[propbeanie]

There was quite a bit of leeway in the wording. Early Asiatic Fleet boats out of Manila and then out of Surabaya had "In compliance to orders per ComSubAF, you are hereby ordered to proceed via [routing to patrol area] and conduct anti-shipping operations for a duration of not less than X days, communicating with Named Officer or Position all contacts" etc. Pearl initially did "When in all manner ready to depart, proceed via [routing out of harbor and destination] conducting anti-shipping patrol blah blah blah." There would also be "standing" directives issued monthly (squadron) or quarterly (command) about proper patrol procedures etc. They were usually numbered sequentially, such as 12-42, which would signify the 12th directive for the year 1942. All of the orders might be very specific, or rather ambiguous. There were also differences in their wording due to the person writing the orders and their personalities. Some guys were deadly serious, formal and "by the book" in their wording. Other guys, such as Sunshine Murray, would throw in a humorous line or two quite often, and might say something like "If you can find the time, we would appreciate it if you could stop by xx Atoll and have a look-see there". Captain Fife at Brisbane attempted the Doenitz-style and did nightlies with crews reporting in with positions and status, and would then move them around "like checkers on a playing board" for a time, then quit doing that after four of his boats were sunk in short order in early 1943, possibly due to Japanese use of HF/DF. Examples of orders can be found in some of the War Patrol Reports of some of the skippers. Others never mention theirs. In "Clear the Bridge", Richard O'Kane gives several examples of his orders, and Fluckey in "Thunder Below" alludes to some of his. Look at the differences in the War Patrol Reports, and how some guys were more verbose than three of me, while the next guy gave minimal detail... lol - same with the orders. The thing is, you can only use so many characters in the missionbriefing of the game, else you will CTD the game - been there done that... That figure of characters seems to be a function of character count versus carriage returns versus line count, etc. which makes it very difficult to do mission orders for a Narwhal doing three Primary Objectives... lol