How did you get into U-boats (everyone please post)

[Max Peck]

Silent Service on NES got me started with sub sims, Aces of the Deep showed me how amazing (at the time) they could look, Silent Hunter and Silent Hunter III actually made me learn targeting and tracking skills like a true submarine commander would have to use.

[SubConscious]

I've been interested in WWII history since early High School. I think what fascinated me most was how close Germany came to winning and how their defeat could be attributed to a few key strategic mistakes.

It was at this time that I was exposed to my first computer game - a multi-player Star Trek combat simulator written in BASIC written by two friends of mine. The game didn't have any graphics (so it was fast enough to have 6-8 players at that time), so we were flying around and plotting intercepts in 3D space using nothing but numbers. To put this in perspective, we were playing on 110 baud terminals. If you think a 56k modem is slow, try something 509 times slower.

Several years later, I was visiting a friend who had Aces of the Deep on his PC. He was tired and sacked out, but I ended up playing that game until the wee hours - I was completely hooked. When PCs outpaced AotD and I couldn't get it to load anymore, I gave up on Sub Sims, vowing to wait until something that I thought was as good or better than AotD arrived. I think SH3 fits that bill.

Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane...

[Jusa_Finn]

• Read all the war and navy books in the 60’s starting with Hornblower.
• Started playing Silent Service 2 in about 1990
• Played Silent Hunter 2 until I heard that SH3 is coming.

[Jager Kapitan]

I always loved researching WWII, then I learned my grandpa was in fact a radioman on destroyer, guarding the east coast from u-boats,, thought that was the only person in my family to ever be in the navy, but it turns out I'm a distant relative of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry (by marriage through my great uncle) And thats about all the naval tradtion in my family. (my 2 greatx3 grandfathers were in the Civil war, we still have one of their resignation letters)

[HunterICX]

As an Kid I Always loved stuff about WW2,
had 100 - 200 of those small plastic soldiers...you know...those Green - American, Grey - Axis and yellow - Brits


and when I had an Computer I played
Panzer General the Classic one
and a whole lotta more WW2 games
and after a while U-Boats start to blow my mind about how the germans did it in WW2.

Also my Grandpa, was an part of an dutch resistance...Sabotaging small things on the Airport of Gilze-Rijen . he almost got fusilized for that Geezzz...Grandpa...
well

here I am sinking stuff

[Zero Niner]

I started off with MPS's Silent Service for the Apple ][, then Silent Service II & II when they were released.

But it was the first Silent Service that got me hooked.

Then it was (iirc) Aces of the Deep and the original Silent HUnter + add-ons.

Jane's Attack sub was cool, but lack of replayability doomed it to a short life on my hard drive.

Looking forward to SH IV - somehow patrolling a US boat in the Pacific is what still interests me.

[Mooncatt]

i got into u-boats from a game on the c-64 "silent service" wicked game

[Redbear]

WWII has always been an area of interest for me. It started a long time ago when I got the Avalon Hill board game Panzerblitz as a gift (in the 1970's). Since I played the German side, I wanted to learn more about the German armed forces in that war. One thing led to another, and soon I was playing flight simulators including the Combat Flight Simulator series and IL2-FB. On a combat flight forum I heard about SH3's development. That led me to investigate the SH series and buy SH2. Again, as I learned more and played more, I was hooked. Ever since SH3 came out, I play it almost exclusively.

[WilhelmSchulz.]

I saw the game and I said "Hmmm... Looks like a good game:hmm: "

Also before that I had red 1 U-Boat book.

[Inbred Pest]

When I was a young lad (round 7th grade) a class required us to read a book called "Deathwatch" by rob white. It was a story that had absolutely nothing to do with the military, but I was so enthralled with it that I searched the library for other books by the author. I found he was a wonderful WWII Naval fiction author penning such classics as "up pericsope", "the frogmen", "torpedo Run", etc. Reading those books started my passion for WWII navy things that then branched off to movies, other books, etc. Then that developed into a love for modern submarines as well, but WWII was and still is my favorite. It was also around that same age I got to take my first trip through the USS Torsk in Baltimore, MD. My first subsim was 688 attack sub for a sega game console. Even though as a sim, it was pretty lousy, especially by todays standards, I played that game for weeks on end. Finally, in my college years, I grabbed a copy of the great Aces Of the Deep that shifted my interest to German Uboats. I thought AOD was the greatest game ever made, despite its shortcomings. A few years back, when I upgraded to Windows XP, AOD would no longer work and there was no support for the game anymore. For a year or two after that, I had abandoned the notion of having a good UBoat sim. Finally I could take it no longer, and started searching the web hoping someone had independently made a patch for AOD to make it work again. That's how I stumbled onto this site. I couldn't believe there was a whole community of folks with my same passion. I had never even heard of most of the games on here, but the same night I found this site, I ran out and picked up SHIII which unbelievably was everythin I had ever wanted in a game. Been reading here and playing for many months, but finally decided to start posting. The only thing better than SHIII is this forum and knowing I'm not alone in the world.

[STEED]

WW2 is my main interest more so the eastern front, picked up SH1 for a nice cheap price back in the 1990's but had no real interest in subs until I bought SH2 which started me to start taking an interest in subs. And when SH3 came out I became more interested in reading up on the battle of the Atlantic. And I suspect when SH4 comes out I shall take more of an interest in the Pacific.

[bigboywooly]

Always been into WW2 mainly the navy side
Used to read a load of books by Douglas Reeman (?) when younger and that started me off
While in last years of school we had to make a database and one of the choices were uboat sinkings
That was me hooked on uboats and have never looked back

[U-Bersnuber]

As many others, i have always been facinated by U-boats.
But the sim part was when i tried SH1.
Back then the graphics was stunning anyways:
Being able to lurk around those huge areas feeling completely alone was totally different from other games i had played.
But the thing that really got me hooked was when i got my first successful hit with a torpedo. NO game beats that feeling!

well, that's pretty much my experience regarding U-boats, nd now im trying to figure out the SH3 gameplay

[Ducimus]

I think the primary reason i got intrested in U-Boats, was due to a lack of sub sim's that had the same level of immersion, but in a US Fleet boat.

What got me into WW2 sub's in general? I have no idea. It's just something that happened. I suppose i saw some old black and white film as a kid. Infact, it may have been "Run Silent, Run deep". I really don't know.

I remember as a kid playing, "silent Service" on my NES. Later on in highschool i read a few books written by Edward Beach. (sp). Later on i started playing Aces of the deep, because there wasnt any sub games with American boats. Silent Hunter I was an utter dissapointment to me. Too cut and dry, didnt have the feel like AOD did.

Later on while overseas, i read a few more of Beach's books and some other books on US subs. I read the tales about the Wahoo, harder, Seawolf, Tang, Toutog, Trigger, the list goes on.

Then oneday i read about Sh3. Looked really cool, shame it wasn't with US fleet boats, but i figured i wasnt about to let that stop me from enjoying a good WW2 diesal electric sub sim. After playing SH3 awhile, i grew to want to know more about the German Uboats and their crews, and started reading books about them as well.

Now i feel i know about as much about Uboats as i do Fleet Boats, although i think im probably still more familiar with the Gato then i am with the type VII or type IX. I toured a Gato once, and i sort of knew where everything was before i ever set foot onboard. Once onboard, i wasn't lost, and knew exactly where i was, and had a damn good idea what i was looking at. Talk about a geek. I can't say that about German Uboats, but then again, ive never gotten the chance to see one either.

[IronOutlaw]

I have always had a passion for the German Navy, and to a lesser degree the Royal Navy, of the 20th century, mostly focusing on the battle fleets of WW I and the capital ships of WW II.

However, a few years ago I got to meet, and subsequently becomes friends with, the II WO from U-1105, Heinz Sonnenrein and his lovely wife Ursula. Heinz and Ursula both died back in 1999, within 10 days of each other, but my interest had been fired up.

As a consequence of meeting Heinz, I immediately began, through letters, and later the net, making friends in Germany who also shared the U-boat interest. One friend actually works on U-995. When I visited in 2000, he took me to Laboe and showed me around U-995. We later went to Bremerhaven where we saw U-2540, and also to Wilhelmshaven where we had lunch on board the frigate Emden. Also visited the Peter Tamm collection in Hamburg, the U-boot Archiv in Cuxhaven-Altenbruch, and later I went to Freiburg im Bresgau to visit the Navy Archives where I spent far too much money on photocopying.

Another friend is currently a Kapitänleutnant in the Deutsches Marine.

Last year I discovered a U-boat veteran, Herman Meyer, living very close by who was a torpedo mechanic on U-409, and survived her sinking. He has been able to help me with some technical stuff about the Torpedo Firing Report, so that I can complement my SH III KTB's with the correct forms for any targets I engage. Unfortunately, Herman is not so good these days, but I still see him from time to time.

Then there was SH II, and by the time SH III came out, it was too late, I was addicted to U-boats, and beyond help. Maybe there is an SH III Anonymous group out there for guys who are so afflicted and may be able to help me kick the habit, but I doubt it! I bet there is a Partners of SH III Addicts group though!

Anyone interested to see how bad the addiction is, let me know as a recent patrol finished and the KTB, FTB and Shooting Report are nearly ready, and I can send you a copy.