Most of my SH3 patrols are late war and so have spent a lot of time snorkelling although I carry few of the objections thrown out here. I spent a fair bit of effort learning how the U-Boats operated inshore in the late war period and applied those techniques to SH3.
1. Snorkelling is not used to transit from Point A to Point B. Use it to top up the battery and air out the boat only.
2. TC and snorkelling means death. Run the game from the navigation map station zoomed to 5000 metres or less with the observation scope raised. Absolute max TC is x32 and you will probably live longer if you limit yourself to x16. When snorkelling you need the map updates to be "On".
3. Never exceed Ahead One-Third when snorkelling, this limits your speed of advance to about 5 kts when charging and no more than 7 kts with standard propulsion.
4. Once you decide it is no longer safe to transit on the surface, cruise submerged at 3 knots and snort two or three times a day or when the battery is down to 85% or so. On station, remain at 2 kts unless prosecuting a contact and snorkelling once a day should be adequate to maintian the battery at >95%.
5. It can take significantly longer to air out the boat and charge the batteries when snorkelling in high seas.
6. Your hydrophones remain effective so SH3 does not appear to model self-noise. Suck it up, the diesels would be shut down regularly to conduct hydrophone checks anyway so who is to say that contact you just detected didn't happen during that time.
7. Contrary to what is often written I do not agree that you are as detectable snorkelling as you are on the surface.
8. Limit your routine cruise depth to <30 m since below that using the heads and disposing of trash through the BOLD tubes becomes problematic.
On my last snorkel patrol (December 1944) I hung around the North Channel for two weeks even spending several days outside Liverpool undetected while sinking three ships and dodging all counter attacks. Unfortunately was sunk hitting a mine in the Hebrides straights on the way home but that wasn't a snorkel problem. Because of the low TC used this patrol took some considerable time to play out but I experianced no game save bug (for saving when submerged) and was careful to save only when out of contact and greater than 50km from a port or more than four-hours game time from a sinking.
Snorkelling in SH3 certainly has issues but using it in a historically reasonable manner while minimizing TC can make your snorting fun again.
Good Hunting
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