I've been thinking on this for a while now bubblehead1980... The game "tracks" everything in "text". When you get close enough, it "renders" the "vessel", generally accepted as 20km away. The game will "un-render" something at 30km. How far away from the sunk vessel are you when you crash?... Is your game a DVD install? Which version of the game is it, do you by chance know? v1.3 is the most common, with Gold probably running next, but just as a guess. Immediately after an install, have you ever run the SH4Validator app?
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...11#post1745211