My interest in Military History probably stems from my Father and Grandfather, who served in the RN during their respective World Wars. I bucked the trend by joining the Army. My main interest is the warfare in the Trenches of WW1 and my knowledge of submarine warfare in the pacific was sketchy to say the least. To my mind it paralleled our experience with Bomber Command, i.e. taking the fight to the enemy in the only way possible at the time. My Dad never talked about his time in the Navy much, and he died pretty young - about my age in fact. One thing he did say though was that it was hard to get girls if the Yanks were in port, because they had so many medal ribbons on their uniforms - the solution to this was to glue sweet wrappers to a strip of cardboard and attach it in the appropriate place. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I want it to be
Really it's playing this game that ramped up my interest, and by "This game" I mean TMO. The stock game was fun, but not anything special. I can't even remember how I came upon these forums. I think I was looking for a game patch. I heard people talking about a thing called TMO, and I took a look and I was pretty instantly hooked. From getting immersed in the game it was a natural progression to looking into the stories behind it. Some of which i'd heard before - I remember reading a book as a schoolboy, but not really comprehending. I had no idea about the extent of the torpedo problem for instance.
Anyway - for me it was the game that sparked an interest in the underlying story, rather than the other way round, which is hardly surprising. I imagine that for Americans, the submarine war in the Pacific is as significant as the battle of Britain is to us.