Back in the water!

[MarkShot]

I'm enjoying it.  Besides where else you going to get practice writing english?  :P

哈哈哈！

[besilarius]

If you like submarine novels, Beach's two World War II novels are great.  His first one practically invented the genre.
Dust on the Sea, may actually interest a gamer more.  It's probably too historically accurate to appeal to the general public, but it's about a wolfpacks' attempt to stop a Japanese convoy carrying a division from the Manchurian army to the Pacific islands.
Beach based this on a comprehensive study of the battle reports of the various american wolfpacks.  It didn't find the audience that Run Silent, Run Deep did, so he stopped writing WWII stories.
One situation that I've never heard of in a computer game, but once when Trigger was diving, the captain, Dusty Dornin, slipped and fell into the periscope well.
His quartermaster managed to stop the periscope before it crushed him, and he got out with just some bruising.
Can you imagine this happening in a game?  The howls of outrage as you lost an ace skipper to a banana peel?

[Nefaro]

This is good, Mark.  I enjoy the good sub sims.
As to the stern tubes, both Dick O'Kane in Tang, and Otto Kretschmer in U99, liked to surface inside the convoy at night.  From a center point, they got a lot of use from their stern tubes.
Ned Beach, who wrote quite a lot about the submarine war, Run Silent Run Deep, mentioned that it was a great help if the fish were about evenly expended from fore and aft.
Otherwise, there could be trim issues, keeping the boat level.

I'd prefer firing from both ends, at the same time, too.  But the convoys in many of these games are so tight that getting inside like that means you're under minimum arming distance for your torpedoes quite often.  :'(

[LongBlade]

So, with exception of Nefaro and Oche (and possibly Herman lurking) is anyone else enjoying the patrol log of SS-212 in the waters off of Northern Japan?

Yes, I am. I don't always read every post, but I do check this thread whenever it's updated and I do read many of the posts.

I've always enjoyed sub sims, but haven't bought anything in many years. It seems enough to read what you post for now.

[MarkShot]

I've taken bow+stern shots in AOD where it is far easier to come to PD in a convoy of multiple columns.  However, a Type VIIc U-Boat only has 4+1 tubes compared to the Gato Class 6+4.

I remember coming to PD well positioned in SH3/GWX and seeing convoys spread out across the water as far as you could see from the scope.  (although the games I play are fun, the graphics are far from photo realistic)  Anyway, that must have been an awesome sight in real life looking through the scope.

[MarkShot]

I'm enjoying it.  Besides where else you going to get practice writing english?  :P

哈哈哈！

BTW, if anyone was wondering about my response to Bison.  That's "ha ha ha" in Chinese.

[Taiwan Blog Mode = ON]

Just came back from seeing a pretty nice apartment fairly close to here.  Three bedrooms and 2 baths in fairly nice condition.  Quite close to where we are now staying by National Taiwan University.  However, this housing is pretty much across from the National Teachers University where they teach people how to be educators.

Apartment hunting seems quite different here than the USA.  Although large development corporations actually build buildings, most units are a bought by relatively small investors.  Chinese have always considered real estate to be a good investment and often think of putting their savings into real estate as opposed to the financial markets.  So, we met the Landlady.  A very nice woman who is a Professor of Nutrition at another local university.  I like the location as it would mean that my wife is minutes away from her best friends.

The people in Macau, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have a very different view of time and space compared to Americans.  For Americans, an hour commute each way to and from work is no big deal.  Here, that seems oppressively far.  Additionally, not sure if this is true of the Taiwanese, but for people from Macau and Hong Kong, they are much more impulsive.  Activities often aren't planned and happen almost spontaneously.  So, if we live a bus stop away from my wife's best friends, she will see a lot more of them.

So, my wife and her friend are doing most of the apartment hunting.  They screen them, and I take a look at the few they like.  Unlike the USA, there are no applications, criminal checks, credit checks, employment checks, housing checks, landlord/tenant court checks ...  There is simply an interview with the landlord.  If you make a good impression, then you can arrange to rent.  Apparently, we did that today, since the Landlady asked us to "please consider it over the next few days" as opposed to saying that she would consider it.  I was doing my best to score points:  speaking two dialects of Chinese, previously lived and worked here for the military, and married to a Chinese wife for 30 years.  So, it looks like we are going to nail down housing over the next week.

[Taiwan Blog Mode = OFF]

[MarkShot]

08/01/42 Our current offensive role ends.

Around midnight we spot a small unescorted convoy of 4 ships (two tankers).  We are already in good position and come to PD to shoot.

This time we salvo 1x4 finishing our bow fish.  Again duds.  In setting up the close forward shot (2,000yds), we are dangerously close to a collision.  After having observed our miss, we crash dive to get under convoy and bring our stern tubes around.

Once done, we come back to PD.  Luck smiles on us.  The convoy is scrambling.  The tankers are evading right in front of our stern at practically point blank range (600yds).  We fire two 1x2 salvos and sink two tankers!!!

[MarkShot]

We are only back at Midway for 5 days:

[Nefaro]

Sweet!  New sub bling on that port visit!  :D

[MarkShot]

Incredible!  The Admiral wants to send us back to patrol Northern Japan again!



Fortunately, I have some pull in Washington.  It is time to patrol the Taiwan Strait.

[MarkShot]

[MarkShot]

Oh, look at that!  New orders!  We are going to Taiwan!  :)

[Nefaro]

I'm pretty sure most Pacific sub sims dictate your patrol area by which port you're based at.  Been that way in all the ones I recall ever since Microprose's Silent Service. 

So I'm guessing Silent Hunter I only has a couple patrol zones for Japan that it chooses from, if you're based in Hawaii.   Right?  Although if you at Midway, you should probably get some stuff south of there, too, historically speaking.

[MarkShot]

I'm based at Midway.

Here, Oche, some photo realistic photos for you.  :)

[Oche]

Nice, don't forget to capture life guard assignment screens. For some reason i Always felt greater accomplishment after doing those in SH1 than in SH4.