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

[bookworm_020]

Can to subs in a roundabout way. I was interested in ship wrecks (titanic was the main one, started by watching a night to remember when at sick a home one school day) I read a book about famous shipwrecks which the titanic was one. The next chapter was the Lusitania! The chapter also mentioned the exploties of the U9 sinking 3 cruisers in one afternoon, so I was hooked.

My first subsim was called sub battles, which played on my old Mac plus. Many a long afternoon playing american and german sub commanders sinking entire merchant fleets, (my record was 300,000 tons as a German, 350,000 as American) Finnish off a battleship with my AA guns was par for the course.

The mac got replaced with a newer one, so my next sub game was the forgettable wolfpack where you could be a sub, escort, or merchant(why the hell would you want to be one???)

Next sub game I could play on my computer (at work) was SHII, got SHIII when works computer got upgraded.

Now I moved to a new job, so have to install on a new computer.

I'm getting withdrawal pains....

[Hueywolf123]

I promised my elderly father to research the death of his uncle. Uncle Ronnie, the family knew, was in Coastal Command. They thought he was in a Sunderland, but this did not match with his sqadron, when I corralated the date posted missing against the squadron, I found he was shot down by U-343 off the Costa Del Sol, Spain.
I decided to research this U-boat, crew names, background etc and found myself hooked. This and the fact that RAF archives are still acting like it's all still official war secrets, and refuse to give out the names of the aircrew he died with. I found the Bundesarchiv to be of an enourmous help, even sending me the ships radio log from U-343 on the dates concerning his being shot down. All desribed etc.
This is when I purchased from the bargain bin, a copy of SHII. I loved that game, but when SHIII came out and now modded with Greywolves - wow.
Ayhow, thought I'd share that with you,
See you in the Nord See

[RAM]

Back in the 80s we got a computer at home, it was an Amstrad CPC. With the computer came several games: the typical alien-killing arcade (Galactic plague, it was called), educational software, etc


one of those games was called "admiral graf spee"...you were the famous german ship and had to hunt for merchants and avoid being killed by enemy warships, or running out of fuel...well,that got me hooked (I was some 7-8 years old at the time) and sparked my interest in naval sims as a whole, and WW2 in particular.


Not much later, my dad bought me an air simulator (We had a deal, if I came home with good enough califications from school, he'd buy me a computer game) called Spitfire 40. When I chose it from the shelve of the store (I had no idea of what it was, all I knew was that it was about planes and I thought playes were cool) my father looked at me and told me that the game was too complicated for a kid my age. I didn't care, and still got it.

It was hard as hell, but I got the basics fast. It was not long until I was killing Bf109s in my trusty spitfire .

That got me interested in air simulators...and WW2 air sims in particular.


Finally, in another "good califications game buy" I found a game called "hunter killer". It was about an "S" class boat hunting german u-boats near heligoland. I had no idea about what an "S" Class submarine was, where Heligoland is, but it was about subs. And subs were cool in my mind, so I chose it.

Again, dad looked at me: "This is TOO hard for you, believe me, choose something else" (He always was at loss at why would I buy those complicated things over the usual arcade games everyone else wanted to try). He was right, in my first tries I never understood why when when I fired the torpedo, the enemy sub would run at warpspeed from it...

Took some and many tries until I found out what was happening: if I pointed the periscope other way that 0º bearing ahead, it "straightened" itself after firing a torpedo. So I would just point the scope to the enemy sub, no matter the bearing, and fire a torpedo- it wasn't the enemy sub running away at warp speed, it was my scope returning to 0º bearing...and of course the torpedoes were launched at a 0º bearing!!! .

That made me think quite a bit about how to correctly use my weapons, and finally decided the best way was not turning the scope towards the enemy, but the whole sub (hey I was an 8 year old kid, what do you want!!! ). Needless to say it worked and I was able to finally kill my preys, lol.

So...I also got interesnted about submarine simulators .


A couple years later ( I was roughly 10) I saw a huge book in a store near my home. It was called "War at sea 1939-1945" by John Hamilton, a big book covering the whole WW2 story from a naval point of view. I agreed with my dad that if I had good qualifications for the whole semester, he'd buy it to me instead of the games (It was quite expensive, more than 3 CPC games together). It was illustrated by the author drawings (and he was quite an artist). Up to that point I had read about WW2 and had played games about WW2 but I had never seen a picture or a drawing of the real action. THat book was quite a revelation for me about the naval side of WW2...
a side effect was -it was in english-...so I had quite a motivation to learn english FAST...to understand it .


Up to this point all I got was interest in WW2. I wasn't really hooked to any kind of game in particular...its just that that also included air and naval simulations (not really usual in a kid of that age)...if you can call a simulator to the very limited experience a very limited computer as the CPC could give you.



Finally some years later (when I was 14) we got a PC. The old agreement of "you get good qualifications-I buy you a game" ended at that point because my father thought I was spending too much time at the computer (he never really liked computers to be true), but I still purchased a game now and then with whatever money I saved.

One day I happened to be around in a shopping mall, computer zone and saw something called "Aces of the Deep". It was about subs, about the atlantic, and about WW2. The cover warned that the game could actually induce to seasickness, so I thought "hey, this must be REALLY good!". Immediately bought it.

It WAS really good. Rest is history.


(Something similar happened to me with Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. Those two games turned me into a sub-sim and air-sim hardcore addict)

[TarJak]

My interest in all things naval came from my father. He was a keleck AE (Senior Rate Aircraft Engineer) in the RAN (Royal Australian Navy), back when it had a real Fleet Air Arm and an aircraft carrier of it's very own. (HMAS Melbourne), both now sadly long gone.

Somewhere along the line I got to visit one of the old Oberon class subs that the RAN used up until the early nineties. Whilst we didn't submerge (tied up to the wharf the hole time) as a young kid I could imagine it.

The sub sim thing started with an old arcarde slot video game which had a periscope and you fired a faster and faster moving targets that shot across a fairly flat mono screen. i progressed to Aces of the Deep and then the original SH. Didn't think much of SHII because of the other graphical advances that were happening at the time, but it was still a good improvement on the original. Blew my mind when I saw SHIII and had to have it. Currently running a campaign using GW after using RUB and some other mods for the past 6-7 months or so.

[Seaveins]

My grandfather (Danish resistance member) had stories of reporting German naval traffic to the UK around Lolland and Langeland, DK (saw the Bismarck!). I ended up getting into scuba diving and worked on a boat that had recently recovered artifacts on the U-? off North Carolina, USA. The propeller was salvaged and ended up in the dive shop's lounge. I would sit there looking at it and imagine the journey this object took. I guess I have always been into U-boats.
-Lars

[Hawk_308]

In 6th grade we had to read (periscope up) , I was hooked on subs and reading ever since. By the time I was in the 9th grade I was selling my sub drawings (mostly type VIIC) for 5 bucks a pop . I lot of times I would draw a VII attacking a AXIS ship just because I liked the look of them over the US subs :rotfl:.

[stabiz]

Originally Posted by Hawk_308

In 6th grade we had to read (periscope up) , I was hooked on subs and reading ever since. By the time I was in the 9th grade I was selling my sub drawings (mostly type VIIC) for 5 bucks a pop . I lot of times I would draw a VII attacking a AXIS ship just because I liked the look of them over the US subs :rotfl:.

Hello! Could we see some of these drawings?

[UnterSeeTub]

I opened the hatch and climbed in

[Hawk_308]

Originally Posted by stabiz

Hello! Could we see some of these drawings?

Next time I go back home to my parents house Ill dig though my old scetch pads and note pads and see if I could find any thing . 80% of my stuff I did was naval mostly WW2 area battle ships , subs, aircraft carriers then ships of the line from the 1800's.After that I did WW2 aircraft and then a few nature scenes.

I was over one of my old friends house about 2 years ago and he had a turkey hunting scene I did framed in his living room made me feel pretty good. I havnt done any pen and inks in over 11 years and oils in over 13 years .

Originally Posted by slow_n_ez

Going to the mall arcade in late 60's and playing the quarter machine for hours... every 10 ships you sunk you got a free game .... you looked thru a periscope to target the ships ..... bad thing about then .. they didn't provide chairs so after about 2 or 3 hours standing there it was time to go .............

LOL...I remember that game. The torpedoes shot up from the bottom toward the ships cruising by on top. I think it was called Sea Wolf.

My interest first started after a trip to the USS Cavalla when I was 12. It then peaked with the game Silent Service II and then really peaked with Aces of the Deep. I still have those games now and even have the Aces of the Deep Grid Map on my wall today.

[vodkaphile]

I've been interested in most things German military since the middle ages/Holy Roman Empire days.

Das Boot and other sub movies have always been a favorite of mine plus one of the first games I played on PC was a game called "Wolfpack". I was hooked from there on out.

Pirates and Submarines are a great interest of mine, go figure. I guess they are similiar in a way.

[Slick Rick]

I grew up on the South side of Chicago...and we went on a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry....and it was there that I first laid my eyes on U505....I have been back many times since and I always get excited every time I see her......I also never missed an episode of Voyage to the bottom of the Sea.....

[rcs929]

I have always enjoyed simulation games & have a great interest in WWII. I saw a friend play silent hunter I at a lan party so I watched him play a bit. He ended up giving it to me & about a year later I played it shortly- I have waaay too many games that I like so bounce around a lot. I liked the cat and mouse of it and the charting but it didn't really spark yet.

Later on I saw SHII so I bought that & played it a great deal more. The rolling seas, running smack dab into a convoy in heavy heavy fog & trying to escape hunter/killer groups got me hooked. Also I like the slow pace which I can choose to speed up or keep slow.

I got SH3 because the sub rolls with the sea & the crew. I didn't like manning a one man sub that never moved especially when my favorite feature in the game is the rolling seas. I must say the community here keeps me playing as well, I get to reading some patrol stories then I am inspired to go out on patrol

[spork542]

I took interest in world war two and its ships at a young age, and was given Silent Hunter II as a birthday present a long time ago, I think. Then I got really interested in U-boats. Several years later, SH3 gets released without my knowing, and I eventually got it.

[Wilko]

Read "Run Silent Run Deep" (which I have just had to rebuy after loosing it) then I bought SH, SH2, SH3 as well as Janes 688i with that lovely spiral bound manual, Sub Command, Dangerous Waters.