I feel like a useless human being... and yet... also one of the most accomplished. To get my mind off of the whole fact that I won't find out if I won the arts editor election till next week, I've been playing Silent Hunter III. Nothing saps up more of your time than commanding a U-boat.
Half the time it's just sailing around looking for merchant ships to sink. Not the most fun thing in the world, but it takes up my time and stops me pacing around the room like an expectant father.
Anyway, here are a few screen shots of what a typical day out in the Atlantic ocean is like for an enterprising German Leutnant such as meself.
The story starts with me sinking a couple of merchant ships outside of Gibraltar. I'd perched there to pick off ships sailing out of the Med... they'd have to come through Gibraltar and I'd be waiting. It worked, somewhat. Sure, I sank a few ships, and feeling real smug I started sailing around Gibraltar thinking, "hey, what's the worst they can do?"
After all... it was windy, the seas were rough, and there was no chance in hell they'd spot me.
Perching smug on my conn tower and making sure my watch officer was okay with getting soaked to his bones, I stood feeling unstoppable, invincible.
Then the planes came. Depth charges hit the water with loud slaps, followed by muffled explosions as the water around me suddenly became very dangerous. I went belowdecks and ordered an immediate dive to periscope depth. What the planes couldn't see, they couldn't aim at.
Within minutes my sonar operator started screaming sonar contacts right and left. The chief engineer secured the sub for silent operation and I glued my eyes to the periscope for the first sign of enemy contact.
Sure enough a destroyer came into sights, and blasted right by us.
I had the torpedomen fire a parting gift for it out of the aft tubes. Chances were the two torps would miss by miles, but at least the eventual explosion would draw attention to a different area.
But it didn't. The destroyer didn't hear the fish coming towards its backside and with the first impact, the thing split right in two.
Still, my moment of victory was short lived. Even as we left at a slow 3 knots from the scene of the crime, A Hunt-class destroyer came into sights, and started searching the area. Sonar pings echoed in the water, thankfully with us well outside of its range.
A Hunt-class Destroyer... steaming around searching for me.
This is a view of my navigation map, where I plan out my attacks. The red lines are hostile sonar contact directions. The black lines are merchant ship contact directions. It would be good to note now that the merchant ships are all headed away from this scene, and the warships steaming right this way. The red blip around the circle that I drew (denoting the destroyer's patrol path) is the Hunt-class destroyer which is hunting for me near the sinking wreckage of the one I sank. Don't ask me what class that was, I wasn't paying attention to that detail.
The skies were filled with torpedo planes patrolling the area, and more warships were coming, but I turned to make fight. Well... not quite yet. I exited the game after I turned around and got a crappy feeling that since the destroyer was going round in circles, hitting it with a torpedo was a one in a million chance.
So I took some screenshots instead and just quit. =) Hence this post. Mostly to fill up blog space, since I don't want to talk about the election... I'm too nervous. =D
The U-108 of the 2nd Flotilla. In other words, my baby.