SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - The most immersive game made!!

Steve,
I had read your post about a week ago and last night Silent Hunter III delivered for me.

I was on my 8th patrol heading down the African coast toward Freetown and my assigned patrol grid. Not much had happened since leaving St. Nazaire except for a lone tramp steamer I picked off near the Spanish coast. I settled into a boring routine of running on the surface at night and spending most of the daylight hours submerged, since I was trying to conserve fuel for this long run. I was bored and I imaged that the crew would have been too. To make matters worse, for days I was receiving message after message hoping one would be a convoy spotted near me, instead it was other boats reporting their tonnage sunk...damn them!

A few days later as I was passing through map quadrant EI when the longed for message came in around 0530....a large convoy was reported north of my position travel slow due south. I reversed course and plotted an intercept course and rang up ahead flank! Now my heart started to pick up a few beats :D Just as it was getting light the watch officer reported a warship bearing 351 degrees and closing.

I worked out a rough intercept course that would put me on the port side of the convoy and dove to periscope depth. A few more short observations with the scope as I approached the convoy showed an escort to my port at the front side of the convoy and a second escort to my starboard toward the rear of the convoy. I was in a good position to slip between them so I ordered 120 meters, rigged for silent running and slowly moved toward the convoy. I was starting to get tense....if they hear me or ping me my whole attack plan would be toast.

I camped out at the hydrophone station listening intently to each report my sound man gave me...taking the headphones away from him every now and then to hear for myself (he was just assigned to my boat replacing my experience sound man...thank you SHCommander :huh:). After what seemed like an eternity I finally slipped by the escorts. Now I just needed to patiently wait and close the range on my intended victims. I waited until I thought I would be in a good postion and slowly came to periscope depth. When I raised
the attack scope I found myself between outer and inward columns on the port side of the convoy...not the original plan but even better!

About 10 degrees to my port side was big merchant around 6000 tons plus and following him a smaller merchant maybe 1800 to 2600 tons. I calculated a firing solution for the bigger merchant and sent three fish his way...I wanted to ensure he went down. I turned my attention to the second smaller merchant and sent one fish his way hoping for a good hit either sinking or crippling him. Just as I fired the last fish My first salvo started hitting home.

My cheers and the crews stopped quickly when the sound man in a frantic voice reported we were being pinged and warships were closing on us fast. I whipped the scope around to 180 degrees to see an escort charging straight up my stern at close range. I fired a quick desperation shot from the stern tube and crashed dived throwing the rudder hard to starboard. Seconds passed I got a torpedo impact message...but was it the small merchant or the escort....minutes passed, but no depth charges, maybe I got in a lucky shot and got the escort. It did not much matter because a couple more escorts had shown up and had my position cold.

As I passed 80 meters the boat was shaken from one end to the others by a series of close depth charge explosions.....I was taking damage. I finally made it to 190 meters manuvering violenty to avoid depth charge attack after attack. Now the depth charges were shaking the boat but I was deep enough to avoid any more damage. I now had enough of a breather to evaluate the damage...not terrible: minor damage to the stern tube, deck gun casing and forward quaters, however the hull in the stern had taken a bad beating. Over the next two hours I sat glued to my chair playing cat and mouse with the escorts.

After two and a half hours the depth charge attacks stopped and the sound man reported that the escorts were moving away. Finally after 21/2 hours it was over....actually it wasn't. I thought it was safe to increase speed and open the range as the sound man report he was losing contact. Within a few minutes of increasing speed I got the report that a warship was closing fast..one of the S.O.B's had apparently stopped and stayed behind to listen for me. He made a nunber of depth charge runs, but I was deep enough and I guess in the right place at the right time because I did not receive any damage. An hour later I finally got the report that he was moving off. I slowly came up to periscope depth. My oxygen level was dangerous low, CO2 was at danerous levels and my batteries were getting very low. I needed to surface soon.

By this point it was 1:30 am and I was actually getting tired, I had been glue to the PC for 5 or so hours now. It clouded my judgement. I raised the scope and saw the escort was moving away and quite small on the horizon. I took the chance and surfaced hoping he was far enough away not to notice my small uboat. I ran about 5 minutes on the surface when the watch officer reported ship sited. Damn if it wasn't the escort...he must have spotted me and he was charging toward my position closing the range quickly. I crashed dived reversed my course until I was about 45 degrees off his starboard side. ran flank for as long as I dared to then rigged for silent run and dropped to slow ahead. The escort charged by me to the original position he spotted me and made several depth charge runs.....luckily I was not there. He spent and hour circling around the area looking for me, but I had gotten far enough away that he was a not threat. He finally broke off and left at high speed heading back toward the convoy. This time I used common sense and waited for him to move off until the sound man lost contact. I slowly headed for periscope depth hoping my batteries held out until I surfaced.

At periscope depth I scanned the horizon in high power and did not see a thing, it was dusk and visibility was dropping. I surfaced and started the repair team to work and had my torpedo crew begin loading tube one. Fatigue had set in, but I wanted at least one fish in the tube and a few items repaired. I swear I thought I could hear the crew grumbling at this point. In the meantime I slowly began to circle back around to the position where I had attacked the convoy. I wanted to see if the escort or small merchant I believe I had hit were crippled and had been left behind.

Sure enough I spotted the merchant listing and dead in the water....the gun crew finished her off. As I passed the burning wreck I spotted the escort dead ahead and also dead in the water and listing. I dove to periscope depth and approached the escort...it may have been dead in the water, but I wasn't going to bet that the guns were not working :). The one fish I had loaded did the job. I returned to my original course to my patrol grid and radioed in my patrol report.....then finally saved the game! whee!!!

As I pushed away from my desk I uttered out loud "Wow". It was 3:00 am and I was beat....but with a feeling of complete satisfaction. I have played SH 3 with mods off and on ever since it was released....and it has constantly rewarded me with those "wow" experiences. I have SH5, but it has not come up to this level yet...you have to love SH3:up: Sorry for the long post....got carried away:)

Opps almost forgot....I do want to point out that SHCommander, GWX gold and several other mods Made the above experience great.