...on this, my recent patrol, i lost my finest flak gunner to a Swordfish attack. in the end i stood my ground and took out six - but to what cost?
some balsar wood in the sea, and my dead flak gunner.

Dive and leave the scene. 128TC is ok but you need to watch the screen all the time, scrolling in close to your boat, the planes show up as triangles i think.

and make sure you have a full green bar above your watch crew all the time or as much as possible. 64TC is maybe better. but maybe its about knowing where you are too.
if you are close to the British Isles coast - up north near Scotland then there is a chance you'll get it near the begining of the war, then as it progresses the planes are protecting shipping routes further and further out to sea - and then comes RADAR....

i think the general concensus here is to DIVE as soon as one is spotted, but you can choose to stand and fight and watch the action unfold - sometimes its quite spectacular if you score, but the price of losing your crew and damaging your boat probably far outways this the more immersed you become with the feeling that it is in some way a real experience.

i hate losing my crew to a stupid action from my self - an act of heroism that means nothing only that i got bored/frustrated at the wrong moment and then paid a heavy price with a good crew ie, dead crew, lost u boat - career over - again!!

look after your crew - you'll live longer, but it may not be so exciting!!

^^^ Quite correct, but there doesn't seem to be an option for 'panic and wet yourself silly...' :O:

LOL :DL

You want a watch qualified officer on deck, plus at least 1-2 watch qualified POs. In short, you want that green line fully loaded. And, using SH3 Commander, you want your TC settings to reduce to "1" when a plane is spotted.

Fighting a plane is just silly. They can churn them out on an assembly line, and if you crash one, well... one pilot bites it. But if he pops a shell in your pressure hull.. at best weeks of repair time. At worst, a very expensive U-boat and 50+ skilled men go to the bottom.

Always go under when you see a plane.

Thank you all for your opinions. I started a new career and this time they sent me to the coast of Norway. No British planes hopefully, so this patrol might be a bit more like a training patrol for my green crew. I'll try to get more people with watchman ability for my next patrols and I'll see how it helps. I doubt I'll ever turn 128xTC near British coast again though :)