After a bout of chronic restartitis I finally settled on a new career which I hope to take long term.
Leutnant z. S. Karl Giebl, sailing out of Wilhelmshave in U-52, a Type VIIB.
Got the north of Scotland as our designated area, so we went up the British east coast and hung out for a day or so in what might be the most atrocious weather I've ever seen.
This isn't the boat submerged. That's surfaced, with one of the waves coming over and pushing us down. I guess they're are a product of the seasonal waves I clicked in SH3Commander. The conning tower was spending half its time a meter or more below the surface.
After tiring of tormenting my watch crew I decided to give the rest of them some punsihment and gave an ALLARRRMMM crash dive.
And ploughed into the sea-bed at 70 meters.
Today we learned to check depth under keel before crash diving.
Frankly I think that incident alone would have been enough to demote me to cabin boy, but whatever; I struggled on, feeling pretty sheepish.
Luckily my pride was damaged more than the boat.
Since I was already playing the ignorant, houghtless oaf so well I decided to round things off by going down the Irish sea and back through Der Kanal. Not as suicidal in September '39 as the rest of the war apparently, because I got a haul of eight ships for 30,669 GRT - my best yet.
By the end I was sinking them with the deck gun.
Barely heard a squeak out of the Royal Navy. Picked up a lot on Hydrophones, but they never seemed to notice me. One destroyer came within visual range while we was sat on the surface in calm weather and good visibility, watching a large cargo sink. Didn't spot us, didn't ping us, didn't come anywhere near us. Somebody upstairs must like me.
And after all that I didn't even get a bloody medal.
Next time.