Stories and Patrol Logs + Screenshots and Videos (merged)

[Silent-Killer]

Watch out! Shark attack!!!

[Sulikate]

:rotfl: nice one mate!

[Snacko]

[Safe-Keeper]

Silent, you need to "crash surface" that thing near a lifeboat.

[sqk7744]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

And now for something completly different...
Misadventures in modding:

Let's see if the Waitress is on rollerskates sir

[sqk7744]

Experimenting with nHancer settings. Here are a couple @ 1280x768, 4xMS + 2x SLI SS , 8xAA, 8x FA, Vsync force open GL Triple Buffer. Would be interestesting in seeing what other folks are enjoying for settings.

[Sunset Harbor Cruise]


[Ship Spotted bearing 090]


[The Mess Hall now has a swim-up Bar]


[Rookies on Watch]


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This last one is nuts! With patch v1.2, new (and short) campaign mode. I fired 1 deck gun shell (By accident of course) at the nearest ship and Pearl Harbor went bananas. I guess there is allot of resentment and competition among the fleet since an all-out brawl erupted that included every ship in the harbor! (Don’t try this with a 'real' campaign you care about -just for testing)

[When DE's go bad]

Here's a short animation:
http://www.compuglobalhypermeganet.t...s/sh4/loop.gif

[Keelbuster]

Originally Posted by sqk7744

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This last one is nuts! With patch v1.2, new (and short) campaign mode. I fired 1 deck gun shell (By accident of course) at the nearest ship and Pearl Harbor went bananas. I guess there is allot of resentment and competition among the fleet since an all-out brawl erupted that included every ship in the harbor! (Don’t try this with a 'real' campaign you care about -just for testing)

[When DE's go bad]

Omg! :rotfl:I love it! Fire a shot then drop to PD and watch the whole thing through the Obs Scope!

[sqk7744]

Originally Posted by Keelbuster

Omg! :rotfl:I love it! Fire a shot then drop to PD and watch the whole thing through the Obs Scope!

Yip

[Buster0083]

Nice pics Buster....nice pics

[Buster0083]

Thanks Uber

[AVGWarhawk]

Nice pics men

I like the racing destroyer and the sub

[Sailor Steve]

Great shots! I especially like the first one - close-up in the night.

[Quillan]

Disclaimer: I reloaded a save game in the middle of this one. NEVER go off to the bathroom (or anyplace else) and leave the game running on time compression. That's the moral of this story.

June 12, 1942. I'm ordered to depart Pearl Harbor and make a photo recon of the Japanese port of Osaka. We set off to the NNW at Ahead Full bound for Midway. Along the way we encounter a friendly TF, one carrier with plenty of escorts, bound to the north. Hmmm, wonder if there are Jap fleet remnants up there running from the battle at Midway. No matter, I'm not going to investigate.

After a refuelling at Midway we head due west. Less than 100 miles from Midway we get attacked by a Zero. What? Where the hell is a Zero coming from out here? And why didn't my brand new, I-SD radar pick it up? Damned new tech, prone to breakdowns (1.2 breakdown, I suppose). From this point, we adopt hostile waters SOP. Submerge half an hour before dawn, surface half an hour after dusk, run at Ahead 1/3 the entire way. The trip from there to Japan is uneventful.

Intel has suggested the possibility of minefields in the vicinity of Osaka. Examination of the naval charts shows the channel is very narrow between the islands, but there is deep water on both sides of the narrows. I decide on an inbound course hugging the left side of the deeper water in the center. The plan is to run submerged during the day until we get close, wait for full dark, surface, and cross the narrows during darkness, then hide in the deep water in the bay. As it happens, dark falls before we arrive at the shallow narrows, so we surface. The weather is horrible: heavy rain, high winds, heavy seas, visility 500 yards or so. We go to Ahead Full and race through the narrows. When we get into the deeper section, we drop back to periscope depth and do a hydrophone depth. With no near shipping, it's safe to use the fathometer. The bottom here is perhaps 120 feet down, so we come to a stop and settle down to 105 feet deep, waiting for daylight.

Once daylight comes, it becomes apparent that the water here is rather clear, so we begin moving again. I have chosen to approach near to the end of the deep water during the day, when I can see through the observation scope if there are any deep mines planted. Hopefully we will be able to stop in time, if so. We arrive at the chosen Listening Post/Observation post without incident, and settle down to wait.



I have a good sonar crew; through the rest of the day we plot the positions of the merchant and warship traffic through the harbor. This gives us a general course which should be free of mines.



Dusk falls at 11pm, Pearl time. We wait until midnight, rise to periscope depth, and I have a look around through the scope. The weather is still just as bad as the night before, visibility will be crap, so it should be safe to move on the surface. We go ahead and surface here, stationary for a few minutes to replenish the fresh air on the boat, then start moving in down the chosen route at just above periscope depth. The bottom continues to rise, eventually forcing us up to the point where the hydrophones can't pick up surface contacts any more. I hope we don't blunder into a subchaser there as it's way to rough to use the deck gun (not that I'd want to in any event) and too shallow to fully submerge.

We continue moving on ahead to the objective, however visibility is so bad nothing can be seen. We continue dead ahead for Osaka harbor. As we get closer, I can distinguish a few large silhouetes against the barely visibile backdrop of the harbor, but not enough to identify anything, much less photograph. I have the navigator plot suspected positions of enemy ships on the chart, and we continue creeping closer. We've had to rise to 40 feet here.



We continue ahead at slow speed, and I eventually decide to turn around. Nothing is visible. With the boat facing back on the reverse course we took coming in I bring us to a halt, then to Back Slow. We're going to back into the harbor, so we can race out if we need to. Eventually I get to the point where I can identify a ship: it's an old style medium tanker, but photgraphs are right out. We're at 500 yards from the ship and photos aren't going to come out, so I decide just to wait. We go back to Ahead 1/3 and make our way back to the LP/OP. I rise to the surface again about 6 am, to refresh the air, then we sink back to near the bottom and wait for the next evening.

Come the next night, we rise back to periscope depth just after midnight PHT, and a look through the scope confirms that the weather has cleared. Seas are still high, but no rain, and visibility is perhaps 4500 yards. We surface for fresh air, drop back to 57 feet, and start heading in again. This time things go much better. We have a close call on the way in, as a gunboat was heading out of Kishiwada, but it never got close enough to see us. We got in just close enough to ID all the ships in both harbors (Osaka and Kishiwada). The largest military vessel there was a subchaser, but there were two large modern tankers anchored, and I took photos of them for Military Intelligence to pore over, then we headed back out.



We head back out into deeper water. We take up a position on the southern side of the deep water, about halfway down the length of it. We come back to the surface for fresh air again about 6 am, then settle back down. We had another close call with that same gunboat, as it was moving so slowly we ran up on it heading out, but again weren't spotted.

We wait out the day, and today, as it turns out, is heavy traffic day. The sonar watch gets lots of practice with all the merchant traffic we hear. In the early afternoon we start hearing lots of traffic at the narrows. LOTS of traffic. It looks like a convoy is heading in. Uh oh. They come in through the narrows and keep going north. Whew, ok, they must be heading up to one of those ports.

OUT OF CHARACTER: here's where things went wrong. I got up to go to the bathroom and left the game running at 128x TC. The boat was 110 feet down, 10 feet above the bottom. We were motionless and rigged for silent running, making no noise. I start hearing explosions from the bathroom. Somehow they've changed course, sailed right over the top of my boat, and detected me down at the bottom. This is where I reloaded the save from the last fresh air stop, just before dawn.

Now, watching that convoy, it gets fully into the bay then changes course for Osaka. It's going to pass right over me, so we start up and head north. I barely get out of the path of the lead escort, but we make our way successfully around the convoy and go on back to rest. About 8 pm, while it's still daylight, we start moving again back to where the water starts getting shallow, there to wait until dark. Near dark, there's more traffic at the narrows, so I decide to try to slip out between the islands. This proves to be impossible, as the weather is clear and the islands have shore batteries that will spot us. So, I redirect us to the narrows. A subchaser is going out, and we follow it, but not too close, on the surface. Trying to stay out of the center of the channel, I get a little to close to Shikoku and a shore battery opens up on us. We go to Ahead Flank and run. The subchaser starts turning around, so we sink down to 55 feet and hope he misses us.

He misses us, but the commotion has also attracted a gunboat from out in the other side of the narrows, so we have to change course, running back across to the eastern side, and remaining submerged. So much for the quick dash across the narrows. We missed all this in the storm on the way in. After several hours, we made it clear of the patrols there, out into deep water, and surfaced to recharge batteries. It's 4 am Pearl time, and I could have made it this far in half an hour if we'd have been able to run surfaced through the narrows. Oh well, we're out of the bay and should hopefully be safe now.

[sqk7744]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

Nice pics men

I like the racing destroyer and the sub

Thanks

Our IFF was broken so we decided to just pull-up and ask.