SIDE OF WINNERS

[Kapt Z]

Originally Posted by UKönig

You mean, "gone off the deep end?"

Off the rails, through the station rear wall and into the bay....

....the deep end of the bay, as you say.

[Torplexed]

Awww. All the poor put-upon Adolph ever wanted was peace. Peace, Peace, Peace

A piece of Poland, a piece of France, a chunk of Ukraine, a plot near Bryansk.

[CCIP]

Returning to the original topic, because this was at one point about SH3, and SH3 vs. SH4, let me try to break it down for you...

What I see in that perspective is a lot of mythology that surrounds uboats, and I'm sad to see it drive away players, because SH3 is a wonderful game and the Atlantic campaign is so worth playing and experiencing. And I say that as someone who is predominantly an SH4 player. The problems I see with that view of U-boats is that I think it comes with a misunderstanding of what the experience was actually about.

Over the years since WWII, the subject of U-boats has grown over with various myths. Perhaps the first of these were promoted by, ironically, Doenitz and Churchill in equal measure. The view of U-boats as "greatest peril" and "grey wolves" and a sort of scary opponent that was oh-so-close to succeeding comes largely from people like them, because their historical legacy stood to gain from that. The truth is that the U-boats weren't close, and they were beaten decisively far earlier than most would think. As a campaign, the U-boat war was effectively lost by early-mid 1941, much in the same way the war on land was lost by mid-late 1941 when Barbarossa failed to get to its intended objectives.

If SH3 was a competitive game where you played as the leader of Germany, yeah, it'd get pretty frustrating because the other players would have you beaten by that point and it's not a great sport after that. But SH3 is not a sport, and you're not playing Germany - you're playing an individual U-boat commander, and in that role, I'd argue that you have no less to experience than in a game that's about commanding troops on a tactical battlefield after Barbarossa, or about flying an airplane after the Battle of Britain. It's VERY worth playing and you can achieve some outstanding success on your own personal scale.

The second set of myths is that "Iron Coffins" view you mentioned, of U-boats as death-traps full of doomed men who are hopeless and painfully aware of their coming demise, but stuck and unable to do anything amid crumbling morale. But that, too, isn't really the truth, especially as applies to U-boat commanders - and Werner and to a lesser extent Buchheim had their own agendas when presenting that view. Werner in particular had been heavily criticized, by both historians and other U-boat men, for distorting facts to create that narrative of doom and victimhood. Yes, it's true that most U-boats were sunk, and that the costs were heavy. However there is little evidence that any of the gloom suggested by these heavily anti-war works actually existed in the Kriegsmarine. What's more, the deaths in the U-boat force disproportionately affected the ratings, while many more officers and the vast majority of U-boat commanders actually survived the war, including most of the successful ones. And again, I remind that your role in SH3 is not the role of a low-ranking sailor or of an anthromorphized submarine - you play as the commander of a boat, and as such, the truth beyond the myths is that at any point in the war, your chances of surviving a career are not actually that bad. And to the end, you would have a crew who were ready and willing to go to sea, contrary to what some of the myths say.

Finally, the third problematic perspective is that promoted by historians such as Clay Blair. Blair is an excellent researcher and his work presented some really important archival evidence - but Blair was also an American navy officer and a man with an agenda. His agenda came from the fact that he was bitter to see the U-boats getting so much post-war attention, while for quite some time, the US submarine effort was forgotten. He wasted no opportunity to impose his own interpretation on the U-boat war, looking for the smallest bits of evidence that the U-boat force was ineffective, unprepared, corrupted by Nazism, and otherwise not nearly as good as his contemporaries might've thought. He wanted to portray U-boat officers as, in effect, liars and braggarts - while taking a very generous perspective on US submariners in equivalent positions in his other work. In breaking down - quite justly - some of the original U-boat myths, he'd also helped build his own, which I think is very unfair and in many cases absolutely forced. The U-boat story is one that absolutely is significant and deserves to be heard - and experienced, through games such as SH3. It is not one bit tainted by "losing", and the actual history of the U-boat war shows that there are some very significant things worth knowing and understanding about it, at any time in the war.

So in the original post, I see elements of all three mythologized perspectives - the "greatest peril" of Churchill, the "iron coffins" of Werner, and the "no-good lying Nazis" of Blair. All three of them are highly inaccurate and I fear they've distorted the views of a lot of people. I recommend learning more about history while letting go of those preconceived notions - and, I absolutely recommend playing SH3!

[Admiral Halsey]

Honestly some of the most fun I have is late war. Surviving to 44 is my goal every time I start a new career and I've only done it once. I wanna get the Type XXI but I wanna do it legit so I just keep banging away running into the brick wall that is May of 43.

[Kip336]

This topic taught me more about the start of WW2 than anything else.

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Returning to the original topic, because this was at one point about SH3, and SH3 vs. SH4, let me try to break it down for you...

What I see in that perspective is a lot of mythology that surrounds uboats, and I'm sad to see it drive away players, because SH3 is a wonderful game and the Atlantic campaign is so worth playing and experiencing. And I say that as someone who is predominantly an SH4 player. The problems I see with that view of U-boats is that I think it comes with a misunderstanding of what the experience was actually about.

Over the years since WWII, the subject of U-boats has grown over with various myths. Perhaps the first of these were promoted by, ironically, Doenitz and Churchill in equal measure. The view of U-boats as "greatest peril" and "grey wolves" and a sort of scary opponent that was oh-so-close to succeeding comes largely from people like them, because their historical legacy stood to gain from that. The truth is that the U-boats weren't close, and they were beaten decisively far earlier than most would think. As a campaign, the U-boat war was effectively lost by early-mid 1941, much in the same way the war on land was lost by mid-late 1941 when Barbarossa failed to get to its intended objectives.

If SH3 was a competitive game where you played as the leader of Germany, yeah, it'd get pretty frustrating because the other players would have you beaten by that point and it's not a great sport after that. But SH3 is not a sport, and you're not playing Germany - you're playing an individual U-boat commander, and in that role, I'd argue that you have no less to experience than in a game that's about commanding troops on a tactical battlefield after Barbarossa, or about flying an airplane after the Battle of Britain. It's VERY worth playing and you can achieve some outstanding success on your own personal scale.

The second set of myths is that "Iron Coffins" view you mentioned, of U-boats as death-traps full of doomed men who are hopeless and painfully aware of their coming demise, but stuck and unable to do anything amid crumbling morale. But that, too, isn't really the truth, especially as applies to U-boat commanders - and Werner and to a lesser extent Buchheim had their own agendas when presenting that view. Werner in particular had been heavily criticized, by both historians and other U-boat men, for distorting facts to create that narrative of doom and victimhood. Yes, it's true that most U-boats were sunk, and that the costs were heavy. However there is little evidence that any of the gloom suggested by these heavily anti-war works actually existed in the Kriegsmarine. What's more, the deaths in the U-boat force disproportionately affected the ratings, while many more officers and the vast majority of U-boat commanders actually survived the war, including most of the successful ones. And again, I remind that your role in SH3 is not the role of a low-ranking sailor or of an anthromorphized submarine - you play as the commander of a boat, and as such, the truth beyond the myths is that at any point in the war, your chances of surviving a career are not actually that bad. And to the end, you would have a crew who were ready and willing to go to sea, contrary to what some of the myths say.

Finally, the third problematic perspective is that promoted by historians such as Clay Blair. Blair is an excellent researcher and his work presented some really important archival evidence - but Blair was also an American navy officer and a man with an agenda. His agenda came from the fact that he was bitter to see the U-boats getting so much post-war attention, while for quite some time, the US submarine effort was forgotten. He wasted no opportunity to impose his own interpretation on the U-boat war, looking for the smallest bits of evidence that the U-boat force was ineffective, unprepared, corrupted by Nazism, and otherwise not nearly as good as his contemporaries might've thought. He wanted to portray U-boat officers as, in effect, liars and braggarts - while taking a very generous perspective on US submariners in equivalent positions in his other work. In breaking down - quite justly - some of the original U-boat myths, he'd also helped build his own, which I think is very unfair and in many cases absolutely forced. The U-boat story is one that absolutely is significant and deserves to be heard - and experienced, through games such as SH3. It is not one bit tainted by "losing", and the actual history of the U-boat war shows that there are some very significant things worth knowing and understanding about it, at any time in the war.

So in the original post, I see elements of all three mythologized perspectives - the "greatest peril" of Churchill, the "iron coffins" of Werner, and the "no-good lying Nazis" of Blair. All three of them are highly inaccurate and I fear they've distorted the views of a lot of people. I recommend learning more about history while letting go of those preconceived notions - and, I absolutely recommend playing SH3!

You seem to have formed your opinion from reading sources which are less biased than Werner or Blair. Which do you recommend?

[Sailor Steve]

I'm not really a gamer, at least not as I see it. I like the machinery. I play airwar games because I like airplanes and it's as close as I'm ever going to get to being a fighter pilot. I likewise play ship games because I like the ships and I like the history. I pretend to be a U-boat kaleun in both SH3 and right now SH4, and maybe I'll pick up SH5 again someday. I still have Aces Of The Deep and SH1 on my computer, and sometimes I take them out for a spin.

SH3 is still the best of the lot, immersion-wise, at least for me. It's funny but I've never felt that hopelessness. It gets harder, but that just means I have to work harder at it.

George, that was a great summation.

[jorgegonzalito]

This debate has perhaps gone a little branch directly to the historical and political implications of submarine campaigns of World War II, but it has been a great deal of teachings about which I have taken due note. My original approach is based more than anything in the law of mathematical probabilities, focus most preferred not to mention -especially enthusiasts German U-boats- but the statistics are there and make a clear difference. A good player is to have the odds in your favor, 70% German submarines lost against 16% of Americans, it is a strong contrast to figures given for reflection. It goes without saying which likely attracts me, because as I mentioned at the beginning of the thread. Besides that I like well equipped American submarines, large, comfortable and informal and refreshingly sympathetic me seemed to be in war US Navy.

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by jorgegonzalito

This debate has perhaps gone a little branch directly to the historical and political implications of submarine campaigns of World War II, but it has been a great deal of teachings about which I have taken due note. My original approach is based more than anything in the law of mathematical probabilities, focus most preferred not to mention -especially enthusiasts German U-boats- but the statistics are there and make a clear difference. A good player is to have the odds in your favor, 70% German submarines lost against 16% of Americans, it is a strong contrast to figures given for reflection. It goes without saying which likely attracts me, because as I mentioned at the beginning of the thread. Besides that I like well equipped American submarines, large, comfortable and informal and refreshingly sympathetic me seemed to be in war US Navy.

If only SH4 received the modding support which has made SH3 the wonderfully immersive and adaptable experience it is now. Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes the ideal gaming experience for them, and the vast set of SH3 mods allows each of us to tailor the game to our tastes. SH4 not so much.

[CCIP]

And yet again, I want to remind that in Silent Hunter games, one plays the commander of a submarine, not the sub itself - usually geared towards the more successful ones, at that. While it's undeniable that U-boats had it a bit tougher by the end, among commanders, particularly the more successful ones, the casualties were not all that high. In fact, out of the top 10 U-boat commanders, only one died on patrol during the war (Prien) - out of the top 10 US submarine commanders, that number was two (Morton and Dealey). The number of U-boat combat losses is about 11-12 times higher than US combat losses, but the number of patrols made by U-boats is some 5 times greater, so again, the difference is not as huge as it initially looks. What's more, because so many of the U-boat losses are concentrated in the last 25 months of the war, it's actually statistically true that serving on a U-boat between 1939 and early 1943 was actually "safer" than on a US submarine at any point in the war. So there's something about mathematics - conclusions from stats, as with everything, also very much depend on the perspective you take on them.

[CCIP]

The really easy answer to that is, read all of them I think they all have a bit to offer, and Blair is still a very important source - I respect his research, just not the conclusions he'd made. I don't mean to disrespect either him or Werner, but I have a lot of trouble taking either of them without a grain of salt.

One of my favourite reads lately have been Michael Gannon's books on the U-boat war ("Black May" and "Operation Drumbeat"). And as far as books for general knowledge, there's a lot of really good stuff here: http://www.uboat.net/books/index.html/new_readers.html

The other great thing is that thanks to sites like uboat.net, these days you have access to an impressive amount of raw historical records. Even just reading through those can be really informative, which I've done a lot of (both for modding work and research, and just for fun).

[BigWalleye]

Originally Posted by CCIP

The really easy answer to that is, read all of them I think they all have a bit to offer, and Blair is still a very important source - I respect his research, just not the conclusions he'd made. I don't mean to disrespect either him or Werner, but I have a lot of trouble taking either of them without a grain of salt.

One of my favourite reads lately have been Michael Gannon's books on the U-boat war ("Black May" and "Operation Drumbeat"). And as far as books for general knowledge, there's a lot of really good stuff here: http://www.uboat.net/books/index.html/new_readers.html

The other great thing is that thanks to sites like uboat.net, these days you have access to an impressive amount of raw historical records. Even just reading through those can be really informative, which I've done a lot of (both for modding work and research, and just for fun).

Thank you.

uboat.net really has a mixed bag: everything from Van Der Wat to Werner to Buchheim. A novice would need to read quite a few of the references there or he could come away with a rather distorted view. The primary source reports are, as you say, the most illuminating.

I confess that I don't see nearly so much of the bias in Blair that you do. Early war, he seems to emphasize the scrupulously ethical behavior of many of the U-boat skippers. But then, I tend to agree with John D. Campbell: "I prefer to read authors whose work reinforces my own historical prejudices."

[Fahnenbohn]

Originally Posted by BigWalleye

I tend to agree with John D. Campbell: "I prefer to read authors whose work reinforces my own historical prejudices."

Historical prejudices are contrary to justice, thus contrary to peace.