Mother of all convoys
 

I had an interesting sighting last night.
I was on my 3rd war patrol in the South China Sea & had not seen a SINGLE ship when the deck watch announced smoke on the horizon. I came upon the convoy at a 90deg angle to its line of movement & stretched as far as I could see from port to starboard were ships. There was a good haze in the just after dawn hour limiting my visibility but I counted 24 separate plumes of smoke.

Going to flank & starting to bore in I realized as was actually towards the end of the convoy. The ships were sailing 2 by 2 with each class in rank. Large tankers & passenger ships were at the starboard limit of my visibility & they got progressively smaller as they ranged to port where some large fishing vessels were bringing up the rear.

Unfortunately I had a CTD when flipping through the RM & it didnt even occur to me to snap some screenies until after the CTD but have y'all seen anything like this? I am using RSRD & based on zero sightings in weeks & then this massive gaggle (no telling how big it really was) lined up largest to smallest makes me think it is some kind of bug.

I recently was in the same area and happened on approaching screws from the south (TMO/RSRDC) after a long stretch of finding nothing. Headed north out of Singapore were 6 escorts (all DDs) and three columns of 5 merchants each. A happy hunting ground, to say the least. My only regret was being in a Porpoise at the time :cool: Date was early 42 (I was still based in Java).

I had one while trying to iron our some issues with RFB. Had a lone tanker spotted off my starboard bow about 5000 yds away. I moved my boat to get into attack position off the tanker's starboard side and went to periscope depth. Out of nowhere, my sonar man started calling out contacts non-stop. I raised my scope to see a convoy that stretched from the "lone" tanker all the way south out of visual range. I counted 50 tankers, all the same make, all heading north at 9 kts. For giggles I went to third person camera and started heading south with it along the convoy and it never ended. I fired two fish at the first tanker and sank it. Fired two more at the second and they just passed right through it. Literally. Reloaded and fired two more, same deal. Never could work out the issues I had with RFB and, to this day, can't figure out how the tanker got replicated so many times. :hmmm: Downloaded TMO and haven't had in issue since.

What was the date? Convoy heading?

I couldn't tell you the exact date. It was maybe 2 weeks into a new campaign (CTD prohibited a AAR). I spotted the convoy about 75mi SW Taiwan. The convoy was headed from the Luzon Straight on a NW course at 6-7 knots.

I don't see any Japanese merch convoys at all before April '42. Was it transiting the Luzon Strait towards Japan, or heading towards the Taiwan Strait?

Yeah me either, that & the fishing boats at the end of the convoy lead me to believe it is a bug of some sort.

I surmise it had transited the Luzon Straight but when I saw them it appeared they were headed for the Formosa straight.

It happens at Truk as well ... there is an overspawn issue that gets fixed with some of the better mods. You'll crash just sailing near it.

The largest open water convoy I have ever seen was 52 ships.