The most shocking thing i saw was Kretchmer interviewed in "The world at war" series of documentaries (the one narrated by Lawrence Olivier), talking about a certain torpedo attack against a merchant. Next thing i know, his interview is cut short and another interview mixed in, with one of the British sailors on the sunk ship. From that point on, it rolled like this...one answer by Kretchmer, one by the British sailor :rock:

I know this doesn't count as a WWII U-Boat crew, but I Was on the very last diesel-electric submarine the U.S. had, SS-581 USS Blueback. I was a Radioman and it was quite an experience. I was lucky enough to never have seen actual combat, but we had plenty of wargames, and a few fires, minor floods, etc to keep it very interesting. We used to watch all the classic sub movies while out at sea...Das Boot and all those.
I think that what inspired me to volunteer, was partly my Grandfather's WWII stories(he was on Battleships, shooting the 16 inch guns), and partly the tours I used to take of the USS Lionfish in Fall River Mass. Although the Blueback was much larger than the Lionfish, it was still fairly crowded (only 219 feet long).
I really am enjoying SH3, but can't really compare actual U-boot combat to the tour I did. I will watch the video's you linked, I am sure they are captivating to watch.

For you, SS-581 man!

http://www.omsi.edu/visit/submarine/QTVRtour.cfm

GibsonSG, welcome aboard! I was also a radioman, though on a destroyer in the 1969-1970 period.

Feel free to post your bio (and pictures, if you like) on this thread.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=87423

Also you can use the main board there to post any stories you might want to share.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=175

I also have a question relative to this thread: SH2 had the Erich Topp interviews, SH3 had Jurgen Oesten and SH1 had Bud Gruner not only telling stories but also giving a tour of the boat.

My question is this: Does SH4 have an interview with anyone? Was there a technical consultant who also tells great war stories? Please say yes, as that was a big part of those earlier sims.

A big welcome:up: GibsonSG

RDP

Welcome GibsonSG:up:

Crimeny, what I wouldn't give to talk to a real U-boatman...

I think I might even be overpowered by the experience. It would just be too cool.

Thank you all for the warm welcome to subsim. And thanks Maillemaker for the link...I actually took my grandparents to tour the Blueback shortly after the museum had her ready for tours, in Portland Oregon. It was funny how it seemed even smaller when I toured it, than it did when I lived onboard. They had removed a bit of equipment to allow more room for the tours to get around.

I am downloading GWX right now, after playing stock SH3 for about 10 months...I can't wait to get rolling.

You will love it!

Welcome and happy hunting GibsonSG!

Re: Interviews ...

By now you know I am an AOD DOS player, but I have the CAOD CD. Is it in a form that I can just watch it off the CD or am I going to need to install VPC/98/CAOD to watch? If so, just how long are we talking about? Don't want to go to a lot of work in order to watch a 5 minute interview.

Also, what about SH2? I have that CD too, but never really looked at SH2, since I only played SH2/PA (no longer installed). Can I just watch them off the CD?

Thanks.

I don't know about CAOD, but I found it very easy to take the Topp and Oesten interviews off of SH2 and SH3 and put them in a desktop folder, so I can watch them any time.

I found the SH2 quicktime.

Where are the SH3 Oesten movies on the DVD? I don't see any media files on the DVD or in my stock SH3 directory?

Do I need to autoplay the SH3 DVD to access the movies? (I am scared to mess around with the DVD too much, since I don't want to infect my PC with Starforce.)

Thanks.

Mark,

the SH2 interviews are on the cd inside the game's folders, in the subfolder "Topp" and you can view them with Quicktime but AFAIK in the earliest releases of SH3 DVD (Which is the one I have) the interviews were not included. I downloaded them from UBI's page.

As for CAOD, you can also extract the interviews from it, but I have not been able to determine which program opens them. However, you can do an install of CAOD in XP, and even if the game won't run (Add "-s" to the shortcut path so it doesn't give you the soundcard error when loading) you can access thepart where the interviews are and watch them (And lots of cool stuff like maps of sinkings and very good reading about the U-Boat campaign).

Hope that helps

I've just watched Oesten movies, they were not on my DVD (without starforce).

This is interesting when he talks about meeting his former enemies and drinking a bottle of Scotch, being invited to British ports etc... "killing not a particular person... ships fighting ships" or Malayas midship man thanking for putting the ship into docks for so long!

I'm now in 2/3 of Alistair MacLean "HMS Ulisses" and I must say that this is quite shocking. Human struggle with cruel weather and the enemy constantly behind their back, just waiting for the right spot. And than it all end in few minutes of freezing cold or burning oil... hmm