Mystery Contact

[Kaptlt.Endrass]

I was playing some SHIII (obviously) the other day when I contacted a convoy some 12 kilometers WSW of the Rockalls. Having had an unsuccessful and lonely patrol, I move to intercept, getting dangerously close to the Channel.

A little desperate for tonnage, confident in my skills, and with Brest under 100 km away, I lie in wait for my prey. A little after midnight on the 13th of May (1943), we get our first sighting: the V&W Class that is leading the convoy through these dangerous waters. We submerge immediately from decks awash and move along our final leg to get into position.

Finally, we start to go through our normal attack procedure as the ships of the other side of this ~30-35 ship convoy become audible on the hydrophones. Then, we get an 'unknown contact'. I man the hydrophones myself to investigate.

The screws of the contact are much too slow for the merchants in the convoy, which is moving at a stately 8 knots. It most definitely is not a warship of any sort I am familiar with; the sound of the engines is much too slow. Whatever it is, I see it on the opposite side of the convoy, not in formation.

I run my attack, sinking a small merchant and a C2 with one torpedo each and heavily damaging an intermediate tanker, setting it ablaze and sending her crew into a frenzy putting out the inferno. As the destroyers move in to engage, we dive to a safe 150 metres to ride out the storm.

3 hours, one flooding incident, and a recovery from fighting a sinking submarine later, we are finally alone. However, during that time, I heard what sounded like a torpedo exploding, and we received confirmation that the tanker was sinking. The mystery contact can still just be heard; the same churning of water at a very slow rate. There are no surface contacts however.

Was it a friendly submarine? And if so, did it fire a torpedo or was that an internal explosion on the tanker (if I recall, GWX was not able to get AI submarines to fire torpedoes).