[MarkShot]

I was East of the Philippines commanding the Pampanito (Balao) in May, 1943. On 05/03/43 at 14:06, I picked up screw noise of a large convoy heading West. An end around was performed and by 19:30, I was approaching the convoy at PD bearing 000 relative. It was an overcast night with heavy seas and no moon.

Much to my chagrin I navigated myself right through the center of the convoy without locating a single target. I had sound contacts with 15+ ships from every direction, but never gained sight of a single ship through the scope. After it was clear that I had missed my opportunity, I surfaced to see if I could overtake some merchants from the rear. Instead, I had the misfortune of the first sighting being a destroyer which began to shell me immediately. I dove deep, but sustained damage from repeated depth charge attacks. Thus, upon evading the escorts, I was forced to terminate the current patrol rather than risk my ship being lost.

Are night time convoy attacks feasible or are they too risky due to low visibility/situational awareness?

Thanks.

[Werewolf]

I believe they are very feasible, I have often gotten in, attacked and sunk a merchant without being inside visual range of a destroyer and then gotten out again without being in contact with an escort. With large convoys protected by only a small number of escorts I believe that night attacks are the best since you are often beyond visual range for an escort opposite during the day.

[MarkShot]

I managed to pass right through the convoy without a visual contact!



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[Werewolf]

Hmmm that is very strange, how close were you by estimate? Close enoguh to hear the screw noise without sonar? There is still the chance that you can be within sonar range to hear them, but still beyond visual range to see them. Then there is the possibility that something is wrong with your computer..graphic card perhaps. How long time do you keep the scope up? When I raise the scope there is normally a small delay before I can see a ship because my computer is a bit slow at high resolution.

[Werewolf]

By the way, are you not the one who has made a long post regarding how to avoid the save game bug. I save a lot, usually dusins of times for each patrol. How the h... do you do that? What is the hibernate option for example? I have a Danish computer so my menus are a bit different.

[MarkShot]

As for passing through the convoy:

(1) I was at PD with the scope up.

(2) I went from having the sonar contacts on my bow say from 350 to 10 relative to literally having them encircling me.

(3) I had sonar contacts, but did not hear any screw noise through the hull.

(4) It was a moonless night, heavy seas, and overcast. Perhaps, visibility was less than 1,000yards. If I had seen anything, then I should have gotten a "Visual sighting,sir" or "Ship spotted" along with a grey or red ship icon on the map.

(5) Later I surfaced as I thought I would try to attack on the surface from the rear ... I thought I was already inside the screen. Almost immediately, a destroyer came out of the darkness at 500yards driving straight towards me. I went deep and retired from the engagement.

As for hibernate:

This option would not be in 95/98/ME. It might be in 2000, but is definitely in XP.

It is way of powering down your PC without actually stopping the system. The entire contents of memory is written to c:\hiberfil.sys. When powered up again, the contents of c:\hiberfil.sys is reloaded into RAM and everything that was active at power down is once again running. It is like leaving SH2 running for 2-3 days on your PC, but still being able to turn the power off when you want to.

That and making SH2 work better (smoother) in a multi-tasking environment is sufficient for me. If the SH2 experts say that save/reload screws up the game, I take their word for it. I have not tested this myself.

[MarkShot]

[Werewolf]