A ROCK IN THE SEA - U-55 GOES TO WAR - Episode 63 - Full Realism SILENT HUNTER 3 GWX OneAlex Edition

Welcome to a fresh Silent Hunter Campaign with the GWX OneAlex Edition Mod compilation, based on SIlent Hunter III.
Link to a synopsis of "Sharks and Little Fish"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharks_...
You can find the GWX OneAlex Edition Mod compilation here:
/ discord
The Rules for this Campaign are:
- Dead is dead. When I die, the campaign ends.
- Full realism settings. Only the external camera is allowed for filming purposes
- Manual Targeting
- No recognition manual for random merchant ships
- Attempt to abide by the historical orders in regards to the London Naval Treaty, Operating Procedures and Restrictions

[@MColeProductions]

Catalinas were used by the RAF and Fleet Air Arm for Atlantic patrols. One of the most famous encounters for a PBY was sighting the Bismarck heading for France on 26 May 1941.

[@theroyalaustralian]

Holy s***, now THIS I didn't actually know.

[@thisherehandleIdospout]

​@@theroyalaustralianApparently, it gets even more interesting - The one who spotted the Bismarck was not actually a member of the Royal Navy, but an American observer who was essentially, to my knowledge, just riding along 😆 And being as how we Yanks hadn't joined the war yet, it was, technically speaking, a bit... uh... 'problematic'... 😅😅😅

[@theroyalaustralian]

@@thisherehandleIdospout Well I'll be, holy s*** dude, interesting insight.

[@rufuszell]

as you were on the surface the PBY's didnt drop the DP's and shot you instead, had you crashed dived when you first saw them you would probably be dead as they most certainly would have dropped. The AI was smart enough to hold fire on the depth charges on that 1st run and still managed to hit you on the second. A very close shave tbh.

[@Ayeshteni]

This.

[@Camcolito]

"I feel as though their resolve has been strengthened" - As soon as you said that I could imagine little icons popping up over the crew's heads with "+3 Resolve"

[@peterdavies6660]

The RAF operated several hundred Catalinas of various Mks.

[@antgiat]

80 knt for take off,80 knts for flying,80knts for landing....dependable and still flying!

[@DaystromDataConcepts]

Ships need not be sunk to make your episodes and excellent commentary worth watching. please keep up the good work.

[@thisherehandleIdospout]

Here here! You are a veritable font of knowledge, Toncs, and a superb storyteller to boot, so don't worry about giving us a certain amount of 'pew pew' each episode - I suspect that's not the main reason why most of your followers are here 😉

[@cobrageneral556]

9:38 brits even used ASW versions of B-17s

[@randolphstead2988]

I agree, the air routines are not so great. My biggest beef is with how many planes attack you in the early war phase, 1939 to 1942. Coastal Command was neglected and had sparse resources. They did not send two to six planes out as a group, as that was highly inefficient. Such deployments of the small number of patrol planes would've left huge gaps in coverage. The AI flak gunner is also wonky. I so often notice, as in your video, how when two aircraft are flying away from you that the gunner is shooting at the aircraft which is farthest away.

[@pyry1948]

Yes, the RAF had PBY Catalinas for Atlantic partrols.

[@theroyalaustralian]

9:30 What your looking at here, is a PB4Y Catalina MkII, which is one that is capable of taking off from, and landing on a Runway.

[@adammcinnis9922]

I disagree with the note on anti-aircraft fire causing any suppression or disengagement from RAF/RCAF aircraft... as was the case with one of the four U-Flak boats designed- At 20:50 on the 24th, the flak boat U-441 was attacked by a Sunderland of 228 squadron RAF in the Bay of Biscay. Despite being hit by heavy anti-aircraft fire, the aircraft managed to drop five depth charges before it crashed into the sea; the attack wounded one crewman and extensively damaged U-Flak 1 which returned to base the next day. More than half of all U-Boats were sunk by aircraft with a total of 120 planes shot down. The Ständiger Kriegsbefehl Order was largely catastrophic in retrospect, safest bet was to dive dive dive.

[@Tonci87]

I wonder if it is enough to look at pure numbers. Maybe the context is important? I think it makes a tremendous difference if the Airplane surprised the boat, managed to suppress the AA defense, or if more than one plane was involved.

[@adammcinnis9922]

@@Tonci87 Absolutely. Context and conditions are important to consider.... however, the majority of interactions with aircraft and U-boats did not turn out well for the latter. For those 3 months of Ständiger Kriegsbefehl Order, 32 aircraft were shot down and 26 U-boats were sunk by aircraft thus negating any potential suppression. Good info here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKGwXpZudrh7fNE Phenomenal series, Käpitan!!

[@vipertwenty249]

Regarding the aircraft issues - oddly enough a fabric skinned, wooden framed biplane aircraft can receive a great many hits even from explosive 20mm rounds and survive simply because the fabric skin does not initiate the explosive detonator. There is just nowhere even near enough resistance so the round passes straight through leaving a neat hole in the fabric and nothing more. Even if you hit a wing rib or a strut it's still only a thin bit of wood so the same can very often apply. Even if it is a main wing spar it is still only a thin bit of wood. Basically unless you hit a fuel tank, the engine or the pilot it can be hard to shoot them down - conversely, wood and fabric biplanes are slow so you have more time to get more hits into them. 20mm HE is very effective against WW2 era metal airframes though.

[@thisherehandleIdospout]

Something else to consider is that wood can be pretty resilient, sometimes even moreso than steel, in some ways. Thus, I kinda feel like that Catalina took a reasonable amount of damage - that seemed realistic - though I do feel like a biplane (be it a Swordfish, Gladiator or otherwise) should be somewhat more fragile, even if what you say is true 🤔 At the end of the day, a 20mm shell is a BIG shell, even if it is rather 'small' for a sea vessel in terms of its AA ability. One thing that I think should be mentioned, is that I don't think any of the Kriegsmarine's 20mm-armed vessels, U-boat or not, got access to 'minengeschoss' shells like the flyboys did in their 20mm cannons. I'd imagine there was probably at least a decent reason for this, perhaps they were incompatible with the Kriegsmarine's 20mm cannons for some reason, but all I know is that a few of those shells flying towards those Cats instead of the standard HEF shells could only have helped 😕

[@JustPeasant]

Silent Hunter 5 was released almost a whole year ahead of schedule. Game ends in 1943. That is a quite an unfinished game! Bucharest studio got memo from Ubi executives to halt all the work on SH 5, und focus on Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2.

[@michel.montreal]

The RAF Coastal Command started receiving the Catalinas in late 1940; you probably just met the only 2 fully trained crews in the entire Atlantic theater !!! Or they might have been on a training patrol ... imagine in a few years from now !

[@GlennM53]

Jan 19th is my birthday! Hope there was cake on the boat. As for the ai discussion I think we need to remember sh3 is nearly 20 years old, I don't think there is much more the mods can achieve with it (what they have achieved is nothing short of a miracle to be fair) and sadly I don't think we'll ever get a subsim to beat sh3. The gaming industry is too safe and greedy these days. U boat made a good effort though.

[@memyshelfandeye318]

Issues with AA: 1) gun (in)effectivness - seems to be quite fine to me. This gun shot AP-T (25%) and HE-I/-T (75%) ammo, the later with a 6gr. bursting charge. Means a 1-engine aircraft would need ~4 hits to go down. Considering that the gun only had a 20-round mag, was manually aimed from the deck of a highly unstable sub ... no wonder it does not shoot down anything except with a very lucky hit. And yes, I'm pretty sure the aircraft do have hit locations, or "roll for critical hits". Btw., this gun was utterly useless against biplanes like the Swordfish, as BISMARK found out, because both the AP and the HE ammo pass right through the canvas and do s**t to the airplane - it needed a very lucky direct hit on the pilot or the engine to get any effect. 2) (not) aborted attack runs - if a slow-firing 20mm peashooter spraying a handful of bullets around would have deterred any moderatly experienced pilot from an attack, no ship would have been sunk by aircraft in WW2. Actually, the game depicts one of their tactics surprisingly well: hose down the "bridge crew" of the sub with high-cadence 7.x mm fire and keep going, to drop a bomb on them before they can crawl into the conning tower, shut the hatch and dive. 3) Targeting of submerged boats - now THAT's a problem. I caught the game cheating like **** when I finally switched to the Type XXI: Bombers coming from Britain, ~2 hours after I was last spotted, came right in at my position ... and when I went to 15kn underwater (80m deep), I could see them curve in on my course. They did not drop, but dove on my position, pulled up again and turned home. Sometimes aircraft do lose the bearing on the sub, but I never figured out how this is triggered. So be warned ...

[@michel.montreal]

A special tool for anti-submarine warfare was a Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) mounted on most ASW planes by 1943. But the system had many false readings. By late war, MAD in combination with sonobuoys proved more useful. Also, you were lucky those bombers were not equipped with homing Torpedo MK24 FIDO. Now, how much of that was actually built into the game, I don't know, however it could explain what you went through.

[@Tonci87]

It would be nice to know if Aircraft have hit locations modelled, personally I don´t think they do. I might be wrong though.

[@thisherehandleIdospout]

​@@michel.montreal Jesus - Let me take this opportunity to suggest Tonci gets a Type IX, Post B-model, as soon as he can, and hunt somewhere FAR away from Europe, PARTICULARLY as 1943 starts to roll around 😬 Just FYI, U-178, a Type IXD-2, will be completed in February of '42 - Not sure if that's modeled in-game, but I feel like it's worth a shot ;) Sure they're big, but they're faster on the surface, even if just by a little bit, and most importantly, U-boats are very hard to hit if they're NOWHERE NEAR Allied air cover, which is easy to do if you go and get lost 'in the boonies' on a Type IX =D

[@Bingo551]

American made Lend Lease PBY's / Catalina's British flown drop bombs, depth charges and torpedoes. Range 3,000 miles.

[@vipertwenty249]

Catalina flying boats. PBY if you're American. The pure flying boat variant - the most common - has a max range of up to 3000 miles. The amphibian version is quite a lot shorter.

[@thisherehandleIdospout]

Oh wow, I didn't know that about the version with landing gear - Did that equipment really take up so much space? How much range did it lose?

[@vipertwenty249]

@@thisherehandleIdospout Figures vary in the sources but it seems the amphibian version had a range of between 1500 and 1800 miles.

[@vipertwenty249]

@@thisherehandleIdospout Oh - and you should be able to get some details on the gear installation from Wiki - don't rely on Wiki entirely though.

[@thisherehandleIdospout]

@@vipertwenty249 Wow, almost HALF the range, if not actually fully half. That *is* huge...

[@vipertwenty249]

@@thisherehandleIdospout Yes - surprised me that it should be so much less too. See what you can find about it and let me know if it diifers by much. I presume the space occupied by the landing gear was previously a fuel tank area, but I'm not sure. It would certainly increase the aircraft's wieght.

[@NovaTrap1312]

I really hope that the game UBoat will one day be as good as this. The crew management and dmg model in U Boat is so damn good and its so immersive to have the entirety of the sub modeled and being able to walk inside and interact with the boat but tue gameplay is so arcadey even on the highest difficulty.

[@cruzerlououtdoors1940]

Yes , the British did use PBY,s , in fact it was an American USN Ensign Leonard B. Smith , co-pilot flying a PBY for the Brits that first spotted the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen when the attempted to break out into the North Atlantic on May 26th 1941 .

[@jamesfrench7394]

DISCUSSION POINT: I was wondering why you hadn't loaded your 'extra' deck torpedo into the forward torpedo compartment (at night) during these long quiet days when the sea was calm. Because if you see a convoy, you would want all of your torpedoes available! Then I remembered that on American submarines, torpedoes took up bunk space in both torpedo rooms, and forced the men to sleep in 'hot bunks' until they were shot from the submarine. QUESTION: was it the same on German U-boots? IF SO, since you are taking a 'realistic' approach, is your captain balancing having more bunk space in the forward torpedo room, with two torpedoes fired, vs. bringing the extra torpedo in right away? Is it Morale? Expediency? Got enough 'eels' for now? What is the reasoning? What is the command 'balancing act' you are simulating? Love to hear it! SECOND POINT. I thought that the metal blisters on the side of the U-boot were to hold the air from the compressor to bring the boat to the surface. If so, those .50 cal bullet hits you show would allow the air to escape unless welded over. You say it is 'superficial'. But to stop a .50 cal takes about 4-5 cm of steel. Just holding air, open at the bottom, so compression is not an issue. Were the buoyancy tank walls really that thick? Thoroughly enjoyable series!

[@Tonci87]

It is very mush the case. A fully stocked torpedo room meant that there was very little room for the men.

[@michaelcrews4982]

Great series

[@bjornhellgate3985]

Fun fact about rockall Island, it has some of the most funny reviews on google maps

[@phillipbriere740]

Exciting video! If I may, I suggest you stay submerged a few hours longer after getting spotted if possible, especially in daylight and clear weather. Also I suggest leaving a repair crew on station at all times so in an emergency all you do if click on damaged compartiment and forget! Great content!

[@fairestcape1621]

I would disagree unless you are close to night time. Personally I would make sure the aircraft have left, surface at full speed, change course in a completely different direction from the original course and move out the area at 15 knots. In this instance that Catalina is at the edge of her patrol limits for 1941 so I am heading west and in two hours I would have have put 60 kms from your original position and increased the search area immensely and probably made it out of their patrol limits.

[@phillipbriere740]

@@fairestcape1621 In this case I would agree that your solution is a sound choice, the risk is any aircraft close by will be coming towards you. But in 1941. +/-950km from the closest airbase it should be fine staying surfaced if heading west

[@Tonci87]

I can´t have a repair crew on standby at all time since being at repair station will drain their stamina super fast.

[@JuanManzano88]

Hey man! Greetings from Argentina! Love your videos.This was my first Silente Hunter game. Unfortunately, I'm a Mac user since 2012, and this game is not compatible. But thank to you, i can enjoy this game. Thank you again!!!

[@michel.montreal]

I used t play SH3 on a MAC up until a few years ago. You should be able to run the game in windows xp compatibility mode.

[@JuanManzano88]

@@michel.montreal it’s a M1 Pro Mac. Can’t run Windows 😢

[@michel.montreal]

@@JuanManzano88 UTM Virtual Machine could work, or VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop. (UTM seems easier to set up). Or you could just get an old pc clunker :)

[@user-pz4hr5eb5c]

Napokon! Moraš snimati češče!

[@mrorome5064]

Speaking of other sub games, what about SH4? It has some amazing mods too, and a change of theater could be a nice break if we finish the Sh3 campaign :D + I'm already stoked to see you lose your mind with early war US torps.

[@tarkalak]

You can double click on a compartment title to fill it up and right click to empty it.

[@Tonci87]

I know, I just like to do it this way

[@bflo104103]

Uboat's aircraft AI is no better. The boat's AA is incredibly powerful too making it unbalanced towards the boat. In Uboat your chances are better if you stay surfaced against aircraft especially early in the war.

[@phillipbriere740]

If you play the current you need to mod it alot! Real navigation, atteck disk, engine control, compass mod… The list goes on. I hoping on starting a new career on uboat with the full release coming soon

[@spiraling69]

Hi Tonic! Do you plan to make more Graviteam Mius Front vids? I really enjoyed them!

[@Tonci87]

Right after I finish the Remnants of War Campaign in Arma 3 (Almost done)

[@frederic2166]

One of my friend is flying the last one still in UK with other volunteers

[@Tonci87]

WOW that is awesome

[@franknstein546]

Next time!

[@friendlytankcannon7952]

I’m not a veteran of UBOAT but I’ve faced the airplanes before as far as I know I don’t believe there is air suppression when shooting at them because I have sprayed a plane coming right down at me and he dosint veer off

[@vaggelissmyrniotis2194]

You made a brave decision to stay on the surface to engage them in their first attack run.Planes are very tricky in this game especially as the war goes on which is realistic and if you had crashed dived immediately they would be over you in no time.Even if you changed course while diving,they were close enough that it may not had helped.It was pretty odd indeed to attack you that far from britain and you are in early 1941..Do you use the 'higher propability of air strike' mod?

[@Tonci87]

No I don´t. I guess I just got unlucky

[@thatguy990]

Algorithm 👍👍

[@grossadmiral1]

Hallo Tonic, immer noch "1/3 Fahrt voraus"? 😂😂😂

[@Daniel-es3qq]

Luckily no bomb hits xP

[@jojomarujo8704]

Because i don't know much about ww2 aircrafts, that look like a bit too far deep in the middle of Atlantic for the Catalinas. Did the Allies have a kind of seaplane tender to operate along with those cats?

[@MrBlueBurd0451]

Certainly not, the PBY could manage about 1400 nautical miles with 2000lbs of payload.

[@JokeFranic]

You can double click a empty section in crew managment and it will be filled with crew that are on rest...then you can manage particular persons.Uboat (the game) doesent come close to SH3...i mean in Uboat you can take your uboat surfaced in port of London and through dover straits no problem...plus the game is clunky as hell.It has some qualities (like better graphics) but other than that its worse in every way (imo).

[@brandemon6667]

How much distance can the aircraft travel? im playing on lsh3 but i never see them as long as im 600 km away from the nearest port

[@Tonci87]

PBYs have a very long range

[@dominikjankowski3040]

hello . Why did your crew spotted the aicraft so late ?

[@memyshelfandeye318]

Haze and glare can hide aircraft suprisingly well, especially on what seems to be a "really fine" day. And yes, the game does take that into account. You can test this easily early in the war: in the morning or evening, get the low sun behind you and you can shoot up ships on the surface at your leisure, and they won't ever be able to shoot back because they can't see you. At night, never ever get between the moon and a warship, or they will spot you very fast and start raining shells on you ... .

[@2Dark03]

Can't wait for graviteam tactics. my goodness

[@manuelkong10]

should have dived IMMEDIATELY upon sighting aircraft....and the game shouldn't show you what's damaged topside if you're submerged

[@Tonci87]

Yeah, good point

[@michaelspringob9937]

The range of a PBY-5A Catalina was 2.990 miles, with a ceiling of 18.100. So, you were well in range of those flying boats. As always l, great videos. Thank you for the entertainment.

[@es7821]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Castle_Archdale?wprov=sfti1#Units

[@nekromagus6334]

If You will have another video with only talk please inform about this on beginning episode.🥱

[@Tonci87]

Can do