The Funniest War Story Of Them All..

I was on a mission in my salmon class sub today, and soon I would be facing off against two frehyr class ships and an enemy sub, with plenty of enemy dorniers and mosquitoes flying over head.. no time to gawk at anything, the alert was going off as I took control of the bridge.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.. My XO had us trimmed at periscope depth when we made contact.. or should I say they were pinging my sub.. I found two profiles way off in the foggy distance to my aft at about 176 degrees... weather was cloudy, and the waves were just a little choppy..

As I was making notes of my tactical display, the sonar operator called incoming torpedos and I immediately took her down to just below 30 meters. The high pitched sounds of the approaching torpedo screws gaining on us had me worried. How did they get a firing solution on us so quickly from that distance, and worse what if the captain was smart and set those torps to run deep? I decided this was no accident and I didnt want to be one either. I took her under 50 meters just in time as two torpedoes passed on either side of me, thankfully missing by about 25 meters either side. The sound of those two torps passed by me, but now I heard another sound. Third and fourth torps we didnt detect at all must have been fired in close succession, as the first two were so loud we could have been sunk only seconds later if we started to rise too soon.. but we made it back to periscope depth.

Whoever the captain of that sub was, he had a slick trick going with that audio masking scheme.. so far not a scratch on us at this point, but I knew we were caught off guard and staying topside was no longer an option for long. Those sub hunters were closing fast but I didnt want to go down without at least trying to slow them down. I raised tactical and swung it around to see them within range, and bearing down on us running side by side. I fired off four rear torps, in a spread with the two center torps going right down their throats, and one torp to either of their outboard sides from each other. In the event they tried to evade they would both have a tough time turning either port or starboard. I watched in anticipation for as long as I dared, and just as I decided to rig for silent and go deep, I saw them both kick rudders hard to one side and masterfully kick it back to side step my oncoming torps. It looked like all torps were going to miss, and I could watch no longer. A new profile, a third ship was coming out of the fog behind the first two.. and I was going to have to wait for full reloads in the aft compartment.

So, down we went, setting depth for 200 meters running slient. Just a moment after the periscope was down, sonar reported one explosion, one ship sinking. Hoorah!

Now without keeping you in much more suspense than necessary, this is where things get a little hazy. You see, I just pulled a full 24 hours gaming marathon in real life of trying out some new game demos, beta testing, etc.. and I wanted to get into Enigma for a couple quick runs because I just finished retraining the voice profiles over the last couple days and I needed to test it out before I really had to crash.. you know lights out... sleep, that kind of thing.

Well here I was, pinned down deep in silent running mode, taking a few spins with the external camera to see ship profiles way above me floating in directions that I knew indicated they didnt have a good fix on me.. the cabin was dimly lit in deep red, and all the lights were out in my computer room. Ping.. Ping.. Ping...

A few distant cans exploding.. water and bubbles rushing downwards toward the rear of my sub, showering me in white curtains against the deep dark blue outside all around my sub..

Something jolted me awake, RING!... RING!... an new enemy alarm? No.. I fell asleep leaning back in my chair, and the phone next to me was ringing at 4pm in the afternoon or so. A friend from out of town with a computer problem called to tell me all about it. He talked non-stop for fifteen minutes before I got a word in edgewise that I would have to call him later after getting some sleep.

Then I looked at the computer screen. Only 15-20 minutes had passed, and I was afraid my mission was over and I would be dead. There was no movement or sound from my sub as if I paused the game before falling asleep?

No, but there was a big message plastered on my screen - YOU WERE VICTORIOUS! You sunk all the enemy ships ! I answered YES to the question "Did I want to continue playing?".. so I could see the hull and fuel status. I was healthy with maybe only one notch of hull missing, but fuel was down to 1/3. Still at 200 meters. I looked at the mission log and sure enough, those attacking ships were sunk. Most likely by the sub that had now disappeared.. [edit: I think the ship I sank at 1400 meters was the third profile to appear when the first two ships sidestepped my torps, the third one didnt see them coming for whatever reason] I surfaced and fought a few planes that were still hangin around until I was on fire pretty good at which point I quickly exited the game and shut down the pc

But, I went back in later to look for the log text file to check the differences in time from the first ship I sunk to the waking up point.. I wanted to see if I could calulate how long I was out.

How long can YOU play a mission, surviving in your sleep? What a question!.. unbelieveable..

For some reason the log was missing, and I think I exited the game by hitting alt-F4 instead of exiting the regular way. I wonder if that explains why the text file had not been written to disk.