The lifeboat mod is not available on the site. Does anyone have it or want to host it or share it ? Or is there problems with it ?

In the immortal words of the Sacred Cows: "Kill!, Kill!, Kill!, Thrill!, Thrill!, Thrill!"

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jGwSgk5U0Zk

In all seriousness It's a game and whilst reflecting on the RL events behind it I feel nothing other than satisfaction over having gotten into position and settin gup a good firing solution to get the sinking.:arrgh!:

My grandfather (who died many years ago) was a merchant marine onboard oil tankers in the latter part of WW2.

As i was very young when he died it was an aspect of his life we regrettably never had a chance to talk about.

ever now and again i find myself thinking "i wonder what his opinion of my playing this game would be?" but then i remind myself that it IS just a game, and im sure it is a game that he would have had at least some interest in simply because of the naval aspect.

Agreed :yep: ....My father (84 year old and still alive) served in the British Merchant Marine during WW2 and upon being informed of my gaming preference, commented only "A lot of good men died in those terrible times".
I never thought to ask him if he meant only British lives or German lives as well. However, I suspect he meant only British, considering his father also served in the British Merchant Marine and went down with his ship. :hmm:

I'd bet my dollars he meant both of them.
That's the admirable thing about seamen, most of them killed "ships" but regretted the loose of "fellow sailors". After all, why would you think sub-commanders would assist the crew of a sunk ship with directions, food and navigation tools? They were in the war "together", just battling for different countries, and they knew, that each individual was not guilty for the country where he had been born, or he was serving to.

In general, this holds true for airmen as well. There is quite the significant difference in killing a 'thing', a weapon of the enemy, than an individual. You can read all those wartime diaries of so many pilots - especially during the first world war - where the parachute is mentioned. Or the lack of parachute. To me it says something about humanity in those that flew. Sometimes it's more between the lines, and so maybe I am guilty of reading too much into it - but the hope is well founded.
It's rather logical, that to have to kill another man dents your mentality and well-being far more than to watch the artillery on your battleship wreck the Bismarck. It's when you hear voices and see people on deck that something inside you is caught - at least I gather that's where it must be.
The distance to your enemy is relatively short in a submarine, to your target merchant. I don't doubt some had quiet thoughts about what they did, from time to time, but again you're firing on a big, 'dead' object.

My father was drafted and ended up as a canon spotter in Vietnam and he definitely is against anything that involves violence or war. When we were young, we weren't allowed to have toy guns (not even squirt guns), GI-Joe was a BIG No-No. Most action figures were banned if they had guns. When I got older, through my love of alternative gaming mostly due to my introduction to Dungeons & Dragons, led me into the histrorical wargames of Avalon Hill and SPI. My father definitely dissagreed that those games should even be in the house but tolerated it because I was a teenager at the time but he refused and STILL refuses to play them. He can't even watch a movie with violence in it so therefore, action films aren't his forte'

This said, he knows a lot about the subjects of the tactics of the battles and a LOT about the history of various wars. While he refuses to play any games blatantly dealing with war, I can show him a scenario in a board war game and he can tell me particularly what each side did in the battle.. who came in from where... what tactics each side used that failed or succeded...etc. He even showed me how to do manual targeting and manual navagation in Silent Hunter III (which are basically trigonometry equasions that I still really grasp to understand but that's besides the point), and he's also given me some tips and tricks and coached me in some of the tactics that the German U-Boats used that actually worked in the game.

I think now, he's finally beginning to come to peace with his war time experiences and is now willing to talk about and share these stories and teach the history of various events that I've only gamed. This adds a lot more meaning to these games for me actually. It amazed me that a man who hates war so much is such an expert on the history and tactics of battles and wars fought all through history. It's a contradiction in him that I love.

You know what ?.....I'm gonna ask him on Sunday :yep:

Video games shouldn't make you feel guilty I allways say if Hitler had Halo 2 WWII never would have happened.

Guilty that your sinking ships, which is what your playing the game for? No!, But I still don't machine gun survivors! It wastes ammo better used to sink ships.

In real life sub crews sometimes had some sympathy for their enemy, especialy when they died in a bad way, oil fires and so forth.

Das boot caught the moment when they saw survivors on the burning tanker.:yep:

Well...

What's there to really feel guilty about? It's all a computer simulation. In the game you may be sinking oil tankers and troop ships but there's no real harm done. No real loss of life and property. In terms of the glorification and romanticism of War, it's quite low-key compared to other military games. It was clearly inspired by Das Boot. Not really much of a recruiting tool like some other titles.

On the other hand, it's not a bad thing to sit back and think about the ramifications that War brings onto the World, throughout History. In fact, if playing the game sharpens your feelings against War, maybe that's the best thing to ever come out of it all.

I think the best way to look at it is to maintain a level perspective and accept that SH3 is purely a submarine simulation that is loosely based on true life events during WW2.

U-boat commanders have throughout the decades been branded as heartless devils who wanted to kill whatever they encountered. This was part of a real left-wing brainwashing to show everyone how bad those U-boat Nazi's were (although only a very small part was actually member of the Nazi party). But the gruesome fact was that it was rather the Allies who were the beasts on the seas, they killed helpless U-boatcrews who were already in the water when their sub was sinking. Only on 2 occasions in the whole war did U-boatcommanders cross the line, 1 was even accidentally (it involved shooting wreckage to make it sink faster so they could hide their locations from planes) while in the other case the commander was executed on personal order of Dönitz. In the early years U-boat even helped the crews of the ships if they could by giving them food, water and sometimes even directions how to make it safely to the shore (if they were not too far from it). But the Laconia incident forced them to abandon this help. For those who don't know, the laconia was a passengers ship torpedo's by the U156 while it was sailing without lights, it was holding 1800 Italian POW and several British people (including women and children). The U-156 courageously started to conduct a rescue operation and picked up as much survivors as possible (regardless of their nationality). Dönitz sended 2 more U-boats and asked the Free French to send a few ships to pick them all up afterwards. U-156 transmitted a message asking for assistance of other ships in the neighborhood with the promise he would not attack, no reply came. the following days 3 other submarines came to help (U-506, U-507 and the Italian Cappallini), their decks where crammed with survivors. On 16 September 1942 the subs were spotted by a B24 liberator who could clearly see the Red Cross flags drapped over the gundecks, the U-156 signaled the plane for help. A few hours later the plane returned and attacked the subs (with their decks full of survivors) with bombs and depth charges!!! The subs had to abandon the operation and had to put all the survivors back in the sea in the hope that the Free French would arrive quickly. In spite that these vessels arrived later that day several hundreds of people perished in the cold water.

After this incident Dönitz forbade every rescue action because it endangered not only the boat but also the entire crew.


The attack on these subs (although they were military crafts) was without doubt a warcrime, the one who ordered to attack the subs was never convicted for this (surprise, surprise).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconia_incident

http://www.uboataces.com/battle-laconia.shtml

EDIT: D'oh! Should have read the post above me, great minds think alike, eh?

I generally dont feel guilty when I play, because I like to imagine that I always rescue the crew, or provide them with supplies throughout the war (although I have yet to survive to see the Lacona incident resulting in it being banned). Since SH3 doesnt model in rescuing crewmen like that, I do have to attack unannounced, but in my mind, I'm being civil about it.

I sink ships, not men.