Nice screens BClaw. A favorite tactic of mine too is to hide under merchants in the convoy. Throws the escorts through a loop!

:damn:

Love the redfin skin, looks good!

I fired two torpedoes, one at each freighter under the funnel, both stopped dead in the water I had three destroyers hounding me so I hid under one, they knew where I was but couldn't get to me. One would stay facing me while the other two would run up and down either side of the damaged frieghter, One even rammed the frieghter I think trying to move it off me. I sat there silent till way after it got dark before they gave up and moved off.

Thanks. :)

Came to me in the middle of shooting up ships docked at Hiroshima port.

That was my last torpedo. :rock:

Great stuff. Can hardly wait to play. My vid card should arrive tomorrow.

Them crazy Japaneese.
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9527/45435ny2.jpg

i love how the gunboats look like crappy oldschool mississipi river houseboat things.
looks sorta like a log cabin in a flood with ornamental smokestacks or something

Way to Close for comfort... USS Snapper, has a close call near Takao. (Straddled by 4 bombs, two on each side..)
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a28...er4/Splash.jpg

another victim
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a28/Shaffer4/Burn.jpg

Dude... a shirt.... PLEASE?!...
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a28...4/Freckles.jpg

Brilliant work (as usual) maestro, love that one :up:

Sorry mate I was referring to raming a battleship with your sub, sort of like a poodle trying to have it off with an elephant, the enthusiasms there, but, well...... it just aint going to work!

http://i117.photobucket.com/albums/o...3-2007_4-1.jpg
flank speed in 15 meters per second?(modded weather report) of wind. yea theys on the deck guns

VIDEO OF YAMATO ATTACK - (REALISM SET TO 100%)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAVF4d9ANaI

If the game is realistic enough, you might just have been lucky; it may have been set to go off much deeper, and it did - after you were well out of range.

Some of these stories are fun to read but a reaccouring theme is the lame actions of escorts. Here is mine?

I jsut dropped off an agent, and was heading out for some merchant destruction when, I recieved a FOX telling me to head for the China Sea. In route, a horrible Typhoon began to bow with 30' swells and my boat was bouncing all over, so I initiated a dive drill. General quarters was sounded and the crew quickly went to work and after a great deal of effort (stupid game), our boat was cruising at 100'. I released the General Quarters and went to 2/3. About 20 minutes later, Sonar indicated it had merchant and warship traffic heading straight for us. Sounding General Quarters Again, Sonar began tracking. At exactly 400yds, we went to periscope depth and between the giants swells, a large passenger liner was at a perfect 90deg. I could not get bearing or accurate yardage so I fired a spread of all 6 fix with 3deg difference left and right of zero (manual is so much fun!) and dove down and went to standard to loop around and get another shot with rear tubes. After tracking for several minutes explosions were heard and then sounds of the ship breaking up. Of my 6 fired, three hit and it was a perfect bow, stern, and mid spread. The ship broke into three pieces and exploded as well sending sailors and passengers flying in all directions. The ship must have been loaded with troops and weapons as the explosions were the largest I had ever seen.

Soon the ship was on its way to the bottom of the ocean floor and Sonar started reporting over 15 "merchants" suddenly. Apparenlty many made it to boats but I would have hated to be in a boat with those waves.

(side note: I turned on external views for this mission and one of the fish that hit the middle of the big ole vessle was riding a wave swell and hit on the gangway. Funny watching the people get blown away):ping:

"Disclaimer: On my last patrol I experienced a weird glitch that wouldn't let me reload torpedoes, but to keep this in character and seeing how it was a rather hilarious incident, I'll consider it to be some kinda mechanical failure.. This is my first attempt at a patrol write up so I hope you'll enjoy it."

We departed from Brisbane, Australia on June 2nd, 1942 in our trusty S-18 class submarine which had seen 6 patrols prior to this, with no seaman harmed and no damage inflicted to her. As we had sunk ~ 120.000 tons worth of ships during those patrols, with a dated S-18 no less, we were very confident in our abilities and in the ship. Our main objective was simple enough - we were to patrol the Solomon Islands and sink any hostile ship we could get a hold of. As we headed north for the Coral Sea, we received Comsubpac news that New Guineea was the target of a main strike of combined air, land and naval forces, forcing the Japanese aggressor to withdraw from the island. That meant our travel through the Coral Sea was much saver a task than it used to be in previous patrols, thanks to the fact that Japanese air cover was not as frequent as it had been (Captain's note: my request to install a Flak gun has yet to be answered by Comsubpac .. I doubt it's going to happen anytime soon).

Sure enough, we arrived at our designated patrol area about 5 days after departing from Brisbane about a day's travel south east of the hostile port of Rabaul, staying submerged for most of the day to avoid aircrafts. The first two days passed by rather unspectacular when the Captain decided to have a trip around the Solomon Islands. Sure enough, after about a day and a half going around the northern part of the island group, we pick up a japanese merchant. This meant hunting season and soon afterwards, the unsuspecting merchant was sunk by two torpedoes, never knowing what had hit her. Our Captain just mentioned that one of the survivors on the lifeboat gave him an internationally known gesture of disapproval when we came close to the few men on their little boat as they noticed the periscope. Our celebration was soon struck by concern as word went out that the Captain wanted to cripple the Solomon Islands' life support by raiding the port of Honiara. We didn't know what to expect there, but we were to find out soon enough ...

We stayed submerged for close to 12 hours only about 3 kms out from the port, and the destroyer patrolling the area never picked us up. This was probably one of the most intense experiences in our life on S-18. Depth under keel didn't give us a whole lot of room for evasive maneuvering upon detection, but we trust our Captain enough to let this kind of judgement be his call. At about 2200 hours local time, we were called to battlestations - we raised the periscope to find that the destroyer was only 800 meters away from us at a near perfect angle. 3 fish later it added to our ever increasing number of tonnage sunk. We went closer to the port and waited for our tubes to be reloaded and found it had no coastal installations. We surfaced 1 km out from the harbor because CO2 levels became critical meanwhile, but this was to be as easy as duck hunting - only two small cannon boats were left to guard the port of Honiara. We dispatched off them as well as taking out a 10000 Ton tanker and a 5600 ton merchant when suddenly, there seemed to be a problem in our torpedo room - all four tubes were jammed. Yes, jammed. How can you possibly reload FOUR torpedoes and forget to retract the stop bolts in all four tubes? I will never forget the Captain's desperate cries to fire the torpedoes to no avail, in fact, it haunts me while I am writing this diary. Great .. the torpedoes were now officially jammed in the tubes with no way to fix this problem in hostile waters. The Captain threw seven shades of fit, and on our way out of Horiana you could hear his swearing in Pearl Harbour. No one dared to tell him to keep the noise down either as swimming back to Brisbane wasn't something any of us fancied doing.

We continued our patrol however, going around the Solomon Islands to go back to our initial patrol area. The fact that we had sunk a total of 3 warships, two merchants and one tanker cooled our Captain off as about a day away from our patrol area at around 0425 hours, we met a small convoy consisting of two tankers and one merchant. With the torpedo tubes jammed, all we could do was approach and attack them with the deck gun. We reported the contact and sure enough, Comsubpac told us to take them out with the priority being the tankers. Using the dark of the night to our advantage, we were able to approach the hostile ships unnoticed before we opened up and the peaceful seas turned into a firey hell. One of the tankers took a few potshots at us so she was the first to draw our attention. Luckily for us, the sailors on the japanese vessel were everything but marksmen so when she blew up, S-18 remained unscratched. It left a bit of a bitter taste however because the big 10000 ton tanker didn't drop any lifeboats .. there were no survivors. They might be the enemy, but they are seamen just like us ... but this is a war, and there is little time to mourn when you think about that you could be the next to die 15000 kms from home, never to be found again.

The 3 ships took a lot of ammo to sink but we managed to do so, however, with our torpedoes jammed and running out of deck ammo, all we could do was to make it back to the patrol area and report contacts. Back in our patrol area, we were given permission to return to Brisbane when on our way back we came across three japanese fishers in their little wooden boats. Our Captain didn't seem too interested but reported them none the less, and much to our surprise we were told to sink them. Putting all second thoughts aside about this complete mismatch, we opened up on them with the remaining shells from our deck gun. Two of the fisherboats instantly caught fire while the biggest tried to make a run for it. Then however, we were completely out of ammo. Ok, I thought, we are going to let that one be and return home, but that was not to be. "Orders are clear", the Captain let us know. "Destroy enemy vessels". So we chased after the remaining boat which was using a pattern of board/starboard maneuvers to get away but our diesel engine had no problem at all to keep up with it. Getting closer, the japanese fisher forced their boat into a starboard turn and our Captain ordered to keep the course .. keep it ... I knew what was up. We were going to ram the little boat .. sure, it was solid metal versus wood, but still .. I felt the adrenaline rushing. "Rudder 30 DEGREES STARBOARD! FLANK SPEED!" I thought the Captain had lost his mind. "RUDDER MIDSHIPS!" Seconds passed, and us down in the belly of S-18, being shaken by the wild chase, didn't know what was going to happen as suddenly, a banging noise and awkward scratching echoed through our submarine. I couldn't believe this .. this was surely not your run of the mill standard procedure. I suppose the Captain was a huge fan of "20000 miles under the sea" by Jules Verne. We would call our Captain "Nemo" from that day on whenever he was not around. It worked. The small fisherboat had tipped over from the impact and sank within seconds. The few crewmen made it out alive and I believe, hoping they made it to safety of course, will tell the story of when their ship was sunk by a US submarine at ramming speed for the rest of their lives.

We arrived back in Brisbane on July 5th without further incidents. A lot of promotions were handed to the crew and we were transferred to a new boat, a Salmon Class submarine. 24 torpedoes instead of 12 .. wow. A lot of tubes to jam too .. our next patrol is set to begin shortly, but not before our Captain is comfortable with his torpedo room crews again. Sadly, S-18 was transferred back to the United States where it serves for training purposes now ... but I will forever remember her and secretly refer to the boat that kept us alive on 7 patrols as "USS Nautilus".
__

Right, I hope you guys enjoyed this read. I sadly forgot to take screenshots (didn't intend to make a write up of it), but this patrol was surely the most fun so far, despite the fact that a bug prevented me from using my remaining 7 torpedoes. I surely had a blast writing this and may consider doing a few more of these.

USS Greandier at night; I really like that pic a lot!:smug::D

http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/5...onlightex5.jpg

Desperate try @ Tokyo
 

So there I was, my first mission as almost full realism. No auto-aiming, external views or map contacts.

The beginning of the trip went nicely, I dodged few enemy warpatrols as I didn't want too much attention to mysel on this recon mission. When I got near to tokyo I realized that I have to go through a narrow strait. Ofc I thought that night would be the best time as there wouldn't be any convoys with escorts and their nasty sonars.
So I waited the night to fall and started to head to Tokyo, when I got about 10 clicks away from the strait I dived all the way to..... 37 meters, I was about ½ or 1 meter above the seafloor and I decided to trust that it won't get anymore shallow than it is already. After inspecting the map few times I noticed that there starts a deeper area of water about 12 clicks away, so I decided to go to standard speed and started active sonar listening.
first 7 clicks we're really easy, few gunboats going from north and south from me, but they we're so far away that I decided not to slow down, after all I was so close to deeper waters and a freeway to Tokyo. Then it happened, slow propeller sound coming from bearing 040, then it moved to 033. I realized soon that it would pass my designated line of entry. I went to periscope depth and raised my periscope, it was really dark and took a while to find the enemy but then I noticed him at about 022, a medium cruiser, I recognized the ship(can't remember it atm >.<) and took the distance and made a shooting solution.
After few minutes of stalking I decided that I would just wait for it to go past me and then continue my way, after all it was still a recon mission. So I waited, and waited, and waited until the ship was at 265 at about 1,2 clicks away and started moving 1/3 silent mode towards my waypoint.
Everything was going nicely and I went back to 37 meters. When I was 4,5 clicks away from the deep end the worst thing happened. First of all, the cruiser that I let go past me was coming after me, really fast. I hadn't noticed that it made an U turn and was about 600-700 meters behind me. Ofc I didn't hear this because of my own propeller noice, only reason why I did notice it was because my "own" propeller noise was getting louder.
If that wasn't enough there was a subchaser at bearing 62 which had sneaked right next to me, about 300 meters away. Well I thought to turn hard starboard and hope they would miss me. Well they sure as hell didn't. Cat and mouse play was ready to start.
I was about 3 clicks away from deeper waters and I decided to try to play dead. Everytime I thought I had lost them they found me again, and again aaaaand again. Finally about 600 meters away from the deeper area I decided to go all or nothing, I waited for the cruiser to drop his depth charges and dodged them barely, my ship got a sidehit and the forward torpedorooms we're filling fast. Well I finally got to the deeper waters and dived so they couldn't be able to find me so easily...
And they didn't, too bad that my repair team couldn't fix the leak soon enough which lead to the fact that I was going deeper, and deeper, and deeper... And there I was, first patrol at "realistic" settings, sunken deep to my watery grave.


(Mods that I used was the flavored to taste which made the enemy radars a lot better. It was really impossible to shake that cruiser on such an shallow water. I even tried to just lay still on the ocean floor but it didn't help)

http://home.planet.nl/%7Ehart0751/images/uw1.jpg

http://home.planet.nl/%7Ehart0751/images/uw2.jpg

http://home.planet.nl/%7Ehart0751/images/uw3.jpg

http://home.planet.nl/%7Ehart0751/images/uw4.jpg

http://home.planet.nl/~hart0751/images/uw5.jpg
Mud

Rare color footage of USS Purplepants´ last patrol. :yep:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKw58pXbXkk

I was hoping for some crazy shennanigans and hijinks ending with staring down the bow of a Destroyer or Cruiser. lol

Photo recon mission turned hairy....

So I tried the photo recon quick mission. Made my approach undetected, maneuvered between a live of CVs and merchants. I photographed them all, then attacked. Torpedoed and sank two merchants and two carriers. Began my egress. While leaving I torpedoed a third merchant.

After leaving the harbor I went to PD and did a check. Didn't see anything, so I surfaced. Too close - there were two DD back towards the bay that saw me and gave chase.

I sank the first one with gun fire while taking minimal damage.

The second one got a lucky hit on my diesels and I slowed to about 12 knots. I was firing the deck gun into her as fast as she would reload, but the DD was going so fast she side-swiped me.

I guess this is a bit too close! I was actually blowing idividual bits off the DD. I watch the crew fall as my shells struck home. Pretty awesome.

She fell away after a bit like this and then blew up. I added to DDs to my tally (2CVs, 3 mechants plus the DDs) and limped out to make repairs.

(I love how the look outs are just staring off into space while the flaming DD slides (and I mean screechingly literally) along the port side.)

Here are a few choice pics:

CybrSlydr - the last pick fulfills your wish!

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/1...1836265ai4.jpg
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/5...1916390rm2.jpg
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/7...1931546tn7.jpg
http://img469.imageshack.us/img469/9...1944750vd8.jpg