive! Excellent:salute:


Oh I see the problem. With different boats, you have really long patrols and rest periods and my patrols are often really short - on the last one I bumped into heavy traffic at BE66 and a convoy and was out of torpedoes in three days of action. The patrol lasted only something like 10 - 12 days. If the need arises, I'll adjust the time period when SH3Commander retires my current Kaleun.

Cool.
You'll probably score alot higher tonnage than I do.

I think having GWX's 16 km visibility mod, Raduz's hydrophone mod and noticing glitches in the time compression makes it a little too easy finding ships. It would be nicer and more realistic to have longer patrols and less contacts. I think I might make some experiments with a schedule of regular checks with the hydrophone and just ignore the glitches in TC and only accept hydrophone contacs farther away than 20 kilometers if the sounds come from a convoy and not a single ship.