Did you ever met an armed tug boat?
 

I just had an interesting patrol under RuB and the latest IC, in grid BF14 I found at night a small ship, identified through UZO as 'tug boat'. It looked harmless enough, but the flag was not easily visible and I did not want to lose renown by sinking a German ship (BF14 is quite near France), so I closed to about 700 metres. Flag mainly red but still dubious, so I decided to fire a starshell to illuminate it. As soon as the starshell ignited, the 'innocent' tug boat switched two searchlights on (I believe they were on the top of her masts) and opened fire with gun and machine-gun, mortally wounding my Watch Officer.
I dived and withdrew to a safe distance, surfaced again and sank the pesky little boat by gun (she took some twenty hits before exploding).
She was not so small after all (1,139 tons). So much for 'tug boats...'

BTW, what starts bad ends worse. Two days after losing my WO I contacted a convoy in BF15, crash-dived under depth-charge attack, and when reaching 119 metres I rammed the sea-bed with such force that forward torpedo and battery rooms flooded instantly, and five seconds later I was looking at a dark screen informing of the loss of U-101 and her entire crew. :damn:

It was probably a coastal vessel of some sort. I know because I ran into one in broad daylight, so I pummelled that sucker before it could lay a hit on me. Anyways, maybe next time you'll think twice before approaching a "harmless" ship. :rotfl:

Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups....


JIM

It was something different I urged them to add to RuB. They added many of these tugs (which have till now been unarmed but can be armed in the mission editor if you look carefully).

This post is exactly the "surprise" we'd predicted in the team forum and hoped you'd get. Fantastic!

:arrgh!: I have in my little type II-A in my new campaign, tore it up with my flak gun. The brits need to learn how to shot. LOL

Ah, so it was a Q-ship, a trap! Rats! Next time I will blast 'hem with a torpedo from down under! Learning the hard way, is this...

Well done, that's just the kind of things that make SH3 such an experience. :up:

I made it without casualties or damage but it was a scare,alaaaarm :o

As to the Armed Trawlers in the game or mod, I have seen the
Allied ones only with forward gun mount but the German ones
near my port have 2 DC racks in the rear also. What is up with
that difference between them?


JIM