[torpedobait]

While lurking in the Bismark Sea just north of Rabaul I was forced to dive by a steady swarm of planes (turned out to be Liberators raiding Rabaul - so many that their presence had a pretty severe effect on the fps,) but that is a different issue

I wanted to watch the dive from the external camera (love the eye candy) but noticed right away that the dive planes were not extended even though in a dive. I checked this several times, with a depth change, a normal dive from the surface, and a crash dive from the surface. The dive planes on my Balao do not extend.

The picture shows the bow during a depth change; I didn't capture the pics during the others, but did observe the dive planes do not appear to operate visually, although of course the boat did dive.

The second pic shows date, time and approximate position (Jan 25, 1943 @1331 Base Time. I have seen a discussion of this regarding dive planes on a GAR class, but this is the first I noticed the same on a Balao.

UPDATE: I reloaded a save taken just before moving back up north of Rabaul. This time the dive planes worked properly. Very strange, but there it is. Unfortunately, before I could continue the patrol after sinking an Old Large Passenger Liner, the game crashed to the old Blue Screen of Death! Haven't seen that in years. No idea why, but I doubt it was caused by the game. Will start checking drivers. Sigh.