After what seems an eternity, U-108 unsticks herself from the surface and slides beneath the waves. I order a sharp turn towards the onrushing escort, in a desperate attempt to undercut the attack. In the control room, the tension is palpable as the LI calls out the depth.



And no depth charges come! I thought we were finished. Above us, the escort is searching for us on the surface with her searchlight, while someone has fired a starshell.



The escort makes another run and this time, depth charges slam the depths. By this time, I'm clear of them and on silent running 140 metres down, but speed up again for a short time after the explosions disturb the water, inhibiting ASDIC.



Phew! That was a close call! The aim now is to creep away with the escort astern, to present a small ASDIC profile. The sound man keeps me posted on the situation. As well as the escort and the convoy, he can also pick up the stragglers, well to the south-west.



It occurs to me that if another go at the convoy is a considerable risk, I could always double back and go for the stragglers. Even if the heavy seas mean more than one each eel be needed to get a hit on the wallowing ships, I will be able to attack at leisure.



But first I need to avoid destruction!

I manage to get the escort astern. First part of escape plan going nicely.



There are now two of the beggars circling around, searching for me...



...and occasionally dropping more depth charges, noisy but not close enough to rock, let alone sink, my boat.



The hydrophone operator keeps me in the picture.



The warship contacts are slowly drifting astern....



...and then gone. When I think it's safe I speed up and set course south-west for the stragglers, bringing the boat up to periscope depth.



Now, to get some results from a long and latterly dangerous voyage!

...to be continued!

Just over an hour after being forced under by the escorts, I'm up at periscope depth and looking at the ships left struggling in the convoy's wake, to the south-west.



These ships may be sitting ducks but they may also be armed. This one looks to have a gun aft, and while the seas are still high, I prefer to take it slowly below, rather than take chances on the surface.



There look to be three stragglers. It's a wonder they aren't foundering already.



I spend the next half-hour moving between the ships, firing off torpedoes from bow and stern tubes. It takes three eels to sink my first victim, whom I don't see going down as I'm busy lining up the next one.



It's this steamer, with a deck cargo of tanks.



I leave him burning and sinking and then go for this one. He can see my victim blazing on the horizon and likely knows he's next.



The last target is some way off and to save time and get some charge back into the batteries, I decide to approach on the surface.



There's no shooting, so on I come. The view through the UZO is often blurred by water, so the weather isn't giving me an easy time of it, either.



Don't believe me? Have a look at this. My first torpedo explodes well short of the target.



To cap it all, a few minutes later, the hydrophone operator warns me of a warship coming down from the north. It's one of the sloops who were trying to kill me earlier!



The escort is sailing a steady course so I take a chance and fire off two of my reloaded bow tubes at him as he comes into range. Of course he changes course just afterwards and I miss.

I plot a course away, to the east, but throw in a couple of doglegs which will being me back to where I hope to find the third straggler. By the time I'm back, I'm hoping the escort will have decide to rejoin the convoy.



I'm relieved to have survived my encounter with the convoy, but frustrated that I've been reduced to the leftovers. Still, if I can grab the third one, it won't be so bad.

...to be continued!

Nice story

Thanks Carrick! I'm still getting my U-boat fix from SH3 in spades. UBOAT I tried and while I like the 1st person view of the boat and the ability to dress crewmembers like Action Man/GI Joe, much of the rest I don't care for. SH5 I got more recently and have the obligatory The Wolves of Steel Mod applied, and will spend some time with it instead, as a second fiddle to the SH3 maestro. I doubt it will touch SH3, especially with the GWX3 Gold mod.

As it happens, my return to the scene of my two sinkings fails to locate the third straggler. At least the escort has also gone. Somebody is still reporting the convoy off to the north-west, so for a while, I warily pursue it...



...but give up after a few hours and set course for Lorient and calmer waters.



Why? Well I didn't fancy my chances, for one thing. I'd used up a disproportionate number of torpedoes and was worried about my fuel state. I couldn't get 'range at current speed' calculations from the navigator, which didn't help my level of confidence. As it happened, my realism settings had gone awry and I had 'limited fuel' unchecked, for some reason. I was also seeing the red-green u-boat icon which showed 'locate-ability', another setting I turn off. I had the feeling something was wrong with my install and didn't want to end up with CTDs or corrupted career files. So I decided to get out while I could.



So this is what I ended up with - not even 4,000 GR tons between the two ships sunk!



Anyway, looking on the bright side, we escaped the company of those nasty people in the escorts, we made it to mid-May1941 and we're still in business!

On our third patrol, U-108 will find herself back in the cleaner finish of the base Grey Wolves mod, as some mod tweaking introduced a problem with the radar locations on late Type VIIs with Fifi's modified subs, and I opted to revert. The next patrol report will cover in more detail the departure from Lorient to show off GWX3 Gold's harbour traffic. The experience was so engrossing that I navigated the whole way in real time from the bridge, instead of just plotting a course and time-accelerating to the open sea. It's that good!



...to be continued!

U-108's next patrol is to Marine-quadrat ES67, way down off the west African coast - warmer waters, at any rate!

Here we are, cast off from the quayside and ready go get moving. I'm not pleased that the watch officer on the bridge is bare-headed, in plain view of all the guests.



The good news is that the search for a mod leads me to the Donenitz Elite Flotilla's Silent Hunter 3 Archive (S3A)...

http://www.donitzeliteflotilla.com/forum/index.php?topic=1.0

...where, after a bit of poking around, I'm able to find the Compulsory Headdress Mod. For our next departure.

Nosing out from our berth to fall in behind our minesweeper escort, we pass the destroyer you can see in the previous pic, then a heavily-armed patrol boat.



Turning to port, this armed Vichy French steamer always seems to be berthed here.



I find I'm enjoying keeping station behind the minesweeper.



Using the binos to identify objects I can see ahead, I realise that one of them is an incoming U-boat!



Now let's see...the rule of the road is to pass port to port, isn't it? Sure enough, that's the way that we all turn.



Beyond the U-boat, I can see what look like channel marker buoys and possibly another approaching vessel.



Yes, there's a ship coming up the channel. The minesweeper meanwhile resumes her outbound course and we slot in behind, having closed up somewhat.



Yes, that's definitely a steamer coming into Lorient. This time there should be no need for precautionary evasive moves.



At first sight, the newcomer looks grey and generally nondescipt. Closer inspection reveals there's a Heinkel floatplane carried forward!



It's a hilfskruezer - a disguised commerce raider, heavily armed.



She sails serenely by. As she goes I can hear the squaking of the gulls, but also a sound I've not heard before in SH3 - a bell ringing intermittently. It's actually coming from nearby marker buoys, whose bells ring as they bob about! These buoys also carry red or green lights.



U-108's business lies in a different direction.



Finally we reach open water and the minesweeper turns off to port. Ahead of us now lies the Bay of Biscay. By the time the sun's going down, we're well on our way.



It's a peaceful scene, which I hope will stay that way until we're clear of these dangerous waters.



...to be continued!

About a third of the way to our patrol area, near mid-day off the Portugese coast at Lisbon, we have the great good fortune to encounter a single steamer. She's approaching on a near reciprocal course.



We slip beneath the surface, I think without being spotted. A spot of manueuvring puts into position for an attack run. As you can see, there's a fairly heavy swell running.



The range is winding down nicely and after another course adjustment I start the final run for a submerged torpeo attack. It's at this point that I notice the ship's flag, fluttering at her after mast-head.



The hinomaru - she's Japanese! A potentially ally, currently neutral! Unlikely to be carrying contraband. Even if she was, SH3 won't allow me to apply the prize rules and check this out; and even if it did, the seas are too heavy for a boat or raft to be sent over, in either direction. So of course I have to let her go.
She's a fine looking ship and it would have been a shame to send her to the bottom - especially by mistake!



I consider surfacing to let her see that German U-boats were prowling the sea-lanes. But there's no point in risking her making some kind of radio transmission about us which the enemy might pick up. So I come back to the surface only after she's well out of sight and taking the opportunity to make a hydrophone check for any other shipping. Of which, there is none. A disappointing encounter, but at least I avoided making an embarrassing error!



The weather's still pretty foul and the bridge watch are attired accordingly.



On we go to the south-west, making daily trim dives combined with hydrophone checks, whose frequency I will increase when I've reached out patrol area. The weather improves and the day before we're due to arrive, the sea is calm again.



Darkness has fallen by the time we're on station and I slow down and begin my usual wide zig-zag search pattern.



Sadly this is where this career ends. I had noticed two mods were no longer working - the compulsory head-dress and the one (H.Sie realism mod, IIRC) that puts the 'lazy watch officer' onto the bridge (when surfaced) by default. Efforts to fix this succeeded, but I found that I could not reload my saved career missions! So I've started a fresh career with another IXB out of Lorient, this time U-105. And an equally fine-looking boat she is! I'll try to leave the install alone till I've finished the career, this time!

Old thread but anyway. Several inaccuracies in this thread. 1. Moonlight has no affect in the game. 2. Depth charges do not interfere with asdic, etc. These basic flaws along with numerous other flaws, modded or not, make it a stretch to call SH3 a simulation of the u-boat war let alone the best in the genre.
Great read though, thanks !

Thanks! I know about the ASDC but I play as if DCs interfere do with it, tho I do tend to take advantage and not to wait till the moon has gone behind a cloud! As for 'best', de gustibus, non est disputandum seems to cover it.

No problem; with the escort/aircraft ai being dumb as bricks I'm not sure it matters anyway.

That hasn't

That hasn't been my experience for the escorts, but your mileage evidently varies!

Yes, they have the historical tactics screwed up/not present and it shows let alone the ease it is to escape them submerged at any stage of the war. Also their inability to use radar effectively (having those silly red lines showing radar detection doesn't help) makes it easy to hammer a convoy on the surface even when such shouldn't be/wasn't able to be done.
For starters.

Yes, it's true! employee software