Late 43 - What a pain
 

Hi all, well life on a U-boat is starting to suck big time!!:yep: Trying to get to my patrol area & even with my radar off planes still seem to hone in on me, I'm able to get to dive in time but what a pain, I wait till they are well & truly gone & raise the snorkel, hit TC to 64, next thing I'm getting damaged!:oops: I eventually get through that & radar detector picks up a destroyer moving across my path, I setup for a shot, running silent & just peeking everynow & then to get TDC settings, he closes to around 800 meters, slows down & starts pinging, my hands are shaking & make a quick adjustment to speed, he is still on the same course, I decide to fire 2 shots, the first misses & the second hits & bounces off!!:damn: Gee I hate that, the distance was around 500 meters, I should have used impact pistol!:doh: Well I dived deep & the fun begins!:nope: I'd wait for him to drop DC's & hedgehogs, then speed up for awhile then back to 2 knots, deploy decoys & change course, then in comes his buddies overhead, bombs dropping everywhere:
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...ehk/Late43.jpg
Finally escape with only minor damage, came across 2 more air patrols before my final patrol grid! whew, I'm still alive!:roll:

keep your head down Reece but give em hell!

Back when I played Silent Service I would shoot at destroyers from 200 feet down, because you could do that and you could see them on the map all the time. With Silent Hunter I would put my periscope up and dogfight with them. Aces Of The Deep made it a little harder, but it took SH3 with nasty mods to teach me to never, ever take on a sonar-pinging can-dropping destroyer! They call them that for a reason.

I'm glad you're alright.

Ick.:down:

I've had 2 careers destroyed by snorting. Never even knew what hit me.

Stick to the batteries and only surface at night for short periods to refresh air and recharge batteries once you are in your chosen patrol area. Late 43 and early 44 are lean years.

Hang on till' you get that type XXI :up:

Actually I forgot to mention that when the destroyer finally gave up, he was around 3kms away & I decided to rise from 130 meters to around 100m, still on silent running when he turned and came straight for me I went back down and he started pinging at around 300m dropped some more cans, gave up and left! Wonder what happened!:doh: Smarty pants probably made out he lost contact, but then turned & rushed at me!:dead:
If my renown allows it, slim pickings now so renown is scarce!:yep:

We're in Sep '43 in Wolves@War right now too. Basically I cruise with my finger on Crash Dive and the first hint of aircraft or radar contact and I dive!

I actually almost crashed into the bottom when I was returning to port since I heard 'Radar contact detected!' and it was a friendly destroyer near port in shallow waters. heh

The way I look at it is that it is that much more of a challenge to bring my crew and boat home alive than ever. I don't schnorkel. I'll run decks awash when I can. Otherwise I pop up every three hours Ahead Standard.A/C spotted and I order Dive Ahead Flank. Can't count on the seafloor being shallow enough for a CD. And if a DD/DE gets wind of me I don't head to the surface until She's out of my range for at least half an hour on a contrary heading. And even then it's a very dicey proposition. Even bad weather isn't a good insurance policy. And even when you do every little thing right, a stray bit of a hedgehog run catches you at 260m. The Challenge in '43 onwards isn't getting tonnage. It's surviving till you get back to port.

1 career of mine is in late43',and to be honest its getting tedious,surfaced,dive,surface,dive,I'm up and down like a whore's draw's on a friday night:nope:no way to fight a war;)

Ahhh you are experiencing the pain of late war on a losing side. This is what SHIII is all about, the longer you go on the less chance of surviving the war.

but nonetheless things start to get very interesting and you'll going to have to use clever tactics to sink ships and get away with little dificulty as possible but in late war it will be hard and its just holding your fingers crossed and hope the damage is minor.

HunterICX

Good luck out there captain , looks like you need it :ping:

i'm currently in 41 and i've already had two close shaves with depth charges , looks like it's going to get harder :huh:

When you have the snorkel the best tactic is to snort at night and then cruise at 50 m depth during daytime slowly and listening to your hydrophones.

There are tactics to intercept targets even if using the slow submerged speed, and of course you won't get the success of early war careers, but somehow the challenge of surviving and even scoring some hit is worth it :up:

I rarely play late war now, mainly because of the tedious nature of it. But I did find that by reversing the early-war tactics of 'submerged by day, surfaced at night' gave my watch crew a better chance of spotting the enemy in time to dive to safety. Even if they've got you on radar and are coming straight at you, you can still see them coming in daylight whereas at night you are totally blind.

Stop complaining try Jan45. :dead:

I feel ure pain ..... im approaching New York spring 43 to intercept the convoy before it gets into the safe harbor right now in a type IXC still 130km to go. With only 50m depth below me the last 100km and patrolling destroyers with radar everywhere i had to run submerged the last 12 hrs with 3 knts. The only advantage i have atm is that im in a hurricane which allows me to recharge the battery and tank oxygen full stop deck awash. Any attempt to run that way to my destination was answered by an alert of the WA "Schiff gesichtet....bla bla bla". If there is only a slight change of weather im convinced im screwed and processed to dogfood.

If I survive that long!!:dead:

Reece ask the Greman Navy to buid a heavy water nuclear torp. you might live longer and score my women to take home with you.

Should I set the range greater than 500m and use impact pistol, should I crash dive or surface after firing?:-?:yep:

Three options for survival from mid-1943 on:

1- (Realistic) Stay the hell away from destroyers, only firing long shots with patterned torps at convoys. Don't even think about getting pinged. You actually had it incredibly easy in that you lost the destroyer! Granted, I was in a IX and not a VII, but I was getting detected and pinged from 1000M away, 200M down, in heavy seas. Your only option is to not be detected. (although realistically, you should duel aircraft on the surface as per Doenitz's crazy orders- this is mission, if not career, suicide)

2- (Semi-realistic) Stock up on homing torps like mad. They can mean the difference between life and death. Dueling destroyers with regular torps is soon no longer an option because of the hedgehog. That REALLY puts a damper on sub-destroyer dogfights!

3- (Fantasy) Pick up a XXI and get ready to ride! The XXI has two critical advantages, and one serious flaw. First, it's very fast underwater. That makes evading and attacking much simpler. It is also a tremendous aid in dogfighting escorts (e.g., you can outrun corvettes underwater!). Second, it has a very rapid load system, that when combined with homing torps, is devastating against escorts (so long as your supply of torps is good!). It's serious flaw is that it lacks a stern tube. Against medium-large convoys, when you get 6+ escorts descending on you in a giant furball, it would be very nice to be able to shoot a homing torp backwards. Indeed, with your enhanced speed, simply running away from them and shooting back as you go would be deadly effective. On the plus side, the XXI makes the IX look like a brick in terms of manuevering, and it dives like a homesick water angel. Deeper diving might help if you could go past 350 and evade depth charges, but otherwise Allied improved sonar negates any advantage of going 250-280M deep.

So you have options post-'43, but they are limited. The schnorkel is relatively useless, as it seems to be an aircraft magnet, and you have no periscope watch to alert you, making you a blind aircraft magnet. One last hint: with a good detector, you can detect surface radar well before it detects you (or at least they respond to you). The same doesn't appear to be true for airplane radar (using the colored line mod for hostile surface ships, you can tell the difference- you can also tell because airplane radar grows closer and changes its bearing much more rapidly).

I reckon your three greatest dangers later in the war are:

Elite crew status

Radar

Hedgehog