Fish tales

[Sturgeon]

As I was testing my newly learned manual targeting skills yesterday, I got to thinking. "If I ID this ship incorrectly and sink it, will my log show the correct ID or my false ID." I am quite certain the log will show the correct ID, but I may test this out sometime. Then I started to wonder about real life. Certainly captains occassionally made mistakes identifying ships and it went in their logs incorrectly. Perhaps they ended up under- or overestimating the tonnage they sank. There isn't anything profound in this insight, we all know that tonnage numbers are estimates anyway.

Then I pushed it a little further. A captain (perhaps with his crew's consent) could intentionally overestimate tonnage to bump up his numbers. I am sure this must have happened, since BdU had almost no way to verify kills. But is there any evidence that any captains completely falsified logs, entering kills that never happened? Can any of you history buffs shed any light on this?

Sturgeon

[Teufelschiff]

Hi Sturgeon,

Hitler's U-boat War, by Clay Blair, is an exhaustive and detailed two-volume history. His research demonstrates that gross exaggerations of tonnage and sinkings were commonly reported by Captains and the propaganda machine.

[Sturgeon]

Thanks for the reference. I will have to take a look. I started playing SH3 just for the entertainment, but I am finding that the history is even more enjoyable.

[Teufelschiff]

Don't buy, check out your local library. There are tons of books on the war in the Atlantic.

On that note, I experienced the same SHIII effect.

cell phone vibrates

Bdu: "Hey honey, where are you?"
Me: "Oh, uh, I'm uh, in the library."

Bdu: "Huh, you don't even have a library card, so why?"
Me: "uh, nothing, just uh, looking around."


Seriously, what video game could make a person run to the library and begin reading voraciously?

:rock:

[1916]

Seriously, what video game could make a person run to the library and begin reading voraciously?

:rock:

Good point! I've looked at things differently, and now that I have seen the "other side" of the war in the Atlantic, I now have a much greater respect for Uboat crews.

[Skubber]

Speaking of history, since I started playing SH3, I've gotten rather addicted to this site:

http://www.onwar.com/chrono/

It gives a day-by-day account of the entire war. I like to check it out on the day I start, or end, a patrol in order to get some perspective on what's happening in the broader war on that particular date. There is also fairly decent attention paid to the war at sea, if something significant has happened (say, the sinking of a major battelcruiser).

For instance, on this date (Oct. 5) 1942....

In the Solomon Islands... American planes from the carrier USS Hornet attack Japanese vessels off Bougainville with little success.

Oct 5, 1940...

Over Britain... German fighter bombers, attempting to reach London and southeastern airfields, jettison their bombs over Hastings.

Oct 5, 1939...

In the North Atlantic... Eight British and French hunting groups are formed to hunt for the Admiral Graf Spee (German pocket battleship). At this stage the British and the French can afford to divert considerable forces to such a task. Meanwhile, the German pocket battleship Deutschland sinks the SS Stonegate.

Maybe others will find this entertaining.