[DaveOBiwan]

I've been playing Silent Hunter III with GWX 3.0 for only a couple of weeks. I graduated to Silent Hunter III after playing Silent Hunter II for a month or two. I love Silent Hunter III's Career game and I started and Early War (atually a before the War game) in Prussia. I had some success sinking Polish ships in harbor in Danzig the first day of the war. One Polish Destroyer chased me a little bit but I took no damage and escaped by running silent at about 60m. My home port then changed to Keil.

My next voyage was much more eventful. I was assigned a location soth east of England. I made my way around Denmark (I can't figure out the Keil canal) and headed up towards Scapa Flow. Near the coast of England I intercepted and sunk some coastal merchants using only the deck gun. Then I had to evade destroyers scambled to intercept me. Not too difficult. I then headed around Scapa Flow and down between Ireland and England. I sunk a few small merchants with the deck gun and again avoided any ASW ships sent to fight me. The weather was clear and I was lucky to not encounter one airplane. I then made my way to my assigned patrol. I located and sunk a larger Merchant Ship using three torpedos. It went down right before the third fish hit, so I wasted one.

Further patrols in the area located no additional ships. I decided to head home via the English Channel. I feared air attack but did not see one plane. I did locate and sink a small French freighter again using the deck gun. A French ASW ship I could not identify came to find me but I was able to avoid contact. I continued by travels down the middle of the Channel when I contacted a British Desroyer. I submerged and headed towards France to avoid him at flank speed when my hydrophones picked up multiple warships. I came to periscope level and looked behind the destroyer and following close behind were three large cruisers! I began to salivate and plan my attack. I could also see another deroyer on the far sides of the cruisers, and so I felt I could approach the cruisers from the south and line up a pretty good shot before the destroyers found me. I proceded north at flank speed and tried to line up on the third and last cruiser. My hydrophones then picked up a warship on the starboard side of my sub! I swung the periscope around to see a destroyer bearing down on me at flank speed. I was not being pinged and I did not know if it had seen my operiscope wake but it was coming fast! In my tunnel vision to sink a large warship I had failed to even look to my right. I was now about 1700 meters from my target. I knew I had to act fast so I targeted the Cruiser and fired all four fish right at the middle I then crash dived. I could only go down about 50 meters because the water in the channel is shallow. The Destroyer began pinging me and depthcharges began exploading around me. Not one of my topedoes found the Cruiser. Soon two more destroyers joined in the hunt and I was constantly pinged and depth charged. I tried everything. I ran silent, I ran fast, I played dead on the bottom. I changed directions several times but I could not shake the destroyers. I cheated and took a peek with the external view and there were two British destroyers and one french ship. The one I had avoided earlier. All of them were determined to send me to the bottom.

I evaided and ran for several hours. I was hoping for night to surface and escape but the destroyers were too tight on me. Soon I was running out of batteries and oxigen. In desperation I crawled up to periscope depth. I could use the periscope to see the destroyers without breaking the surface because they were using searchlights to find me in the dark. I had one torpedo in the stern and so I lined up a shot on one of the listening British ships. I fired at about 350 meters, the destroyer must have heard the fish in the water and began to accelerate away. The torpedo headed for the engines and I was very tense until I saw it would hit. My joy turned to terror as the torpedo bounced of the hull! I stayed at about 15 meters and used my periscope to track the the lights of the destroyers from under the water. I did this until one destroyer closed on me and smashed the periscope with his hull! Fortunately the rest of my boat was low enough to void his keel. Back down I went to 60 m and again played my losing game of hide and seek. My CO2 levels were getting dangerous, my batteries were down to 15% and I seriously thought about trying to run for it on the surface. But I knew they would blow me out of the water. A couple of times I hit bottom and had some light damage. It was easily repaired. My batteries were down to 10% and even at flank speed I could only make about 3 knots. So I decided I would just head east at about 50 m and go until my batteries or oxigen ran out. A couple hours later the destroyers gave up and I was able to surface and suck in the cool night air. I put into port at an island near the west entrance to the Keil canal and refuled and repaired my boat. Made it back to Keil with about 24000 tons to my credit. Quite an adventure! This is a great sim.