Out on a second patrol with a type VII out of La Rochelle.
Left port 14 July 42. Patrol area ET21 Northwest of Freetown.
Got down there with good fuel economy (25 percent fuel used) in 13 days.
Uneventful patrol in the area. Then went to patrol west of Freetown.
A report indicated there was a ship moving in from the west-south-west about 100km away. Intercepted the contact in the middle of the afternoon at about 8000 meters. Weather was cloudy with a storm building.
Turned out to be a small enemy convoy. 1 formation line breast. 1 destroyer leading. 1 in trail. A medium tanker; medium cargo and a large merchant. Observing it from the south.
A little close for me. Collected some target track info and plotted it. 9 knots, course 62. Turned around and got on an exit course and sent off a contact report. This being 1942 I knew this report could draw aircraft or worse.
Contact report showed as follows.
Plotted both my track and the contact report track.
Intent: do an end around and approach from the front for a periscope attack. Pick the two most available targets. for 2 torpedoes each.
An hour into the end-around: aircraft. Crash dive.
Stayed under less than a half hour and kept maximum speed knowing it would stress the batteries but I needed to not get too far behind.
Back on the surface.
Got to the end around well in front of them and picked them up at a closer range than I would prefer due to the weather.
Quick one observation range and bearing for the plotting board and submerge.
Time to take a seat at the attack periscope and everyone get to work.
"Auf gefechtsstationen!"
Intent: a 90 degree attack from a northerly direction. Sound observations were fairly true to the original tracks so I split the difference and assumed in between both tracks for now until I had more observations.
So. Head north-north west for about 1ooo meters. Then, a 180 degree turn to starboard to the attack course. This would be a port angle on the bow attack; targets moving right to left.
Around 1500 meters lined up on the lead ship which was a medium tanker. Fired two type 3's middle of ship point of aim. Depth 3 meters; contact pistol; assumed target speed of 8 knots for all shots. Fired at this target when it presented itself 90 degree port angle of the bow. This became my 90 degree reference for the torpedo computer. After 1 and 2 were fired, moved the scope to the right and put it over the center of a large merchant. Since the scope angle input was linked to the torpedo computer, when I moved my scope to the second target, the angle on the bow dial was relational to my first target assumption of 90 degrees port angle on the bow. I forget what the AOB for the second target was but it was somewhere in the 80-85 region. This ship was following very close to the tanker in front of it. Fire 3 and 4.
Medium tanker:
Larger merchant:
Endured somewhere around 50 depth charges before getting out of there.
Sometime later, back up to the surface.
Ran all night in a normal patrol pattern and at dawn, put in a report before
diving for the day.
Unfortunately, a few days later, I was caught on the surface in bad weather by two destroyers. Probably radar helped them, as I did not have a radar detector on me.
So the end of that career, but a good crew and a good boat.
Using the event viewer in the game for fun.
