[Onkel Neal]

Coming this January 2007 Subsim will have been on the web 10 years. Since 1997 Subsim has gone from a small home page to a worldwide community recognized by game developers and mainstream media. To celebrate the community of submarine enthusiasts, game developers, and veterans, we are having a Subsim book published.

From your computer to your bookshelf—

the 2007 Subsim Almanac

The Subsim Almanac will have articles and stories from a good cross section of game players, game developers, historians, novelists, Navy men, specialists, and notable artists. Over 350 pages of material to commemorate all things naval. This book will be available through Subsim and Amazon.com in December 2006.

The Subsim Almanac will feature:


The Flanders U-Boat Flotilla 1915 - 1918 - Deryck Swetnam MA, historian, UK
"UB6’s first patrol had an unexpected consequence. On 1 May UB6 sank the destroyer Recruit in a torpedo attackoff the Galloper Light Vesseland withdrew. The Admiralty made deployments to intercept UB6. Four trawlers on patrol off the Hinder were alerted and four destroyers were sent from Harwich to support them. The trawlers were attacked by the torpedo boats A2 and A6 from Zeebrugge. Columbia was sunk by torpedo; Barbados and Chirsit were damaged by gunfire."




Silent Hunter III Captain's Log - Florin Boitor, SH3 Exec. Producer, Romania
"SH3 was supposed to be released in September and we were late. Very, very late! There was a lot of tension inside the dev team. Sometimes it’s easier to get a million dollars rather than a single month delay. But the unthinkable happened. At the end of June we were informed that the game release would be postponed to Q1 2005 and it should include a dynamic campaign. It was truly a great decision and this kind of decision is instrumental in making a great game. Usually when this kind of announcement is made (the game release date is pushed back), the communities are very unhappy. But, the Silent Hunter community is really one of a kind and they were cheering. Last year I had the opportunity to meet some of them at the Subsim 2005 meeting in Holland and I understood better why their reaction was so positive all the time. I guess, in fact, the community is not based only on the game itself. The game is only one of the vectors that gather them."




Restoration of the USS Cod - Paul Farace, curator of memorial sub Cod, USA,
"Salvation for COD came one day during a visit to the Washington Navy Yard to pick up various artifacts for COD. During a brief chat with Navy Curator Henry Vadnais, Jr, in his office, I asked him if it would be possible to get the 5-in. wet mount on display next door in the Navy Museum. It was a question I had asked him every time I visited him. But this time after telling me the Navy Museum would never part with their prized gun, he added that he had located one for COD. I remember asking quite seriously if he was kidding me. Several months later, just in time for a crew reunion, we installed the seven-ton gun on its mount on COD’s main deck. Today, that gun fires salutes to visiting ships and commemorates important events with a very loud bang!"




Back to the Future: Submarines in Need of a New Mission - Bill Nichols, analyst, former USS Nautilus crewman, USA
"In December 1947 Admiral Nimitz made a formal recommendation to the Secretary of the Navy to begin development of a nuclear submarine. In his letter, Nimitz noted that nuclear submarines would give the Navy a secure means of conducting offensive strategic missile operations. In August 1948 BuShips established a Nuclear Power Branch, headed by Captain Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover soon put the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut on contract to design the world’s first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN 571). Construction began on June 14, 1952 with a formal keel-laying by President Truman. USS Nautilus was commissioned in September 1954 and began sea trials on January 17, 1955 with the historic message, Underway on Nuclear Power. "




The Dreadnought Era - David Millichope, historian, photographer, UK
"In February 1906 a new player entered the world of naval politics; HMS Dreadnought. She was to define the naval era for a period of no more than thirty years. Her brief stay occurred during a global power struggle that stretched from the beginning of Britain’s relative decline as the world’s first superpower, circa 1870 (the emergence of other major industrialized nations) until 1989 (the collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of America as the world’s only superpower). This struggle polarizes around the eruption of two massive military conflicts we now refer to as the First and Second World Wars. HMS Dreadnought was so significant she lent her name to a whole generation of capital ships that held centre stage in naval strategy and thinking. By the time of the second major conflict (1939-45) her day had all but gone, her pre-eminence replaced by aircraft carriers."




In Memoriam: Erich Topp (U-552) - Theodore P. Savas, owner, president of Savas Publishing and Consulting Group, USA
"I had the pleasure of meeting Topp when he was visiting the States in January 1996. The genesis of that meeting was rather unusual. I had just finished reading Eric Rust’s wonderful book Naval Officers Under Hitler: The Story of Crew 34 (Praeger, 1991). One of the footnotes mentioned a recent letter and interview with Topp conducted by Rust. I am still not sure what prompted my decision, but I picked up the phone and called Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Dr. Rust was friendly and helpful. "I just spoke with Topp," he told me. "He happens to be here in Texas visiting his daughter. I don’t think he would mind if you called him. Would you like the number?"I thanked him and hung up. My wife was shocked. "You are going to call a German submarine commander on the phone and chat?" Indeed, I could never have envisioned the journey I was about to begin."




Tesseraction Games and Enigma: Rising Tide - Kelly Asay, Deep Six Producer, USA
"As an independent developer, you have a couple of paths you can take. Contract work for somebody else, create a pitch for a product and shop till you find a publisher; or do what we did: raise some capital on our own, put in a couple years of nearly free work and create your own product. On this path there are also choices to make, particularly the choice of what level at which to compete. Since ones reach should (in nearly all circumstances) exceed ones grasp, we set our sites high: we would make an "A" level product utilizing as much high-end middleware as we could, it would be a massively multiplayer game, and we would release it electronically via online partnerships.
It didn’t quite work out that way."




The Lucky Lighter - Jason Lobo, writer, USA
Man overboard! Mueller screamed out. Everyone turned to look, where Kohler had been standing, but it was too late. Gunther Kohler was gone and there would be no finding him in this storm at night.
Adrenaline surged through Grunni as he flailed wildly in the water. He waved and yelled to get his to get his comrades’ attention, but the U-boat melted into the stormy darkness There he was, alone, bobbing up and down the North Atlantic, waiting for death. He found himself surprisingly calm. He knew about hypothermia and its lethal effects, so he waited to drift into unconsciousness and oblivion. He rolled over on his back and stared at the shrouded heavens.



Submarine Silencer - Donald Ross, PhD, Scientist, USA
"During both World War I and II, the primary mission for submarines had been to attack and sink surface ships. Following WWII, our only potential enemy was the Soviet Union, which had only a few ocean-going ships. With no significant anti-surface-ship mission for US submarines, our need for a submarine force was being questioned. But the Soviets had a huge submarine fleet. To counter this threat we would need quiet submarines designed specifically for the anti-submarine role. In 1949, at the instigation of the submariners themselves, CNO directed that each fleet assign one division of four submarines "to the sole task of solving the problem of using submarines to detect and destroy enemy submarines." Submarines now had an important mission. Submariners could give a collective sigh of relief. A new category called SSKs (K for Killer) was soon designated."




Back in the Day – Life aboard a U.S. Nuclear Submarine - Tim Grab, US Navy, USA
"Request permission to come aboard."
It was a sunny spring day in May of 1993 when I reported aboard the Improved Los Angeles class submarine USS Annapolis, SSN-760, at the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Connecticut. She was at EB for her PSA, or Post-Shakedown Availability. This is a shipyard period in which a new submarine, after her commissioning, launch, and first year of operations with the fleet, receives all of the upgrades and equipment that were not part of its original construction contract. For a nub, the first few days after reporting aboard can be a bit overwhelming. He must become familiar with the layout of the ship, meet the 120-ish crewmembers (and at least try to remember some of their names), and gain a minimal familiarity with the locations of basic accommodations.
The only thing I really dreaded about reporting to the boat was: To crank or not to crank. "