(Story) U-104

[MantiBrutalis]

~~~Not part of the story~~~

Thank guys. I think now there are about enough individual sailors to talk about. Any more and it could become confusing. Also, I accidentally swapped the names of our medic and sonarman, I did make up a few other names, which were used for my different careers. I hope I won't mix them up...

Edit - also I started making up my own English words... Confusive my ass -.-

[MantiBrutalis]

As experienced by Herbert Krauss, 7th January 1941, 6 AM, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

Waiting under water again. Still going deeper, meter by meter. I hate being so deep. We are getting slowly to intended 200 meters. Yesterday, after a week of doing nothing, we had to reload all the tubes and we even brought down 5 external torpedoes. I am exhausted, but it hasn’t ended yet. The escorts should be above us any time now. After this attack, we will reload all the tubes again, and I doubt the captain will leave the last external up there.

Suddenly all things go to hell. “210.” I panic for a second: “I thought we were supposed to stop at 200? Why are we still diving?”

No answer. Then I hear the captain all the way from the control room: “What is going on? Level us up!”
“The dive planes are stuck sir!”
“In what position?”
“Neutral.”
“220, sir!”
Now the panic truly begins.

“Every free man to the stern torpedo room! Back slow! Do something with those damn planes!”

We are all rushing through the narrow corridor into the back of the boat. We hope that we can level it up in time.

“230!”
Quiet humming of electric engines. No sound despite that.

“240!”
Somebody reminds the captain: “Sir, this boat is not supposed to go under 220.”
“Shut up! I know. But we can’t be heard from the surface.”

“250! Sir, we are still not leveling!”
“Shut up!”

“260!”
“Back standard.”
“Sir?”
“Back standard, are you deaf?” He is. He works with diesel engines, he has to be deaf by now. Unlike the British up there, I fear.

“Sir, we stopped diving.”
“Depth?”
“265.”
We are very slowly leveling up, electric engines saved us from death, while at the same time they invited another death to find us.

Finally, a bit of luck finds us: “Dive planes working, sir.”
“Ahead slow. Maintain depth. We are deep enough for their sonars and with luck we have just enough time to get away before depth charges begin to fall. Back to your stations, men!”

I hope he’s right.

[MantiBrutalis]

Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 7th January 1941, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

We are overtaking the convoy once again. This captain is crazy! This morning, when we were trying to slip under the escort of the convoy, our dive planes got stuck, so we dived uncontrollably. It was very tense, we had to keep ourselves away from death by pressure with our engines. Which alerted the enemy. We were deep enough to slip away from them, but this shook the crew’s morale. And the captain wants to try again in a few hours! We nearly died there, and he plans to try the exact same thing even with these damn diving planes against a convoy which we already attacked twice. They will be expecting us! This is madness!



Note – I know it may sound like I made this entire bit up. I didn’t. For some damn bug I couldn’t maintain depth when doing 2 knots or less. If I was diving, the boat would just continue diving, unless I sped up to 3 knots. I encountered this bug before, but the other way around – I couldn’t stay down, the boat would float up. I think it’s something in the GWX. Anyway, I found a way to include it in the story.

[MantiBrutalis]

As experienced by captain Georg Braun, 7th January 1941, 9 PM, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

Here we go. Again. I refuse to let this convoy go, as long as I still have some explosive babies on board. We slipped under the convoy again. Stupid British escorts. They have no idea. Any time now, come on. Come on! We are late already, we are going up in between the last ships of the convoy. Come on! Get there already, you lazy excuse for a boat! Come on!

Surface! Now! “All stop. Open tubes one and two.” There’s a nice fat some 600 meters on front of us. I quickly turn the periscope right to look behind the boat. There’s a cargo ship too, but we have to act fast, the angle is a bit unlucky already.

Then an alarm goes off in my mind. What did I see? I turn the periscope back to 90 degrees. A small freighter sails perfectly straight away from us. That means the ship which is supposed to go in its path behind it is… I turn the periscope to the other side as fast as I can. “Oh… “

[MantiBrutalis]

As experienced by Max Wermuth, 7th January 1941, 9 PM, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

Listening through the hydrophones like this is unusual. This is my first. Until now it has always been listening for rhythmic, metallic noises in midst of humming noises of waves and other natural things. This is my first convoy. This is unknown to me, totally different. Now I have to, yet again, listen for screws and engines. With other screws and engines on the background. Everywhere. It’s very hard to make anything out of all the noise up there. It feels like there is one single monstrous machine all around us. Above us. I clear my mind and focus on the listening part.

Small ships, big cargos, fast engines, slow ones, a tiny screw, two huge screws. All around me. Mostly, I am trying to listen for a suddenly accelerating smaller engine with two screws of an escort ship. I am trying hard, but this is unlike anything I have ever experienced. I do not know if I am guessing the distances right. Also I have to listen if the sounds are closing, moving away, moving around us…

I turn the wheel a bit more to check the escort at 260 degrees. There’s no sound of an escort – instead, there’s a loud swishing of water… Close. And closing. “Oh… “



Note - I really wish the story will catch up to my saved game soon. I haven't played the game since I started this, because I fear that I may forget some of the stuff that happened or the ideas I have for the story. It is slowly getting there. Almost there! I really don’t mind if nobody’s reading this, I am just having a good time refreshing my English and giving my boat and my crew a feel and a soul.

[MantiBrutalis]

As experienced by captain Georg Braun, 7th January 1941, 9 PM, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

There’s a deafening screech while we are all swept to the right. My face arrives at a bunch of pipes. Then the body comes, my side stopped by something very pointy. The sound of traction between metals continues for a second, then stops. We are quite turned to our side, nearly horizontal.

A quick glance toward the depth meter – we are still pretty much at periscope depth, though I have my doubts about reliability of the device after such a hit. The only sound belongs to the ship right above us. It looks like there is nothing in need of urgent repairs, the crew is silently standing up and waiting … for my orders! They really are hero material.

But the fact remains, we are still on our side. I reach up for the periscope, using it as a support ,climb a bit and try to look what it has to show me. It works! Although there’s nothing to see. Suddenly, a giant screw comes from nowhere. It misses the periscope by inches, followed by a trail of bubbles.

My brain goes into turbo mode. The ship hit us somewhere in front of our tower. Tubes should be fine. Men in torpedo rooms… I don’t know. Not much time has passed, we are still near the surface. The convoy didn’t have the time to react yet. I am not going into the depths without a ship accompanying me down there!

“Open all tubes!” I shout. They obey. I try to remember where the ships should be now. “Tubes one and four. Salvo, bearing 350, spread 4. Fire. Tubes two and three, salvo, bearing 350, spread 10. Fire.”

I try to imagine where the ship behind us is. Not much of a chance, but I’ll take it anyway. “Tubes five and six, salvo, bearing 200, spread 6. Fire.”

I wait for the sound of the last salvo leaving the boat. And now… run. “Ahead flank! Dive fast! Damage report!” We start rocking from side to side. Men are doing their jobs anyway. Good.

I try to calm myself. I realize I have trouble breathing, drops are leaving my chin. I broke my nose.

[MantiBrutalis]

Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 8th January 1941, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

Finally it’s over. Over the night, we attacked the convoy again. This time, the dive planes didn’t **** up. This time, it got even worse – a cargo ship sailed right through us. Even as we were rocking from side to side after it hit us, the captain managed to get all six tubes to fire. And we scored three hits. One ship sank immediately, other one stopped with its engines down. An escort guarded the crippled ship all the night, but it had to join the convoy in the morning, so we finished the poor bastard off.

Right now, the crew is fetching the last external torpedo down here. Including that one, we got three torpedoes in front and two in the back. Also we found out why are the escorts so bad at keeping us away – they aren’t British, they’re Canadian. Probably didn’t have much of a live action so far. Anyway, we are goi…

[MantiBrutalis]

Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 9th January 1941, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

Yesterday, as we were reloading the torpedoes, we got interrupted by the Canadian escort – quite a trap they pulled on us. They waited pretty far away, so we didn’t spot them. When they thought we might surface, they came charging right back. The boys up there had to put the torp back in the external chasing. We couldn’t move very fast, because of a free torpedo on our deck, but the captain at least turned us, so the escort didn’t have much of a target. It fired a few shot our way, but at the time of our diving, it was still some 7 kilometers away.

The Canadians left us be a few hours ago, still the captain decided to wait a bit longer. “No more Canadian jokes,” he said. I wonder if we can catch the convoy now, after they had such a lead. And maybe, just maybe the captain will let them go, finally. The collision left long shallow brown marks on the front of our tower and behind our deck gun. The deck gun seems alright, and we might yet use it, the sea is still very calm.

[MantiBrutalis]

Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 10th January 1941, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

We couldn’t find the convoy. We kept zig-zagging the ocean in hope of finding it. After nearly 24 hours, we got a message from U-122, that the convoy turned north after our last encounter. We caught them few hours later, right before the sunrise, but we didn’t perform the same trick as always. We didn’t have enough fuel to screw around again and we were quite far to overtake and prepare an ambush again. We had to act soon, so the captain ordered to fire the rest of our torpedoes from 8 kilometers away. One torpedo out of the five hit a large cargo ship, which sank a few minutes later. The escorts had no idea where we were.

Now, when we have no means to fight the convoy any more, we have other problems to attend to. We don’t have enough fuel to return to Europe and there’s a storm coming from the west. We have one option only – to make for the Belchen supply ship to refuel for our voyage back home. So, let’s head north. BdU still doesn’t respond. It bothers me, we need their help finding the supply ship.



Note - Finally the story nearly caught up to my patrol, so today I went on and finished it. I scored quite a lot, actually I beat my tonnage record - nearly three times. A lot of it was due to luck (good weather for deck gun, crazy blind torpedo fire which actually happened, etc.), but even then. I am toying with 100% realism for the next patrol, but A - I am not sure if I can learn manual targeting, and B - I am not sure if somebody reads this or I am just spamming this forum. Continuing, ending the story, trying to do next patrol differently, learning to actually sink something by myself... Decisions, decisions...

[KpnKardif]

Love the story so far, Manti! The bit about getting run over and the captain breaking his nose is great. That actually happened to me once as well, only I didn't see it coming, and it scared the crap out of me when that ship hit! I do hope you continue, as I have been enjoying reading it.

As for manual targeting, I had that same conundrum after about a year of playing. I started to get bored using the map contacts to plot everything, as I would almost never miss. So I made myself turn them off and learn manual targeting. It took some time and a lot of research to learn how, but I'm glad I did. SH3 has a whole new dimension to it when you do it manually, and hitting a ship is 1000x more rewarding. Harder yes (think my hit rate right after I switched was about 40%), but you do get better the more you practice. Try it out and see what you think!

[Cpt Aurora]

Nice reports so far, keep them comming .

[Alpha Von Burg]

Good story, I have to say. Its unique in a way where it incorporates the same story from different perspective. Keep it coming.

btw, about the bug where you just keep going down; not sure if it is a bug unique in GWX but I can say that it has happened to many of us before and many were not as fortunate as you were and ended at the bottom of the ocean, never to return.

Some say it is a bug; most like to say its part of the game mechanics to include some mechanical failures; others say its Davy Jones' pulling a helpless victim to his locker.

Cheers,

[MantiBrutalis]

Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 13th January 1941, U-104, 150km south of Greenland.

The storm has raged for three days now. Yesterday morning, we arrived at the coordinates of the Belchen supply ship, but visibility is very poor and there’s no sound of engines underwater. We don’t want to risk lights in case the British have captured the ship and are waiting for us behind the fog. The supply ship doesn’t have lights on, because they don’t know we are coming.

We are slowly searching the area. The crew is restless. If the ship isn’t here, we are done. BdU still doesn’t respond. Thing looks quite grim at the moment.



Note 1 – We will see. I will probably add SH3 Commander today and see if it breaks my standing mods or my career. I started a side career with a IIA for two reasons: Because this “main” one takes five times longer to write the story then to play the game, so I don’t get to play the game much. And to work on my manual targeting. There is a lot of options for doing this, but none seems to work for me so far. Anyway, we’ll see if I can nail it before the story ends the patrol. (Also the IIA is small and you don’t get that much action, so I can remember what is going on in the “story” career)

Note 2 – One of “my own” tweaks to the game is to make supply ships work like milkcows (as in 1.6). I hated how it made a new patrol, took a month, just so you can sail back home.

Note 3 – More notes than story in this one, sorry!

[capten yian]

Good story. Keep it coming.

[MantiBrutalis]

Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 18th January 1941, U-104, 150km south of Greenland.

This is our fifth day on the supply ship. Well not “on” the ship, but beside it. When we found it, we discovered a type VIIC U-81 “Sharkfin” waiting for two days already for the sea to calm down. The Sharkfin was damaged in the Atlantic, and like us, this supply ship was the only thing they could manage to get to. But unlike us, they can’t submerge to get a rest from the waves. The supply ship is freshly packed, so there isn’t all that much space, so the captain of the Sharkfin asked us if some of his crew could stay on our boat, until the storm passes.

Sometimes, the captain picked some of our crew to “visit” the supply ship, where the rest of Sharkfin’s crew and the supply ship’s crew were. Not anymore, captains of both U-boats had a huge argument, Sharkfin’s captain didn’t believe our captain the tonnage we sank so far and accused him of lying and faking patrol logs.

We spend our time playing cards, telling stories, and generally not doing anything useful what so ever. With our boat packed full with people, there is no space for maintenance duties. Despite the cold weather, it’s boiling hot in the boat, our medic has concerns about hygiene. Anyway, this storm has to pass someday. When that day comes, we have to part with Sharkfin. And possibly sail home. Finally.



Note 1 – With the manual targeting – I backed down a bit, I can now pretty reliably hit and sink stuff using almost exclusively the Map (F5) with Map Contact Update on. And I am angry with myself. The map has all the precise information already there, so I am only extracting the data from the map using basic geometry. Still feels like cheating. But when I try No Map Contact, I can’t even navigate to a place where I can get a decent 1,5km shot. Guessing AoB is f*ing hard and destroys all the work. Maybe if I could get to the point of shooting, things could go my way, since I think I understand what I am supposed to do. *sigh*

Note 2 – I installed SH3 Commander this morning, and so far I didn’t even launch the game. I spent the day screwing around with the settings, adding more cargo types and so on.