Returning to Sub School. My experience.

[Blacklight]

After over a year of playing Silent Hunter III, I realised that I never attended the sub school and was never qualified. I decided "How hard could it be ? I can probably graduate this course in minutes and ace it !!!"

I took all the exams from navigation down to flak gun training and aced every course. Then came my final exam... The Convoy Attack Test.

"Piece of cake." I said.

As the mission started, several ships passed directly in front of me and behind me. I shot off all my torpedoes, each one at a different target with the strategy of causing them to falter and slow down so the rest of the convoy would abandon them or that they would sink outright. To pass the test, I only had to sink 8000 tons so... no big deal !

While I waited for my torpedoes to reload, along came the escorts from both sides of me. I didn't identify the ships but there were some smaller ships with a single deck mounted on the front and a machine gun mounted fore and aft. These guys lacked ASDIC but there was also one ship I nammed Big Brother which was a much larger warship that had depth charges and ASDIC. They were on the hunt for me and kept me pinned underwater for quite some time as I ran silent beneath them at 3 knots. Meanwhile, a couple of the torpedoed ships sunk addind to my total tonnage.

Eventually, all the escorts lost interest and returned to the convoy and chugged onward... all except for one of the annoying small ships. This damn ship must have had a hydrophone operator with super hearing. Even running silent at 1 knot, he still managed to follow me for hours circling overhead. I have no idea how he did it, but he mirrored every move I made precisely. After a long time of him not leaving me alone, I was able to sneak slowly up to periscope depth, get a bead on him and fire off a torpedo at him several times. The only problem was that he always managed to be too close to me and since he was circling, every torpedo I fired was wasted.

After a good two hours or so of this idiot following me around and the convoy nowhere to be heard, my anger got the better of me. I blew ballast, tossed a crew onto my deck gun, and went at him flank speed with Uboat road rage and A loaded CANNON !!!

We played flank speed cat and mouse. Several of his deck gun shots slammed into my sub, blasting large holes into it, damaging both crew quarters and my conning tower. My Uboat was sprayed with machine gun fire, injuring the deck gunners. However, they kept fireing and eventually, the tough little bully exploded and sank.

I breathed a sigh of relief and set a damage control team to begin working on repairs. It was then that the Uboat was rocked by two massive explosions followed by screams from my crew. Two huge gaping holes had been blasted into my Uboat's left hand side. I turned the deck gun to the left and hit crash dive. I saw that "Big Brother" was steaming toward me at flank speed fireing shells from her turrets. I got off one shot at her that exploded on her fore deck before my men left the deck. Then the engine room took a huge hit as we slipped under the waves. Everything was flooding and falling apart. Deck gun was damaged. Conning tower was damaged, both engines were damaged. Batteries were damaged. I didn't know where to send my damage control team first.

We ran slow and silent, all the while being pinged and depth charged. Luckily, none of them hit us, though some were very VERY close.

My crew was finally able to repair what they could and eventually, Big Brother chugged away. Once I was sure he was out of range, I surfaced and began hunting for the damaged ships from the convoy. I was hoping to find some lagging behind just waiting to be "helped" with their descent and after a good half hour, we spotted two torpedoed trawlers floundering along slowly, having been long since left behind by the convoy coming up on my left hand side. I decided not to waste torpedoes on them and instead felt I should deck gun them in case I ran into any more unscathed torpedoeable targets. I surfaced, placed a crew on the damaged deck canon, and opened fire.

No sooner did I get that first shot off than I heard a low rumbling sound from my right hand speaker that was gradually growing louder. I swivelled the deck gun around and screamed like a little school girl ! There was Big Brother's bow not more than 10 feet away, going full flank straight at me !!! He slammed into me with such force that my sub almost barrel rolled !!! I heard my crew scream below ! There was horrifying sounds of metal breaking, things popping and exploding, glass breaking, and water spraying !!

Also not more than a seccond after the collision, Big Brother's deck canon crew panicked and blasted a couple shells directly into my deck gun killing the deck gun crew, destroying the deck gun, the conning tower, and all the hull plating in the front of the sub.

Someone must have been watching out for me though. Aparently, there must have been a lot of shrapnel or something when the shells hit my deck because Big Brother instantaniously exploded (further damaging my Uboat due to the fact they were right next to each other) and sank to the bottom like a brick. In all my playing of this game, I have NEVER seen a ship go down so fast. He zipped past my bow and was gone in about 3 secconds as if he had ordered a crash dive (As a matter of fact, crash dives go down slower than Big Brother went down). I didn't even get credit for the sinking !

I then assessed the damage. One diesel engine destroyed. Other diesel engine heavily damaged. All batteries destroyed. Conning tower HEAVILY damaged to the point of being unrepairable. Periscope stuck in the halfway up position unable to move. Radio Anteana destroyed. All torpedo tubes except for one in the bow, destroyed and the one remaining was was heavily damaged but repairable. Every compartment was flooding. I had no idea where to send my damage team first so I sent them into the front torpedo room to get that one tube repaired. When it was finally fixed, I just happened to be somewhat pointing at one of the floundering trawlers and shot that torpedo at it. It hit and the ship went down, pushing me just over the 8000 ton limit to make me pass the class.

At that point, I decided to go to the free camera to get a look at my sub from the outside. It wasn't pretty. I use the Real Torpedo Damage Mod. My Uboat no longer looked like a Uboat or anything even resembling one. There wasn't a single section of that sub that didn't show any damage. It looked like a crinkled up piece of tin foil. Surprisingly, also, my damage control crew got the flooding under control and we were underway in a little bit. At this point, I decided to return to port and end my training class. I can only imagine what my instructor's face must have looked like when I limped in this twisted lump of metal into the dock (It probably fell completely to pieces the moment it was docked).

I got rated a score of "Average" on my report card for that exercise. I'd hate to see the boats of the people who failed. :rotfl:

It's a shame that I didn't have "Show Hull Integrity" turned on. I would have LOVED to have known how close I came to the sub just falling apart on it's own accord.

[Keelbuster]

8000 the hard way. Good show!

[T.Von Hogan]

A sub commander with road rage Somehow i don't see him making it to an IX boot:rotfl:

[sasquatch]

Way to pass your training. What career # are you on now...

[flag4]

"...my anger got the better of me..."


you were lucky, this is usually the begining of the end.


the amount of times i have'nt waited that bit longer or stayed cool that bit longer.

99% of the time i died a short time later.


hell of a ride you had there!

[papa_smurf]

I've only ever done the training once, but never did the final exam. Wonder how I'll do with my typical "gung-ho" attitude....:hmm:

[sasquatch]

Everyone should try to ace the training exercises, you start all of your careers with more renown that way. Which means, better officers initially

[Jonathan]

I remember in my convoy training that I sunk every ship except the DD with eels...and then I surfaced and did the circle dance of death with deck guns...and WON! Every ship downed!

[Blacklight]

A sub commander with road rage Somehow i don't see him making it to an IX boot:rotfl:

I couldn't help it ! He kept pushing..and pushing..and PUSHING !!!!

Way to pass your training. What career # are you on now...

Ummm... Lets just say that the number is much higher than I have fingers to count on.
The actual number is uh... classified.

[Jonathan]

After running for so long, maybe you found it hard to walk? :hmm:

[Friedl9te]

Repeating the naval academy over and over again is a little bit boring.
Simply change the contents of NavalAcademy.log --->

[PLAYER]
Name=Player
Rank=10
Exam0=true
Result0=400.000000
Exam1=true
Result1=600.000000
Exam2=true
Result2=300.000000
Exam3=true
Result3=600.000000
Exam4=true
Result4=700.000000

[Blacklight]

Repeating the naval academy over and over again is a little bit boring.
Simply change the contents of NavalAcademy.log --->

[PLAYER]
Name=Player
Rank=10
Exam0=true
Result0=400.000000
Exam1=true
Result1=600.000000
Exam2=true
Result2=300.000000
Exam3=true
Result3=600.000000
Exam4=true
Result4=700.000000

GHASP !!!!
But thats.....CHEATING !!!!!

[Oberon]

Ah, you've met everyone's little friend the Armed Trawler....

He can't drop DCs for **** but he knows how to be annoying.

[sasquatch]

Originally Posted by Friedl9te

Repeating the naval academy over and over again is a little bit boring.
Simply change the contents of NavalAcademy.log --->

[PLAYER]
Name=Player
Rank=10
Exam0=true
Result0=400.000000
Exam1=true
Result1=600.000000
Exam2=true
Result2=300.000000
Exam3=true
Result3=600.000000
Exam4=true
Result4=700.000000

Why are you repeating the Naval Academy?!? You only have to complete it once and you'll receive the renown on all of your careers afterwards.

[Blacklight]

Why are you repeating the Naval Academy?!? You only have to complete it once and you'll receive the renown on all of your careers afterwards.

I wasn't repeating it. I had never gone to sub school in the first place. I started right off the bat with GWX and dove headfirst into the fire. That was my training. It was only after a year of playing that I noticed that my ranking or whatever it is said "Unqualified" or something like that. So I decided to go and actually DO the sub school so I would finally have a diplmoma.