My Biggest Enemy
 

Is not the enemy escorts but bad weather.

This was often the case in real life. I saw an interview once where veterans from both sides were talking about how many times they'd see an enemy ship and knew very well that enemy could see them but nobody even tried to engage... because the weather was too bad to do anything and mostly they were all just trying to keep themselves in one piece and not much else mattered.

I think it was in Iron Coffins that in a winter storm near Iceland, that they said a simular same thing.

And alot of ships in the convoy were sunk by the storm.

Possibly a Murmansk convoy ?

It certainly can put a damper on things...

From a realism point of view, the elements are a big part of the challenge. But it can get awfully frustrating when you start feeling like you're fighting with one hand (or at least one deck gun) tied behind your back. :damn:

Especially when you're early in the war, you intercept a convoy, you take down the two escorts to finish off the remaining convoy with your torpedoes and deck gun..... and then it starts to rain and the wind picks up and you can't use your deck gun anymore :nope: Happens quite frequently to me. Really frustrating. But it's all part of the game...

If you find it frustrating you could use a mod like 'all weather deck guns'. Then you can decide for yourself if it is 'too windy' to man the guns.

Personally bad weather used to really annoy me, especially when I was learning SH3 for the first time. But now aslong as the visibility isn't zero I'm fine with it. As I'm pretty sure it helps conceal you from escorts, and I like the atmosphere created by the seemingly constant raging storms, when I play SH4 I miss them.

I know, I tried it on one patrol, but it felt too much like cheating to me ;)
Frustrations are also part of a sim game of course. Now everytime I shadow a (badly protected) convoy, I cross my fingers for the weather to remain good. It kinda adds to the tension.

Yeah, it is kinda annoying when you find those very early war convoys full of fat unarmed merchants with only one rookie destroyer protecting them :cool:

Easier to stomach than the situation in the Pacific where for the first two years the greatest enemy is the Bureau of Ordinance, which is providing you with defective torpedoes and then blaming you for it's shortcomings. :D

If only they modeled effects like this:
http://www.uboataces.com/images/deck_gun_artic.jpg

It would certainly add to the realism.

Now that would be a bit of a stretch, even for all-weather guns! :O:

Or maybe the Royal Navy has a new secret weapon...

http://i424.photobucket.com/albums/p.../mr-freeze.jpg