My first encounter with mines?
 

I was off the eastern coast of England in my good ol' IID, a coastal merchant was running directly into my ambush. "Just a little further and I will have a good shot at it", I thought. "open tube 1!, prepare to fire" when suddenly it exploded and sank.
"That's odd" I though, i've never seen a coastie sink in 10m/s winds and I didn't expect the weather to sink it so violently. Disappointed, I continued NW up the coast. A few minutes later I get "We're taking damage! We have flooding! We're out of diesel fuel!", followed shortly after by hitting the bottom and complete flooding :-?

So am I right to assume that I found some mines, or did I just hit a dolphin :o or something?

Sounds like you hit a mine, though I wouldn't put this past the Royal Navy's elite Exploding Dolphin Squadron. :up:

Pretty weird that the merchant exploded, though. You'd think the AI would know how to avoid its own mines. :hmm:

From what I've read on the forums, ships completely ignore both friendly and enemy minefields.

I tested this once by creating a mission where I went into a
minefield and had 12 escorts against me. One by one they
came in after me and all got blown up......GO FIGURE !!


JIM

I pulled a patrol in the channel and was warned about the possibility of mines. I watched closely and sure enough there were mines. I layed submerged at parascope depth at the edge of the mine field and tracked lone merchants into the field, most didn't make it. Then watched a convoy come down through the channel and watched 1/3 to 1/2 hit mines and sink.

The convoy actually cleared a path through the mine field and I finally proceeded North up the channel. Submerged at 20m with the scope up just out of the tube to see forward and jocky through the field. Was real glad I didn't have to go out the way I came in.