I set a course to the south-east, to give me lots of sea room for a final more easterly leg back to St Nazaire. And I have a patrol report sent. BdU likes to be kept informed.



He seems pleased enough, from the reply.



This is where it all begins to go wrong. I find I'm stuck. Time won't accelerate and the boat refuses to come onto the new course. Orders for fresh course changes are ignored.



Hours later, and while contacts are popping up on the map and time is definitely passing, I'm still stuck.



I'm forced to save the patrol and exit. If the problem recurs, I can always revert to the previous save. I'm not sure whether I've fallen victim to something getting corrupted, maybe even due to my CPU fan failing and overheating, confusing the CPU. Maybe the torpedo misses were also a symptom. It's a frustrating way to end the patrol, but better than being sunk I suppose. Which is what happened on a patrol I started after loading SH3 onto a laptop to keep me busy while waiting for the new CPU fan, this time in April 1943. First patrol, I sank two ships from a large, heavily-defended convoy in daylight, drifting deep under the escorts' depth charges until the convoy caught me up, then popping up to periscope depth and creeping away after the attack. Tried something similar on the second patrol, but only after getting shelled and hit by the leading escorts when I ran into them at full time acceleration on the surface in daylight. I nearly drifted under the convoy but despite ample use of the Bold 'Submarine Bubble Target', a huge pattern of depth charges from the three escorts which were hunting me sent me to the bottom. I think I'll load the previous save onto my repaired desktop, so I can have the challenge of a more dangerous, later career in parallel. It's a fantastic sim, SH3, even out of the box, and the Steam version was a good investment.