Peacetime - Oh The Boredom

[krashkart]

I just installed GWX 3, started a new career in '39 and based with the 7th out of Königsberg.

Just came back in from our second patrol, a five day shakedown cruise around the bay. Nothing exciting. We spent most of the time fishing, and sneaking around some Polish destroyers. BdU had ordered us to sink some neutral ships. Unknown as to why... they seemed rather benign just floating there doing nothing. OTOH, if the captain of the ore hauler had looked at me just slightly more cross-eyed... yes, maybe we should have torpedoed that one. :hmmm: Anyhow, we disregarded the order to engage and continued onward to a popular beachside pub.

Hopefully our third patrol will be in the same area - there is rumored to be a nudist beach somewhere near Danzig. :D

No, there really isn't a nude beach near Danzig... it's just to breathe life into an otherwise dull thread.

[Jimbuna]

Bdu to Kaleun krashkart

Starting in August 39 out of Konigsberg with the 7th Flotilla and SH3 Commander set at 20 days between patrols.........

You will receive a radio message instructing you to return to base.

Hit Esc and teleport back....apply for a transfer to 1st or 2nd Flotilla....your next patrol should commence on 24th August which will allow you enough time to transit to your patrol area prior to the commencement of hostilities, which is precisely what happened in RL.

SINK EM ALL!! http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

[pickinthebanjo]

Bdu to Kaleun krashkart

Starting in August 39 out of Konigsberg with the 7th Flotilla and SH3 Commander set at 20 days between patrols.........

You will receive a radio message instructing you to return to base.

Hit Esc and teleport back....apply for a transfer to 1st or 2nd Flotilla....your next patrol should commence on 24th August which will allow you enough time to transit to your patrol area prior to the commencement of hostilities, which is precisely what happened in RL.

SINK EM ALL!! http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/pirate.gif

Good to know, that first patrol I did was one of the longest, pointless and boring patrols I've ever done:nope:

[Sailor Steve]

I use it for my 2nd Flotilla boat at Wilhelmshaven to depart August 19th, as several real boats did. I go out on the first, reach the outer harbor, then turn around and dock again. I set Commander for 18 days in port, and on the 19the I'm ready to go.

For my 1st and 7th Flotilla boats I just start on Sept. 1, since most boats didn't go out until the war started.

[Jimbuna]

Trust you to be different :O:

[frau kaleun]

there is rumored to be a nudist beach somewhere near Danzig. :D

Or at least there will be, once you get there. Amirite? :03:

[Jimbuna]

LMAO :rotfl2:

[krashkart]

Or at least there will be, once you get there. Amirite? :03:

Who... meee?? :D:rotfl2:

[frau kaleun]

All I'm sayin' is, the least you could do is get a little closer to shore... making the lads swim the last quarter mile is going to result in a lot of embarrassing shrinkage.

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5678/37158486jr6.jpg

BTW looks like the square in the trunks didn't get the memo. :O:

[krashkart]

All I'm sayin' is, the least you could do is get a little closer to shore... making the lads swim the last quarter mile is going to result in a lot of embarrassing shrinkage.

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5678/37158486jr6.jpg

BTW looks like the square in the trunks didn't get the memo. :O:

LMAO! Good find, frau. :har::har:

Although, when I consider the fates of my last seven Uboats I'd say that swimming is a good skill for the crew to have. ;)

***

Update to my latest fateful career:


Waiting in AO98 for open hostilities with Poland: 12 days

Being the first in your flotilla to sink Polish ships: 4 torpedoes

Front row tickets to Luftwaffe bombardment of Hela harbor: 20% hull integrity

Being sunk 15 kilometers southeast of Portland, UK - surfaced and in broad daylight - by English shore batteries: Priceless


Thus ended yet another glorious career. I did bag a Southampton on the way there, though. :rotfl2:

[frau kaleun]

:har:

The only time I've ever been bombed by the Luftwaffe was when a bunch of pilots was drinking at the next table and one of them tossed an empty beer bottle over his shoulder. He's in Stalingrad now, which is really something considering we won't be at war with the Soviets for almost two years. My connections, let me show you them! :D

I started yet another new career after trying to sort out some mod issues and doing a bit of additional tweaking to my basic.cfg... 5 day shakedown cruise out of Königsberg went fine, as did the transfer to the 2nd Flotilla in Wilhelmshaven, but I forgot to set the # of days in port in Commander and found myself starting a second patrol on Aug 11 1939. :damn:

Made it to my patrol grid in good time and then did donuts in the Western Approaches for a couple of weeks waiting for orders. It's now Sept 10 and since hostilities started we've had only 3 contacts; one was too far off and moving too fast to catch and the other two turned out to be small coastal tankers. We sank them both with one shot each in the midst of a raging storm that will NOT subside. :wah:

The last time I was in these waters on Sept 10, I wasn't in these waters any more because I was already on the way home after sinking 9 ships and running out of eels for the foreward tubes. I couldn't turn around out here without practically running over yet another ship full of Tommies. Now I probably couldn't find one if I went straight up the channel with Deutschland über alles blaring out the tower hatch and a crewman dressed as Queen Victoria standing on the foredeck and mooning the oncoming traffic. :O:

[krashkart]

Now I probably couldn't find one if I went straight up the channel with Deutschland über alles blaring out the tower hatch and a crewman dressed as Queen Victoria standing on the foredeck and mooning the oncoming traffic. :O:

That would be a sight! :rotfl2:

I reloaded the savegame after deciding against another twelve-day wait, which put the boat near Dover. Sailed over into Portsmouth to see what I could find. Well, I found the inlet to be a tricky passage. I had to put the boat into flank to get back off the beach while a good measure of 20mm peppered our exposed conning tower. Not long after making it back into deeper water we nearly ran into a sub net.

Sat there for ten minutes trying to decide what to do about it when the sonar guy says, "Ummmm... there's a warship closing fast behind us". Pop the scope up to have a look and what do I see? An ASW trawler had run aground half a klick behind us. Fired the aft tube hoping to sink it, but even at 1-meter running depth the water was too shallow for it. Pretty sure some clams were unhappy about that situation. Decided the trawler was stuck enough to not cause us any harm and took my chances against the net. The screeching sound that ensued reminded me to put damage control on task.

We made it into the harbor, sunk one destroyer and two tankers. The destroyer was a piece of cake. The torpedo impacted near the ship's forward magazine. The tankers went down after a total of three more eels. Spotted an Auxiliary Cruiser but decided to reserve the rest of my stores and snuck back out. I did find something else of interest in Portsmouth: four S Class submarines. :yeah:

On the way back out we ran aground two more times before finally finding the deepest part of the inlet, which might have been very entertaining to the trawler crew had they not been busy trying to shoot holes in the Uboat. Turned out to be a very exciting raid... except that the radio operator is dead. Honestly thought it would be the sonar guy, with all the screeching and loud *CLONG!* noises we made on the way in and out. :har:

If you're ever near Dover, there was a Southampton class docked close to open water the last time I was there. :yep:

[frau kaleun]

If you're ever near Dover, there was a Southampton class docked close to open water the last time I was there. :yep:

Hey, have you ever heard my Jimbuna impression? It goes something like this:

STAY OUT OF THE ENGLISH CHANNEL!

I have on occasion made the voyage out to my patrol grid through there in late Aug 1939, and once I even made it home through there about a month later, altho not without having to play footsie with a couple destroyers who found my persona distinctly non grata.

But generally, after hostilities have opened, I avoid it like the plague. And what's interesting is that I've noticed I seem to have better luck on that first combat patrol if I take the long way around and arrive in the Western Approaches by coming down past the Hebrides and around the west of Ireland. I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but it's almost like my u-boat coming south through the channel the last week of August dries up the traffic in the lower Approaches the first week of September.

So from now on, I'm staying out of there if at all possible.

Anyway - I'm afraid I bailed on the last career and started another one late yesterday evening. I'd finally gotten Flakmonkey's New Interiors mod to work with Integrated Orders and everything else, or so I thought, but when I got out into the Atlantic on my second patrol I found that the enhanced sound from the diesel room went crazy if I was inside the boat and tried to set the TC above 2.

So I knew I had to disable the mod and re-enable it without the sound modifications, only problem was, since I've used my feminine wiles to trick the game into thinking I'm playing at 100% realism when I'm not, I can no longer hit Esc and teleport back to base from wherever I happen to be. The only way I could get above 2 TC without problems was to be on the bridge or in some external view, where my limit is 32 TC.

I couldn't face continuing the patrol at a max of 32 TC just to get back to base so I could exit and alter the mod. So, knowing I was just gonna tank this career anyway and start over (again), I decided to see how deep my VIIB would go.

Took her out into deep water and ordered a dive at flank speed. Believe it or not, I didn't even get a damage report until around 320m, and we were already passing 390m when the black screen of death popped up. That just doesn't seem right!

[Fader_Berg]

Hopefully our third patrol will be in the same area - there is rumored to be a nudist beach somewhere near Danzig. :D

Maybe that's why they invented submarines in the first place... and optics too, for that matter. :D

[gazpode_l]

All I'm sayin' is, the least you could do is get a little closer to shore... making the lads swim the last quarter mile is going to result in a lot of embarrassing shrinkage.

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5678/37158486jr6.jpg

BTW looks like the square in the trunks didn't get the memo. :O:

Hmmm don't get me posting about this one!!! :ping:

[gazpode_l]

Has anyone had much luck with the Irish sea, a triangle between Holyhead, Dublin and Milford Haven (Not marked on Sh3) :hmmm:

I've been finding plentyful contacts along that stretch :woot: and bagged my third merchant in a month there, my second in Barely 12hrs! :salute:

AND I was sure I heard twp or THREE DIFFERENT sets of screws with my own ears when i manualled used the hydrophones, so there is clearly more out there who want to come and play with me tonight! :yep:

[frau kaleun]

Has anyone had much luck with the Irish sea, a triangle between Holyhead, Dublin and Milford Haven (Not marked on Sh3) :hmmm:

So far in my limited experience (haven't made it past mid-1940 yet) I've had the best luck in and around grids AM52 & 53 in the upper Approaches, and the western half of sector BF in the lower Approaches.

Tyically I haven't had to go much further inland than that looking for targets, this last now-defunct career being the exception, however it was storming unmercifully for the last week of it so who knows what was out there that we just couldn't see.

Once I passed through the AM grids on my way south to my patrol station in the lower Approaches just as hostilities opened with GB, ended up using a third of my eels and quite a bit of gun ammo before I got any farther south. Prey was plentiful. Still had two torps for the stern tube when I passed through again on the way home, used those and the rest of the deck gun ammo on what I found there. As I recall we even finished off a couple of ships with the flak gun because we had nothing else left to shoot at them.

[krashkart]

Haven't been through the Irish Sea again since installing GWX, but when I played the stock game I usually had luck there. Daytime could be a pain with regular patrols of Hurricanes swooping in. After awhile they were like swarms of mosquitoes. :\

A trick I learned is to find a shipping lane and follow it. I hit one in '43 on a long haul to New York City, followed it all the way into US waters and found a fair amount of traffic along the way. Pretty sure it was either the Liverpool-Halifax or England-Halifax route - probably the former.

[Jimbuna]

Hey, have you ever heard my Jimbuna impression? It goes something like this:

STAY OUT OF THE ENGLISH CHANNEL!




http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/greywolftail.gif

http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/badwerewolf.gif

[sergei]

Hey, have you ever heard my Jimbuna impression? It goes something like this:

STAY OUT OF THE ENGLISH CHANNEL!



Just spotted this.
:DL

[pickinthebanjo]

Thats not bad advice :) The first time I played the game I had an uneventful patrol then decided to rush the english channel.
I took out like 5 torpedo boats and had a deck gun battle with 3 destroyers:arrgh!: it's a wonder I made it out after sinking them

Now after I got GWX I don't think thats even possible anymore, made it quite realistic

[Sailor Steve]

made it quite realistic
Good. No submarine is going to survive a gun battle with even one destroyer.

[nikimcbee]

All I'm sayin' is, the least you could do is get a little closer to shore... making the lads swim the last quarter mile is going to result in a lot of embarrassing shrinkage.

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/5678/37158486jr6.jpg

BTW looks like the square in the trunks didn't get the memo. :O:
Don't hit the saddle tank!:o

[krashkart]

Don't hit the saddle tank!:o

Jawohl!

*splash*

*BONK*

*glub glub glub*

Thus ending yet another glorious career.


***

Update from the incident at Portsmouth:


From: U-45
To: BDU


HILFE!!! Der Kaleun ist ein kompletter Idiot! Wir ließen gestrandete drei Zeiten nahe Portsmouth laufen. Er versucht, uns alle zu töten! Gott helfen uns!



I don't know the German language, so I used Babelfish to translate from English. :doh:

[frau kaleun]

That's okay, I understand your crew's been running your orders through there trying to make sense out of them since about your third day at sea.

You know, IIRC there was a u-boat commander who died or had to be removed from action due to injuries sustained when he dove off the boat to take a swim during a lull in the action. Didn't clear the side of the boat and cracked his noggin. :o

[krashkart]

Geez, that poor guy. :-?

[frau kaleun]

Geez, that poor guy. :-?

Yep. Found it:


Kptlt. Rolf Mützelburg died on 11 September, 1942 in a freak accident. Taking the opportunity to go swimming in the Atlantic southwest of the Azores, he dived from the conning tower and struck the deck with his head and shoulder when the boat lurched suddenly in the swell.* The doctor from the Milk Cow U-462 arrived the next day, but too late, and Rolf Mützelburg was buried at sea on 12 September, 1942 in position 36.14N, 31.21W.

*Teddy Suhren in his biography states that Mützelburg hit the saddle tanks and not the deck though.


http://www.uboat.net/men/muetzelburg.htm