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Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
I'm not sure what your point is about the "hardcore sim crowd". I didn't respond yesterday because I haven't been online since the day before that. It's an interesting story, but again, is there a point beyond Admiral Christie's "strangeness"?
Is it about criticizing players who make a point of attacking destroyers (as I recently did)? Sure it was done, but it took torpedoes away from the job of sinking merchants and it was also risky. Remember, Harder didn't come back from her sixth patrol.
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During his short but impressive career Dealey’s USS Harder sank 16 enemy ships totaling over 50,000 tons.
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While Commander Dealey was the bravest of the brave, and 16 ships and 50,000 tons in 6 patrols is nothing to sneeze at, it's also not the most impressive of scores.
http://www.submarinebooks.com/DestroyerKiller.htm
I don't condemn gamers for playing like gamers, but I'm more impressed when they play as if their life was really on the line.
And if what I just wrote has nothing to do with what you meant, I'll crawl back under my bridge and wait for some defenseless billy-goats to come along.  |
Hmmmmm. What's my point? (do I have to have a point? I'm in trouble here
) Christie's strangeness is certainly part of it. He actively resisted his skippers' reports of torpedo malfunctions, disciplining officers who were too strong about it. When one submarine made the mistake of picking up over 50 refugees from the Philippine defeat and one was an officer superior to the skipper. This officer ordered the submarine to continue its war patrol instead of returning to Australia with the evacuees. In the course of this "black hole of Calcutta" mission, they were subject to a prolonged depth charge attack by the inept Japanese navy :rotfl:which nearly exhausted the oxygen supply for the crew. On return, Christie severly repremanded the sub skipper for not cutting short his cruise and returning the evacuees to terra firma.
Balanced on that is Christie's foreward to the book "Destroyer Killer," which I have and you reference with that link, where Christie takes responsibility for sending Sam Dealey out on one too many missions when he knew better. That's a surprising amount of humility from the man who ordered Dealey to force the "down the throat."
I just think the real life complexity is so much richer than the "sonar shouldn't work on the surface dammit!" hardcore simmers who usually operate on very limited factual ground. There are plenty of other examples. Those who pride themselves on "historical accuracy" are usually actually primarily concerned with balance between player and enemy that makes for their subjective goal of great gameplay.
Just like I did with the Dick O'Kane attack method, after they come to their conclusion, they ask "is there ANY way I can historically justify this?" Guilty as charged.:rotfl: