I heartily second the other responses here. While I do not doubt your efforts and frustration in trying to avoid those destroyers, I cannot reflect on my experience of patrols to be generally that hard. (Especially in 1940) It really helped me reading the last parts of the GWX manual. Very useful tips on ASW avoidance. You mentioned meeting a DD means certain death. How long does it take before you are detected in the first place? On the surface I mean. Not getting caught is half of the victory dance. When I make a crash-dive I keep flank or a moderately high speed-setting until I am at the desired depth. Going to 1 knot at 100 meters might still be to shallow, and after that you dive really slow because of that 1 knot. Depth-charges might still fall on your head and hurt. Once you are submerged and in the deep trying to get away from the searching DDs, remember that they may still be doing just that, searching as they circle around you. Pinging also only means that they are searching. They don't necessarily have you in their fix. You just haven't got very far yet in your sneak-away manouvre. If the pinging becomes less louder over time (multiple DD runs) means that you are going in the right direction. Don't go full rudder as it seems to slow you down significantly. With partial rudder can you make a turn and still go somewhere in reasonable time. This is very important since you already are very slow because of being silent. So try to turn as little as possible. But if you do turn, try to head to from where the charging DD came. And for active sonar it matters how your boat is angled to the pinging DD. If he is on your 90/270 then he has a nice reflection area to get a bounce from. As for crushdepth, watch 'Das Boot'. You can often go 25% to 50% deeper than official crushdepth. May be even deeper. But watch out, when you do receive depth induced damage, get up quickly and go less deep. DON'T test the depth at which it started twice! Especially after other hull damage.
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