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I just set it to red and leave it there. If I'm doing something in real time for a while, like a convoy attack I'll get the lights right, but most of the time it's in red

Hedgehogs confirmed

This is a Town class four stack flushdecker, one of the '50 ships that saved the world', which of course they were no such thing. WW1-vintage destroyers given to Britain in exchange for base rights before the US entered the war. Renamed for towns common to both nations, hence the class. Did heavy duty as convoy escorts when escorts were in short supply.






How it ended up in such a state was like this....

Returning from a patrol out in the middle-Atlantic, December 1943. We had attacked one convoy and shot all torpedoes, and met the milk cow for a full reload. This means taking four torpedoes at a time, doing the time lapse thing like in port, and then getting another four until you have as many as you want. This is probably really stupid because at any time destroyers or aircraft or whatever could stumble upon the rendezvous and who knows what would happen then. Anyway, it went fine, and we had fourteen fish for the journey home. Not sure if the milk cow is vulnerable, so I put it in out of the way grids, close to the places I'll be hunting, but hopefully out of the path of the ship traffic in the North Atlantic.

With full fuel we headed east along the convoy route and found an inbound convoy from which we sank a number of ships. This one had a shadower broadcasting beacon signals We came in from well ahead of the convoy and waited a few hours, the effect of which is the other U-boat draws the escorts' attention, and soon they are all milling around 10 miles astern of the formation. I won't take anything for granted, but having that one other boat makes convoy attacks something to take advantage of, whereas solo attacks are perilous. All escorts are in position, ringed around the convoy and ready for a fight will full racks. With no single ships encountered on this patrol, beacon signals are a call to arms.

Got in and fired a full salvo at several ships, and like most attacks I looked to slink out of there, let them go over the hill, and then return to put the stopped and drifting ships under with torpedo or gun. After cleaning up we headed for Biscay Bay, diving at the first tone from the Cross. If there is no matching hydrophone bearing, then it was a plane, but we are not hanging around to see what it is. Evaded a half dozen of these on the way. In the southeast corner of BE grid we caught a small convoy on hydrophone. It was heading due south toward Gibraltar, and the weather was daylight, but a heavy fog, reducing visibility to 800 meters or less. I decided to shadow it as it was small, and wait for the weather to break before mounting an attack. Pulled the plug regularly to keep track of it, and hydrophones said 6-9 screws. I was thinking I might have found a task force, but couldn't see sh!t in the soup. Had six fish left, one acoustic and three electrics in the bow tubes, one electric in the racks and one T1 steamer in the stern tube. Gotta take what you can get from the cow.

As I kept shadowing I was flicking TC on and off, and fumbled it a bit so that we ran right up on that destroyer shown above from behind. Like 700 meters off his tail. In the heavy fog he didn't see us and the Cross was silent. I ordered all stop and let him disappear in to the fog ahead. Went to the UZO and dialed up a boresight bow shot with the T5 and let it go with a depth of one meter. Started pulling out to starboard and increasing speed to sail up the formation's flank. With no radar signals I felt like we could get away with it. I've found that as long as you keep a target just inside the edge of the clear-sight circle, you can see him, but he can't see you, at my settings, except perhaps on the brightest, clearest day, but then you shouldn't be surfaced within sight range. But at night or in fog, this works well. Your boat is hard to see. The acoustic blew off the destroyer's screws and he ended up like shown above.

Then, a fit of madness. I have so much invested in this career. All these hours and effort. Hours spent silently evading destroyers in real time. That's kinda par for the course with a dead is dead submarine sim career. But this time I can actually imagine getting through it, and there is no reason to risk anything. Merchants are our trade. But yeah, I decided to ram that half-sunken destroyer because there's an achievement for doing that and it didn't look like this guy needed much more encouragement to begin his diving course. Honestly I didn't know what would happen, the ship was still manned, no lifeboats that I could see, but maybe they had drifted off in to the fog. But I could also see that the forward turret was replaced by the mortars, and the after turrets were under water. What could go wrong? Called down to ring up emergency and we hit that destroyer square at 18 knots just forward of his bridge. Damaged some bow caps, and our speed and the collision turned U-292's bow out ahead of the destroyer and I thought right in to hedgehog line of sight. I didn't see if they fired because I had my hands full and was in a mild panic, because I didn't need to do that, did I? We ran off in to the fog on the other side while cutting a huge circle to come back in and hit him again as he didn't appear to be sinking. Well, sinking more than he already looked.

He popped back in to view just as we steadied on course at 18 knots and suddenly it sank and the achievement fired. Bow caps were repaired in short order and it all went beautifully. Imagine that.

You can use the optics to 'see' through the fog and if you have map icons on the ships show up for a while .Using this I ran an end around on what proved to be five Liberty ships, plus an outmatched Corvette. Without radar he was doomed to fail. A Corvette is a little slower than a VII, and the fog meant he had no clue where we were. Which again shows this game deserves praise because the AI does not magically know your position, it always feels real when they pick you up, and fair, and you know exactly why they did. With five torpedoes left we sailed U-292 right up alongside each freighter, matching their speed on the edge of the clear-sight circle and I fired manual 80-degree gyro shots from like 650 meters. It was insane. Standing on the bridge the ships looked huge, but darkness had fallen, and fog was still heavy and all five big freighters went down with that Corvette searching 8 miles out in left field. Kinda lucky because one fish is usually enough to stop this type of ship, but not always put it under. Each of these shots used 3m depth in fairly heavy seas. I wonder if the sea state affected whether they went down or stayed afloat?

We set a new top score with 92k tons, surpassing Gunther Hessler's patrol on U-107 in early 1942, when they sank 86,700 tons confirmed, the best single patrol of the war by any nation. Hessler by the way was Donitz's son in law and it took forever for him to receive the Knight's Cross because Donitz didn't want to appear nepotistic. But this patrol finally did the trick. It's also one of the most conservative war-time claims I've seen. Hessler claimed 90k. I discovered there's an achievement for surpassing this total, GRT 86,700. Ships shown in thumbnail below.

I should lay low next patrol

I notice the patch notes that there was a known bug in the Type IIs where if the advanced crew management wasn't enabled they sometimes wouldn't do tasks like cleaning and cooking which would tank morale. This fixed it so if this campaign dies in the Atlantic like so many actually did, I can start out with a few things researched and an experienced crew. It would be tough to captain a Type II again after the Type VIIC fun I've had, but death should have consequences.

Ramming a wounded DD is a risky move that late in the game with all that time you have in it. Luckily it paid off.

Yeah, it was a gamble, wasn't it. Exciting too I gotta say knowing it was all hanging out there. But then I thought, well there's an achievement for it, so the devs must have made it possible. But I don't know if a destroyer is more ram-proof than another type of ship, so I had no clue what would happen. I played the tutorial with different settings and saw the ships use a health pool sort of thing right? I reckoned maybe it just needed a few more knocked off and as long as we didn't go down it's a win lol. We took nearly no damage at all, far different from when we glanced off that big tanker and our boat was a mess.

And I was also thinking I plan to increase difficulty and maybe some house rules with tech and things like that, in the next career, so let's get these crazy achievements out of the way now. Now I'll never contemplate ramming again

Great report Kapitan! I can't believe you attempted the ramming.. but you got away with it too, amazing. Yah so much to like here and so configurable, it will just get better. I found that NO ALARM mod - that thing drives me nuts.

Thanks, not the first time we have been lucky during this career

Next patrol I took another Last Stand patrol to the Pit, which is the square comprised of BE, BD, AK and AL grids. It is the same as Black Pit. To complete these objectives the player needs to sink 250k of trade shipping, twice.

Leaving for patrol in late January 1944 we needed only 18k more to finish Last Stand. Just five days out we found a convoy, got in and sank three C3/Liberty class freighters to clip the requirement and finish Last Stand. Slipped off without counterattack. This convoy was fairly small with an all-Corvette escort which makes it just a little easier. On this convoy, and one on the last patrol, we executed an attack, slipped away, surfaced and ran an end around on the formation. This left the escorts either searching back at the scene of the attack, or trying to catch up with their charges, leaving them out of position. With our good surface speed I got back out in front, submerged and hit them again with the escort way out of position. In one recent attack I radioed a report of our successes just after popping up, which was DF'd by the enemy, which was indicated by a notification on the screen.

Suspecting they would return to investigate, we hauled off at high speed to skirt them, and then hit the convoy while they were searching way behind the convoy. It's risky, but this sort of deception can pay off big time.

Having completed the patrol objectives, we ran for the barn after just a week at sea having put 22k under. The crew has earned it. Now, a nice long refit and maybe we can see out the war this way, spending more time ashore than at sea lol

I moved from Wilhelmshaven to Brest. Found a small convoy in the Channel heading East and just kept nipping at that thing bagging a all seven ships over a couple different attacks. Then once I get there I get the big update on the Atlantic ports are now available and a task to move to a French flotilla, which I =already did, so I guess I can't do that one unless I want to spend two requisition points moving the La Rochelle.

I then did the mission to rescue an interned officer from Spain. Not bad and never saw sight of anything. I didn't get in undetected though since once I surfaced next to the boat at night the shore saw me. Otherwise it went off without a hitch. Out Patrolling the mid Atlantic now found several lone ships, most flying a neutral flag and about 75% I had to let go. Haven't seen a convoy on at this location yet. I did some stress testing of my crew while waiting for hydrophone contacts. I found in my crew I have 3 sea wolves, 3 cowards and 4 with heart problems. I failed the Norwegian campaign objectives, but from what I read I don't think I want to try the escort mission which is all they were giving me. I might fail the Atlantic one since you need to do 5 missions out there, only have so much time and those are long patrols. At least it is if you run them kinda realistically and stay out until damage, lack of tops or food brings you back. I don't go to the point of starvation and any damage I've taken hasn't been that severe.

And for the tech, yeah, I'm researching snorkels in July 1940. They let you get away with some shenanigans in that aspect of the game.

Haha, find out with the forge of fire. Is hypertension enough to get cashiered? I would think so

If you're speaking of the objective Atlantic Theater Operations, then you have until 1945 with that one. Starting in a VIIB at most you need two more blueprints, for VIIC and VIIC/41. I've done just two of that objective's missions so far, agent insertions I believe. The blueprint you get from that one I no longer need. I got mine from Tonnage War to move to the VIIC and Black Pit to move to the /41. I've since gotten two more I think but there's nothing to upgrade to now.

The tech jump you can get is significant. It's like in the war the Germans were always chasing this, caught out by the Allies' advances. But in the game we can get way out ahead. I've gone all the way in with this, but yeah, I think for other careers I'll slow it down in some way. It's not crazy to think that Germany could have been more on the ball, that their science could have been more proactive, especially with radar related technologies, so an alternative timeline isn't outside of possibility. But throughout this career I've felt like we were too far out in front and some house rules are probably in order.

The Cross (and upgrades) is the single most important installation on our boat. But after that I'd rate the T5s as the most valuable. My whole attacking approach shifted once we had those. We usually carry six, if I can get them. Both stern slots, two in bow tubes and two in forward storage. I feel so much more confident attacking escorted convoys with some of these on board. For this January '44 patrol, T5s were scarce and I had to manipulate the quartermaster to finally get four of them. Took a couple weeks of trying. But I honestly didn't want to go to sea without them.

I'm interested in your opinion of Brest wormfood as you tick off patrols. I chose La Rochelle since Brest just seems too close to Coastal Command, and getting in and out seems like it would be more perilous, with warship patrols and the like. In the January '44 patrol I dived about three hours out of port at the first aircraft contact and then did daylight submerged until we were clear of the Bay. The snorkel makes this possible or the air would foul.

Having all my patrols out of La Rochelle, but twice I have returned to Brest. ONce, damage left me uncertain if I could make it further south and once just for fun. Both times were very hairy. On the first time I was attacked by aircraft near to the harbor and the second time took major damage while at the dock.

Thanks man, good feedback. What I cannot know at this stage is if the aircraft you encountered are more frequent than say La Rochelle. You'd imagine so, but depends on how things are programmed. Harbor raids must be scripted, not just standing patrols that happen to pass over your home port.

Basing at Brest just seemed tempting fate, and dead is dead, so I chose the one that seemed less perilous but no idea if it actually is in UBOAT.

Once you get sub pens the air raids are over, but you still have to deal with them getting in and out and I'd expect a higher concentration of enemy warship patrols in the waters near Brest. With wormfood based there now maybe we can gain some insight.

It might bite me in the ass later. On the other hand I've started several missions across 4 campaigns that started with Wilhelmshaven under attack, two of which ended very quickly. So it might not really matter the time period or location.

Yes, they are all perilous, aren't they? Anyway, hope to hear your thoughts as you do more patrols from there.

Not tempting fate I hope, but I'm already planning my next career. If I can finish the current one I will get the achievements for completing a career and completing a career which began in September 1939, so I can start exploring the other options.

I have not seen a single capital ship outside Scapa aside from some County class cruisers in convoys. There are achievements for sinking battleships and carriers in convoys. So where are they? Not in the Atlantic I don't think. Which means Arctic or the Med? So I think I will start the next career in France in 1941 on a VIIC and run Gibraltar strait as soon as possible to transfer to La Spezia and become a Med boat. Maybe we will find some there.

If you go the Med route, good luck with that. The ideas intrigues and frightens me.

You are wise in the ways of sub boats.

The Med is a graveyard. Sure, we will run wild for a year perhaps, maybe two. But after Torch the walls begin closing in and what was a German playground becomes an Allied lake. No where is safe. Add if, as expected, there are task forces and big warships here, it will be even more filled with peril. And if I switch to hard enemy difficulty all bets are off. Sounds cool though. What I need to see is if there are blueprints from Med-specific objectives so we can get in to the life-preserving VIIC/41 as quickly as possible.

In one of my SH4 AARs here we survived everything the Atlantic had thrown at us, including being sunk in shallow water in the western entrance to the Channel by an aircraft. The crew pulled a Das Boot and saved the boat and we rose to the surface with our last gasp. We got sunk later in the Med by depth charges from a hunter killer group. And so it goes.

If we survive, then later maybe we will attempt to be the first U-boat to ever leave the Med and escape to the Arctic to finish out the war. We shall see.

First things first though, U-292 still has to depart in March of '44 and see out the war. Or maybe April if I can really mess with the quartermaster.

You should finish out the war in Argentina, there's an achievement for that.

I have yet to see an aircraft let alone a hostile one. My longest surviving crew made it to May 1940, and the five or so others maybe to December '39/January '40, which might explain the lack of air attacks (or I'm just "lucky" with RNGeezuz).

I've figured my Loss rate is must be just slightly higher than average losses were in reality (at least compared to what I've read in Paterson's definitive book on the 1st Flotilla) and I can't even imagine getting a crew through late '41, into '42, let alone '43-'44 lol. Yes, playing DiD can be frustrating, but it's still worth it imho given the simple fact the desire for self-preservation is there (even if abstractly) affecting how you plan, operate, order and so on. Pretty cool if you ask me.

o7

Still see some weird AI stuff like this Type VII practically escorting a Brit T2 tanker in full daylight, with another one of our boys not far behind..

They never did take any action - so I sunk the brute myself...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ROFSrGdTboBKzHjD4GucU3IV6w46AuTu/view?usp=sharing

Takes FOREVER to search these big cargo holds, even with six of my crew over there. Maybe they need more training. Does the long blue bar beside Klaus name symbolize general competence or is it more like 'life force remaining' .. ?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WC-I6uqt8yyLGRsmx_2CMwOH61aYmRJv/view?usp=sharing

U-61
Type IID
Wilhelmshaven
Commander: KK Werner Schulz

LOG
Patrol No.1, sector watch, AN19-55, ready crew for war footing.

01 Sep 39- 1215h Supply loading complete, torpedoes secure. Crew all accounted for. Course set. Left dock at 1201h. Left diesel running slightly rough. WS cmd

01 Sep 39- 1659h Reached North Sea proper. Seas at 2, winds high at 22. Course laid in, WNW. KH, 1stOff

02 Sep 39- 1620h Beginning patrol, surfaced. Dive schedule set. Course westerly. KH, 1stOff

03 Sep 39- 1300h Prior to dive rec'd transmission from BDU. We are at war with Britain. My crew are well trained and morale is high. WS, cmd

03 Sep 39- 1803h Further message from BDU. RoE regarding the French fleet. KKSchulz made aware. Crew informed. KH 1stOff

04 Sep 39- 1955h Hydrophone contact, estimated distance 30-50 km, moving slow. Monitoring as we attempt to locate. Torpedo maintenance completed.WS cmd

04 Sep 39- 2030h Battle stations, combat lighting. All crew to stations. Periscope depth. Maneuvering for a shot. WS cmd

04 Sep 39- 2050h Freighter identified as Emp Lionel (6167 grt), flying Englander flag. 900 metres, flooded tube 1. Fired. Flooded tube 2, waited for 40 second count. Dud! Fired 2nd tube, Clear hit. Caused a major fire. Enemy vessel wallowing, life boats present. WS cmd

04 Sep 39- 2140h Surfaced as hydrophone did not note any further screw activity. Made our way towards the flaming pyre which slid under when we were with 200m. Radio message sent to FDU. Aided enemy crew, taking on board six sailors, gave supplies to both lifeboats. WS cmd

04 Sep 39- 0000h Crew having great difficulty reloading torpedo tubes. Seas rough and playing havoc with manhandling the spares. KH 1stOff

05 Sep 39- 1200h Remain unable to reload torpedoes. Still have one functional torpedo loaded. WS cmd

05 Sep 39- 1410h Hydrophone picked up potential target, making hard for it's potential location. Single screw. KH 1stOff

05 Sep 39- 1545h Battle stations. Periscope depth. Maneuvering for a 90 degree shot on freighter identified as Empire Trumpet. Flooded tube 3. 1200m range. Fired torpedo. Past 10 seconds until hit, thought this might be a dud, but an explosion at minus 3. Hydro noted the enemy ship was no longer cavitating. No other contacts within 50 km. Surfaced. We must have hit her in the midships and broke her in half. She slid under in about 10 minutes. No more room on the boot to take further prisoners. Radio message sent to FDU. Made sure the three life boats were well provisioned. We made way directly north then east. Somehow we need to load the reserve torpedoes. #%&*$# this heavy sea! WS cmd

Did a patrol in BE2-BE5. Chased down multiple freighters mostly neutral countries and I couldn't find evidence for sinking them. Only found one that was going to Liverpool and one actual target. Found a couple solo targets but was burning up fuel chasing them down.
One the way back to Brest I found a convoy and nipped at it a few times bagging 5 of them in total from that convoy.

Next assignment was to go to, I think, Bear Island and set up a weather station. Uneventful there but on the way back I did hug the English coast and maul a couple small convoys Had another crewman go down with TB on this one. I also stress tested them again and found another 4 seawolves and 6 cowards. Got back to Brest, gave the crew a rest and installed a snorkel in late summer 1940. Put the specialization points on my seawolves so I should be a bit quieter and dive quicker.

By the time the crew got back it's now September 1940 so that's one year down. I checked and I can upgrade to the VIIC/41, I think I'll wait until at least 1941 before I do that.

I sent the rescued officer to the naval academy because I didn't know what it did. Turns out it's a waste to do that as you can't put him in your crew. What it does do is sends an officer away for 16 days and they get 2500xp out of it. So you could use that as a way to train replacement officers at the cost of requisition points. Might come in handy in future playthroughs staying more historically accurate to not get too far ahead in research and maybe release salty officers so they can go crew their own boats.

The naval academy I've mostly ignored. Sent a couple officers for a course in waiting ashore, and they are good at it now.

Great reports, fellow skippers. I like your style Leaf.

As for U-292.... We couldn't stretch the refit as long as I thought, as the January patrol was so short. So it was that U-292 set sail on February 22, 1944, bound for the waters south of the Azores to meet another Japanese boat to hand over some stuff. A mission like this seemed in order, with less intensive ASW encountered, or so it was believed. We have three milk cows out in the Atlantic now, and I have them on an arc, one south of Iceland, one north of the Azores and one to the south of the Azores. Met the Japanese submarines, made the delivery, got the you are hunted event, met the tanker to top off and set course for BD grid in mid-ocean. We could have gone right home, mission was complete. But it felt wrong to spend all this time at sea and not attempt to damage the enemy. Plus, I reasoned that a wide path way out to BD grid might throw off the hunters, wherever they might be. I'd expect them to be arrayed along our direct course back to France, so while they were burning fuel there, we'd be out in the middle Atlantic. Not the worst plan.

A little more than three weeks after setting sail, we found an inbound convoy. I'm very hesitant to do solo convoy attacks at this stage of the war. But I gave it a go anyway. Submerged many miles ahead and let the formation overtake our silent and still submarine. Fired two acoustics, the first of which was aimed at the lead destroyer to open a hole in the defense. This torpedo instead went for the T2 tanker sailing astern in the center column. It hit the stern, and the tanker exploded, upended and slid stern-first below the waves.

Second acoustic went again for the lead destroyer and he blew up and sank, as U-292 sought safety in depth. Clearing out this destroyer gave us time to escape and we had done so. It all went so well I thought we should return to periscope depth and have a look. Bad move. When we hit 150m we got pinged. We had kicked the hornet's nest. Tried to slip under the formation as it sailed overhead, but this escort group was the best we have encountered, and very determined to even the score. For several hours we evaded depth charges. They were able to ping us at 245 meters. Honestly I though the jig was up. All of my Steam friends who play this game have already gotten the achievement for having 100 DCs dropped on you, but here we were in the 37th mission and had yet to have that happen. This time it did.

U-292 was rocked by close patterns. Honestly, without the little blue hydrophone lines I'm not sure we would have survived, as these let me con the boat reactively and accurately. In a bog standard VIIC, I don't think we would have made it. This was relentless. A pounding by multiple warships. Yet damage was minor, just to the radar detector, AA guns, bow caps and this sort of thing. No hull breach or leaks, and that is down I think to the VIIC/41, the extra 50 meters you can dive makes all the difference. Get this boat. Finally we managed to slip away, still not sure how as they had zero trouble picking us up on ASDIC before. The crew was more stressed now than at any time in the career. It was a close run thing. But we survived.

Still under the hunt we still needed to sail all the way home, and this close call tempered any thought I might have had of looking for more targets. We had had enough for one patrol. Dived the boat for many aircraft radar contacts on the way, but we made it, having sunk the 14k tanker and the DD, and tied up at La Rochelle after about 30 days at sea.

Did another long refit and then took an anti-shipping patrol in the Pit. The outbound leg was peppered with aircraft contacts, and we yo-yo'd our way to the west, submerged during daylight until well west of the Bay. Got in on a convoy and sank two big freighters in BD grid, plus another escort. We took eight! acoustics on this patrol. Without them, we are in trouble. I hope they don't run out! Still at sea in BD grid.

May, 1944