as much as i know the patches are not savegame compatible, so you need to start a new game to see if the trigger is working. in new games the trigger works perfect, may be you should start a new game instead of investing time in repairing an old savefile
Read my post again. I never said that I loaded 1.02 savegame with 1.03...
@Devildread: Are you sure that it's already set in January 1, 1936? I don't have any installation problems, I installed everything correctly (HoI 3 SF>2.04f>DLC>1.03 patch).
By loaded save, by the way, I meant I started a game as GERMANY IN 1.03 (!!!), saved the game on January 1 after re-organizing OOB, ministers, technology etc. and then quit the game, changed some static_modifiers (which don't affect flags in any way, so don't claim that editing game files causes this) and then went back on and none of the U-Boat events triggered afterwards.