Your first sub lost... Tragic Tales.

[Angelo Cire]

So, I just had my first loss of a crewmember (2, actually) when a C&D class plowed into me - just a tad SO from Lerwick.

I was only 2 meters above the seabed, but the water was very shallow. They both died, and I proceeded to rest on the bottom, repairing the damage. After getting it under control.... the damn thing rammed me again.

Catastrophic damage; heavy, unstoppable flooding, diesel fuel all leaked and gone, bottom of the seafloor - even if not a very deep bottom. Seeing no way out, I did the only responsible thing I could think to do in hopes of saving some of my crew's lives - I blew the ballast tanks.

At first I saw no change, and I feared for the worst - that the ballast tanks and oxygen reserves had been irreparably damaged - but after a few long moments, my tiefenmesser slowly ticked upwards from 17 to 16, and then on.

I could still hear the pinging of the C&D above, even as we broke the surface, but before I could order an evacuation of the boat, a round from their deck guns hit us dead-center.

Lost both boat and crew. All because of my recklessness.

I'll never underestimate these 'mere' surface ships again.

Where were you, when you lost your first sub (not counting, if you don't wish to, "practice" subs)?

[BossMark]

I lost my first sub with all hands trying to sneak into Gibraltar a very bad idea :nope::wah:

[JazzJR]

I lost two Crew members (Watch officer and a deck gunner) and one injured after a deckgun fight against a Imperial Type Freighter. But didn't lost my ship.....yet.

[frau kaleun]

I think the first time I lost a boat may have been when I tried to "re-ace" the flak exam after installing GWX. :haha:

Not sure about tragic but certainly the most memorable loss was when I managed to get us hung up on the outer gates of one of Wili's locks as they swung closed. The best part was that I was actually backing out through them at the time because I was in reverse after slamming the bow into the already closed inner gates of the same lock. :oops:

[andwii]

just recently lost 9 members when I somehow survived a whole night of depth charging. Problem was I think I was the one who killed them. I forgot I was on the bottom and started the uboat to move, breaking all sorts of things and killing 9 members and wounding one other.

[gt_magnus]

My first loss was on the east coast of England, in early 1940. Me and my Duck (IIA type) was on our 6th patrol. This was planned to be kind of a goodbye patrol with her. We spotted a convoy off south east England, dived quickly and raised my periscope to check for destroyers. Just one! A lousy ASW Trawler! Only problem is that I only have 5 torpedoes.:down: I planned to send two torpedoes towards a medium cargo and another one against a small tanker (Yeah, no big ships). Open tubes, los! ASW trawler didn't notice it. 30 seconds later: :o Tripal class coming straight towards me and another unknown destroyer beside it. They dropped a lot of charges on me. I tried to evade them, but both ships dropped charges at the same time and one of them hit my radio room and killed both men inside. Depth charge after depht charge, I was nearing collapse when one of the destroyers suddenly turned towards the convoy again. Maybe one of my fellow kaleuns were also attacking the convoy? The questions had to wait. My Duck was hard to keep on depth. I had no option, blow ballast! We breached surface. I ordered my crew to abandon ship. I stayed on the boat. I wouldn't give away my lovely Duck so easily, so I wen't down to the engine room, put the engines on flank speed and started to zig zag. Try and catch me, brits. You killed my fr.. Wait! I couldn't just leave my two dead friends on the floor! So I dragged them to their stations while the destroyer was chasing me, wrote on a paper: In memory of... Look what you've done, brits! And put one of them in each of my friends pockets and started walking towards the bridge, but then, one of the destroyers cannons hit one of the torpedoes I had in the forward section, so they blew up, and I was trapped inside the u-boat. I then went down with the boat.:cry:

In memory of my two friendly, hard working radio and sonar men. And my faithful Duck! R.I.P.

As you can see by the length of this text, you'll understand I remember this moment very well.

Bye for now! :salute:

[Kapt Z]

Can't say I remember my first loss, but my most embarrassing loss was being rammed at periscope depth by a tanker I had already torpedoed.

:oops:

[CherryHarbey]

don't remember the exact details but it would have included the following
1 a type II
2 over-confidence
3 shallow water

[Sailor Steve]

The first sub I lost was playing Silent Service, so I'm afraid that after twenty-six years I really don't remember. :dead:

If you meant the first sub in SH3, well, that was six years ago, so I don't remember that either. :dead::dead:

[Missing Name]

Took on a convoy and a good amount of water. Fought off the initial flooding, but the engines were severely damaged. Compressed air failed to get me to the surface, and I watched as I slowly sank below crush depth over the span of two hours...

[mightymightychatham]

The first sub I lost was a VIIB. After installing the merchant fleet mod, I started a new career on 100% realism. I was in the channel when war was declared and made a spirited fighting withdrawral to the south west, sinking a few merchants and evading the many patrol craft and a couple of proper escorts.

Anyway, drawing about level with Land's End, I thought "phew, I made it!" when my lookout spots a lone freighter steaming for the channel. It's daylight and I'm still well within air cover so I decide to make a submerged attack. She shrugs off the one torpedo I sent her and continues with only a slight list to port.

Well, I'm not following her for hours back into the channel to see if she sinks, so I decide to surface, sink her quickly with the deck gun and continue to my patrol sector. Big mistake.

I surfaced at about 1000m and immediately I'm being fired upon. "But she's not even armed!" I cried and then it dawned on me... A Q-ship! Well, not wanting to chance a dive now that my boat's filling with water at a rate of knots, I manned the deck gun personally (I'm rather good with it if I do say so myself) and actually sunk her first. None of my crew were even injured but the boat was beat up pretty bad, I began repairs and sailed off to my patrol sector.

Days later, returning to Germany, I spotted an Anson off the north coast of Scotland and without thinking ordered a crash dive. The boat imploded at 55m.

Just my luck there was a Q-ship, already in service and out to sea before war was declared. What the hell? :-?

[Luno]

On my first ever career I got bold and decided to sneak into a port. I sunk a fishing boat and a tug with the 20 mm flak gun, but I attracted a destroyer. The water was too shallow to escape.

I'm on my second patrol and I haven't killed myself yet (fingers crossed).

On single missions I tend to be bit more reckless. My goal was to sink one of three capital ships. However, I did something wrong and all four of the torpedoes from my salvo missed. An hour later after the BBs were gone, I spotted a destroyer. I was going to quit anyway, so I engaged with the deck gun. I actually knocked out its main gun and bridge in a few hits. It was on fire and tried to ram me. I evaded it at the last second, but it must have been a mere few feet away. More ships came to assist and three boats came to ram me at once. I evaded one, and nearly another, but it scraped me along the hull, depleting hull integrity (minimal flooding at the time...)

On another single mission I was killed by a vastly reduced crush depth. I think I was only at 20-30 meters or so. It really caught me by surprise (it would be nice if the crew got more nervous as the boat reached the critical depth).

I have to ask though: how do you guys surrender/abandon ship?

[gt_magnus]

Of course I have lost some subs before the one I wrote about, but I don't remember them! Now, suddenly I remember one of the first subs I lost. A bit embarrasing, that one. It was outside Brest in 1941. I got hit by a **** schnellboot! :dead:

[Lord_magerius]

I don't remember my first loss in stock SH3 but I do remember my first GWX loss. Very well in fact :O:

I was out near Rockhall banks when I got word of a Task Force heading straight for me. After having weeks of miserable weather, zero visibility and a boat load of dud torpedoes everything went red and I ordered flank speed for an intercept course. Being battered from a convoy attack that went wrong and Bernard manning the hydrophones missing every contact in the known universe I decided to vent my pent up medieval blood rage that had been brewing.

We sat at periscope depth, only coming up for the occasional bit of air and the odd game of life-size guess who (it was usually Hans, though by this point we all looked pretty similar after a month at sea) we picked up contacts directly east of us. Stroking my epic face rug that now clung to my chin like some form of rabid squirrel I took a peak through the periscope.

"one... two... three... four. Yes four of them heading our way. Hubert fetch me my battleaxe and prepare a boarding party"
"Sir, you don't have a battleaxe." he stuttered nervously "nor do we have enough men to board four ships."
"Very well, we'll just have to use the torpedoes instead." I replied, still nursing the creature that was now living on my face. We sat and waited, listening as the sound of the screws grew closer to us and our impending glory.

I risked another look through the periscope, "My God! It's the Nelson, open tubes one, two, three and four."
Slowly she edged towards us, 40,000 tonnes of glory, medals and all the women in Germany. Hmm... All the women in Germany, swooning over my shiny new medals and new found renown.
"Up periscope!" I yelled.
"Sir, the periscope is already up"
"Oh sorry, my mind was elsewhere" I said rather sheepishly. "Make ready to fire."

Just a few more seconds and she's mine. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, sounding like the warships screws we had eagerly anticipated all day.
"Wait for it, wait for it" I started to hesitate, she looked just beyond reach "Fire"

The whooshing of the torpedoes told us that they were all on their way, in less than sixty seconds we would know whether our gambit had paid off. The pounding of my heart grew louder and louder. It really did sound like a warship. Well maybe not a warship but a destroyer closing fast...

Spinning the periscope 90' my heart sank. The last thing I thought as the destroyer went through my face was how much I really liked my beard.

[VONHARRIS]

I can not recall how I lost my first command but I remember very well how I lost my last one.

1941 , U-65 IXB attacking a convoy from within its columns , sunk two ships and a Black swan comes out of no where bearing 165 - 170 runs over the sub and depth charges her.
It was over in seconds!

[Osmium Steele]

The first sub I lost was playing Silent Service, so I'm afraid that after twenty-six years I really don't remember. :dead:

If you meant the first sub in SH3, well, that was six years ago, so I don't remember that either. :dead::dead:

+1.

[postalbyke]

Off the east coast of Britain, positioned between the northbound and southbound convoy lanes, I waited for my prey to come to me...
After only a few hours, my hydrophones pick up a southbound convoy, fifteen ships with four escorts. I plot their courses carefully, double checking all the time until I can see the lead ship clearly. Being in a type II, I have only three shots from a stationary position before I have to withdraw, reload, and give chase...
Taking into account the time of day and the weather, I chose the west side of the convoy to attack from, opened the tubes, and let my eels fly!
Unlucky me, I was positioned right at the turning point for the convoy, and the second after my torpedos leave the tubes, the whole CF turns, leaving me out in the dry...
except for one hit! right in the screw for a medium cargo... she slows to a halt, and an escort drives right over me to get to her... while I'm reloading the tubes. Next I know, I'm in the middle of a depth charge pattern.
Fast forward a few hours, both electric motors are OOC, heavy flooding aft, sinking slowly... the escort seems to have lost me, but is loitering in area (I'm supposing for the merchant). My only hope: sink this insolent merchant and wait for the escort to leave!
I blow tanks til I'm at PD, snapshot the merchant, and try to convince the boat to sink as fast as it was a few minutes ago... to no avail.
I spin the periscope to the escort, and he's at full steam, headed right at me.
"The End..."

[XTChrisTX]

Running away from several destroyers in an XXI at Ahead Flank at periscope depth. That was my preferred tactic for a surprisingly long time.

Most embarassing was probably when I surfaced my XXI to take on about five destroyers with the flak guns because I didn't have many torpedoes left.

[Cheese]

About a week ago, ran straight into a corvette near Scapa Flow. Being young and foolish, I tried to engage it with a deck gun. When it got up right next to me, I, for some reason, decided to dive. It of course depth charged me and I forgot to(or couldn't?) pull out of the dive, so my boat was crushed by pressure. Lesson learned, don't get cocky, or dive next to a warship.

[GoDeep]

"I" have been killed more times than I can remember. Especially in the beginning, when I just had SH3 and played it quick and dirty. I learned the hard way that in U-boat warfare, there is no such thing as quick and dirty. Patience is key.

A few of my more memorable deaths from my GWX era:


Second patrol (December 1939) in a IIA, about 100 miles of the British East coast. I'm running fast below the surface, trying to get a firing position on a merchant ship. Out of nowhere, a destroyer runs right over me, dropping charges. One of them rips open the stern, flooding the engine room. I sink fast to the bottom, which is at 80m. Killed by catastrophic flooding.
New career, I decide to take a peek during the evacuation of Dunkirk. Lots of juicy targets there. One problem though...the sea is as smooth as glass and I am in 30 metres of water. Not much room to escape. However, my trigger finger gets the better of me and I line up two targets, one troop transport, the other a Southampton class cruiser. I launch four torpedoes, two at each target at about 2700 metres. Three hits, the Southampton comes to a full stop, the transport sinks rapidly. No time to enjoy my success though. As soon as the torpedoes hit, the escorts and destroyers go into overdrive, pinging like mad. Within 10 minutes, 7 destroyers have converged on my location and are pinging me in turn, dropping charges left and right. One after the other, they perform an attack run. I can not dive deep, so I have virtually no time to evade. For 2 hours (game time), I manage to evade the attacks without serious damage, then a destroyer makes a run right over my position. Fuel bunkers ripped open, hydrophone destroyed, periscopes destroyed, aft torpedo room, engine room and aft crew quarters flooded. A promising young Oberleutnant dead.
Third career, sneaking up on the rear of a convoy, totally missing the auxiliary cruiser in the rear. It opens up with guns blazing, several other ships join in the fun. I manage to dive with serious flooding in the forward torpedo room. I have to keep up my speed and have the repair team working in order to stop the flooding and maintain depth. Unfortunately, I make a lot of noise like that and am depth-charged. More flooding. The boat rapidly sinks now and nothing I can do can to slow it down. At 220 metres or so, the boat implodes. Another young Oberleutnant dead...
Did I mention planes yet? Trying to shoot it out on the surface? No? Well...I'd better not... :oops:

[JazzJR]

Did I mention planes yet? Trying to shoot it out on the surface? No? Well...I'd better not... :oops:



Oh that was a fun before GWX also these little Patrolboats, which now kill your whole crew and destroy the boat. :doh:

[WWII44]

I had time compression at 1024 and smackedinto a tiny island near the north western tip of scotland.

[Fish In The Water]

I was going to share my most harrowing experience, until it suddenly dawned on me I've spent a small fortune (and years on a couch) trying to get over it. :D

[PhantomLord]

Lost my first sub between german coast and Helgoland, following a pair of german destroyers heading home to Wilhelmshaven.

I missed the fact that there´s a minefield... kaboom at 128x TC.... lost with all hands

[Luno]

I know that GWX has a minefield map, but are there minefield maps that pertain to the stock game? It would really stink to hit your own fields.

[frau kaleun]

I know that GWX has a minefield map, but are there minefield maps that pertain to the stock game? It would really stink to hit your own fields.

I don't know if stock has anything similar to the pulldown friendly harbor mine/net chart you get in GWX. At any rate it wouldn't help you with the mines around Helgoland as they were dropped by the British early on and the Tommies weren't polite enough to inform the Kriegsmarine about their location. :stare:

[soopaman2]

My first boat is sitting on the bottom about 13km se of Scapa flow.

Deck gunning a destroyer seemed like a great idea, until the pair of torpedos I let off before surfacing missed. 1 dud, one passed 10 feet behind the rudder. (it zigged when it shoulda zagged!:D

I'm not so cocky anymore...I was trying to play the game like a "game" rather than a sim.

[U-Falke]

First Uboat lost in SH3 since a long time playing 4 and 5

Playing second patrol on a VIIB, WAC, 200km north of the Hebrides, found a task force at 21 Knt. Tried to intercept but they were too fast. Ship spotted, dive the boat. As the sub dives, it suddenly shakes and the XO report massive damage in all compartments, with flooding in the torpedo room. The hydrophone would not work for the next 10h.
Too shallow, too late. Ordered flank speed and send the crew to fix the mess. I guess that's why they call this area ' Rockall Banks'.
Then, I went to scope and saw the warships coming.
They crossed my scope 4000m away at constant distance, so it was now or never.

Inside the uboat, the situation was chaotic. I decided to shoot a long range "what if" salvo... 2 TI at slow speed and 2 TII.
I had the AOB and the speed. Also a crude range to the cruisers.
Targeted the middle of the TF, and only the TI were able to reach them.
Almost 12 minutes later, one TI exploded the keel of a Dido light cruiser, wich was zig zagging after spotting the approaching wakes. Ship sunk.
That was at 8-9km from my position.
DDs started to look for the bastard who did that :arrgh!:, but I was beyond the sight, and 12m below.
The sonarman said they had turned to slow speed, and I decided to flank them and shoot again. So, I maneuvered to surface some km away and do it. But they detected the surfaced u-boat and one tribal started the hunt.
Tried to use the deck gun to shell it, but had no success. To face the DD submerged in shallow waters was not a possibility.

uboat sunk ...

[Luno]

Well, I lost another uboat on a single mission. I really didn't mind, because I needed an excuse to leave the mission and go to bed. :DL

So, I'm starting off in the stock "Sneak through Gibraltar" mission. Since there's still light, I proceed under the surface and listen. Once the sun finally sets, I surface the boat and proceed that way for as long as possible. After a while the watch spot a ship: destroyer. It too far away for a TII attack, so I order the engines to stop and dive.

But right then, it spots me. Searchlights fix on my position. Luckily I was down before it could start shelling me.

I dive, check the depth, and dive further. It starts pinging and DC'ing and I get rattled about, damaging the turm and fore-deck. Pipes inside start bursting and the compressed air is leaking, making a horribly annoying noise. I decide to use the engine RPM meters to make for a quieter silent speed than just "ahead slow".

This destroyer had side-launching wasser-bombs, and so I had to be especially careful with how I maneuvered. I am evading for around 15 minutes, still getting rocked from time to time when I hear bad news: "contact, kriegsschiffe, incoming, fast". There are now 4 enemy contacts after the first called for backup.

I took a deep breath...let's do this! :rock:

I was doing a pretty good job of avoiding the ships. I was getting rocked by the DC's, but I was slowly creeping away. My SO pipes up again....more contacts!

Long story short, I had 11, yes eleven(!) destroyers and and a few patrol boats circling overhead trying to DC me. I had to fight for hours to get away from them all, and I was still not even in the strait of Gibraltar yet!!

Eventually, I did get away, miraculously.

After an couple hours I surface and proceeded. We spotted a juicy C2, but there was destroyer right next to it. It was too far for a TI shot. So what was the only reasonable thing to do?

Get to the deck gun of course! I checked the range with the UZO and started shelling the destroyer. The second shot hit its mark at the bridge. I had cut off the head of the snake, and the rest was easy. No damage received. I proceeded to work on the C2 when...another warship. The first had called for help!

So, a half-hour later I had 14 (!!) ships on me. Here we go again...

So the tragic bit comes the next day. I was hugging the shore, surfaced, and hoping to charge the batteries a bit. I accelerated time and my Watch reported a contact when it was already shooting at me! This time I was stuck at the surface with a destroyer and PT boat. I did the only thing I could: took to the deck gun, and try to kill the destroyer first. I damaged it severely, but relentless peppering from the PT boats' 20 mm AA guns turned my hull into swiss cheese. I sank halfway though the strait. All hands lost :dead:

Ironically, I could survive DCing from 14 destroyers, but I was done in by a PT boat.... Now that's tragic!


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[Brag]

In SHIII Vanilla days (Early 1942), SW of Gibraltar was racing to overtake a convoy in reduced visibility. Out of the murk, 2 destroyers appeared. In a matter of seconds it was over. :nope:

[Sailor Steve]

Obviously a long way from being my first, but a couple of years ago I was stalking a merchant in the fog, went to a little higher TC and collided with it. :dead:

[tigertiggs2007]

Mine was very wierd, after I saved and then loaded it, a few seconds after it just said 'U-Boat Abandoning Mission' or 'U-Boat Surrenders' while it's 1939. This is very strange, can anyone tell me why? :hmmm:

[Nerazzurri]

Ship sighted.........nice, an ore carrier.......submerge, get a nice angle and distance...........ship approaches the crosshairs.......I'm getting excited.......torpedoes away........bang! she's going down :yeah:

What's that I see?.......a US flag........in 1939...........DOH :damn:

Reloaded of course LOL. C'mon, it's my first mission for 2 years.

[Sharkbait24]

I didn't lose my ship, but I came very close. I was on approach to a large convoy with a light escort, at night. I managed to get in between the columns and started blasting off torpedoes left and right. What I didn't expect was them to start zigzagging. I looked at my map and it showed one of the merchants dangerously close. I sprinted up to the bridge (we were at Decks Awash) only to find a medium tanker bearing down, seemingly unaware of us and just following his zigzag. My precious U-67 was subsequently keelhauled by the tanker, and we sank to 150m before recovering.

[WWII44]

I was fighting a destroyer in my old VIIC sub the U-529. I had jus barly surfaced in order to atempt to get the destroyer to ram us and tear its own bottom out from the raming. she struck the conning tower where I was and the impact threw me over board last thing i remember is the destroyer was droping depth charges. when I came to all that was left of the U-529 was a greasy oilslick and the destroyer was not to far away burning aand abandoned(I asume she blew her self up with her own deapth charges). I flip anover turned life boat and stayed there for two days befor being rescued by the U-106.

[CherryHarbey]

Ship sighted.........nice, an ore carrier.......submerge, get a nice angle and distance...........ship approaches the crosshairs.......I'm getting excited.......torpedoes away........bang! she's going down :yeah:

What's that I see?.......a US flag........in 1939...........DOH :damn:

Reloaded of course LOL. C'mon, it's my first mission for 2 years.

Last week I had two merchants from Honduras in my sights, it was late '41 we had only been at war with them for a week. As the first torp hit, it immeadiately sunk the first ship, then a green icon appears on the map. a closer look at the second ship, reveals the these Hondurans are actually flying Argentine flags, oh dear, second torp already on the way, it hits too.
surface the boat, man the flak guns, operation clean-up.
I shall say at my war crimes trial that they shouldn't have been sailing darkened if they didn't want to be blown full of holes.

[WWII44]

...I shall say at my war crimes trial that they shouldn't have been sailing darkened if they didn't want to be blown full of holes.
I onch in '41 encountered a Whale Factory ship in the irish sea and it wosn't till I had fired my torps that I saw the US flag, She also was sporting a deck gun on her poop deck and she got one shot off at us as the torpeado struck, my defence was she breached her neutrality by caning a deck gun and that she fired on us before the torpeados hit thus rendering the netrality defence null and void.

[Fish In The Water]

Mine was very wierd, after I saved and then loaded it, a few seconds after it just said 'U-Boat Abandoning Mission' or 'U-Boat Surrenders' while it's 1939. This is very strange, can anyone tell me why? :hmmm:

I see you've started a separate thread for this question, so I'll just say good luck and welcome aboard! :sunny:

[Hinrich Schwab]

When I first got the game, I did a dive test past the rated limit to see how far I could go within the game, knowing it would not be realistic. I found out too late that to properly do an emergency blow, you have to hit "e" multiple times to ensure the compressed air gets sent quickly. Even at ludicrous speed, I did not come up fast enough. *POP!* :88):dead:

[the.terrabyte.pirate]

First campaign in vanilla SHIII. Decided to raid Scarpa flow for the lulz. Crept neatly in ala Prien. Avoided the escorts. Found the harbour completely bloody empty. Tried to sneak out. Broached the surface. ASW Trawler. I think to myself "I'm a cunning sort. I'll rest on the seabed run silent, run deep style. Sonar will be scrambled by the seabed." Short time and precision dept charge run later and the remains of my Type II are scattered over the seafloor.

Only later via this forum did I discover that in SHIII allied sonar ignores the seafloor. I was the ideal target. I was even so newbie I hadn't changed to silent running... :haha: