ships I didn't sink
 

While on patrol last night some black sunken ship symbols show up on my map in the bismark sea. I have just started this patrol in a campaign game and haven't sunk any ships on this particular patrol. Does anyone know what these symbols mean?

That's new to me, I have never seen "black" ship symbols. Someone here will be able to answer that I'm sure. Maybe boats sunk that have made the news and/or radio reports?

I believe they are ships that were sunk by something other than you (collisions, storms) etc.

JCC

This is the second time Ive heard of this.

Even in my "easy" campaign I have not seen them.

I have seen grey contacts that were radar contacts but no phantom sinkings.

Then again I run the "limited contacts" mod so that may explain it.

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/6402/phantomxu1.jpg

Here is a screen shot of the black sunk symbols. The one red sunk symbols is a destroyer I whacked shortly after entering this area

This happens when you have not visual or hydrophone confirmation of a ship was destroyed.

May be caused by another factors but not sure.

:up:

Thats weird I have never seen this !

Even before I added the reduced contact mod.

Except at the time these appeared, I had not yet sunk the destroyer, I had not fired a shot. I was taking a northern route to the Celebes Sea through the Bismarks trying to save torpedoes and avoid a boring engagement with another ubiquitous 4 destroyer 8 merchant convoy.

Might want to look into this http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=116283

I have this exact same thing in my current patrol. I attacked a convoy of all Tankers in the Bismark Sea, escorted by four Destroyers. My initial attack saw two of the Tankers go to the bottom. The Destroyers countered with depthcharges. While the attack was going on, I heard the sound of secondary explosions. I did'nt know what it could have been, since both my targets went down. After manageing to rise to periscope depth, I noticed there were only three Destroyers, and that black ship symbol appeared on the map. My only guess is that one of the Destroyers blew himself up during his depthcharge run.:hmm:

Luckly I had saved this game before going to bed last night, which is how I was able to do screenshots. I opened up the game I bit ago and sailed my sub over to one of the black sunk icons. What I found was the stern of a Japanese merchant bobbing in the sea. Now I realize that this must be the remnants of a convoy I encountered in a previous patrol. I have not been in the bismarks for 3 months game time, so that ship has been floating out there awhile.

Thanks for pointing out that thread. I was about to give up campaign games because they were feeling so canned. Now I will give this mod a try.

No, the game doesn't remember stuff from previous patrols as far as I know (if it did, that would be very cool indeed). It reloads the missions based on the patrol start date.

What was the weather like? There have been problems with ships going down in storms I know without any help from guns or torpedos. That is a possibility (and not even terrible seas, either).

It might have been started by a collision as well, combined with sea state.

Another possibility is enemy action.

There are US ships driving around, some in surprising places. I wasn;t going to touch the US missins in the campaign, but testing near Truk I keep seeing US ships in time frames where that should be not a happy place for them to be.

Perhaps there was a random encounter between them. Warships will follow waypoints even if they are engaged, so a US TF could pass on the fringes of gunnery range with a convoy, sink a couple, and sail on...

tater

My pleasure but all credit goes to Tater for his hard work a dilligance on this issue.

Tater is da man on this issue !

Thanks Tater. I downloaded your mod and have already started a new campaign. Unfortunately it may give me one less thing to gripe about.