Your most successful attack on a convoy

[Kaleun Cook]

Ahoi,

maybe you'd like to share the experiences in your most successful attacks on convoys with the community. Of course I wouldn't ask if I had nothing to tell. :D


I'm playing a campaign with 80 % realism early in the war. On the way from Wilhelmshaven to my PQ near Gibraltar I intercepted a convoy southwest of England. It was dark night when the ships went by. I went for a big freighter at flank speed when I was looking for a possible second target - and spotted a south hampton cruiser. I sent two torpedoes out for each ship when I recognised that I accidently rushed into the convoy. Quickly I set up my stern torpedo for another big freighter that just drove by behind me. All eels hit, destroying the first two ships and damaging the third so it sank a few miles further. In the morning I drove another attack and sunk two big ships. In the afternoon I attacked again, submerged this time, picking another two ships and damaging a third one that had outmaneuvered one of two steam torpedoes I fired at it. I wanted to sink it in another night attack but a heavy storm with bad rain made that impossible.
So alltogether I sunk 46669 tons between 2:21 and 14:50. Since it is early in the war the escorts were pretty easy and didn't find me in depths between 160 and 180 meters.

I'm sure you elite guys had much better patrols, can't wait to hear about them.

[Biggles]

Best convoy attack? Must be the one I intercepted west of Gibraltar, just north of Casablanca. Summer 1940, middle of the night, when I got a convoy contact. Only one escort, a Black Swan class, and it was burning and low in water. I sank it with an torpedo, and then I took on the rest of 'em. By thinking before I used all my torpedoes and deck gun ammo I managed to sink 12 ships. 1 escort and 11 cargos of different kinds, like for example Pyros, Large Cargos etc. (Playing GWX, 0%:roll: )

[Homerthedoomer]

I once managed to sneak inside a convoi, letting the escorts pass by. I raised my periscope and stared right at a revenge class battleship. I pumped her full of torpedoes and unloaded my rear eels on a large tanker passing behind me. Both ships sank instantaneously, and the escorts didn't even find me :arrgh!:that was on GWX with around 60% reality settings. Oh and I managed to do exactly the same thing again on the same patrol only one day later :rock:

[melnibonian]

My most successful attack on a convoy? Well it was March 1942 when I came accross a convoy just outside Miami in the US East Coast. The weather was great and the sea really calm. The convoy was really large, with 4 lanes of Tankers and 4 or 6 Destroyers as escort. I approached on the surface, running decks awash and I've managed to sneak passed the escorts on the right hand side. The night was moonless and visibility poor for the escorts. After the first salvo was fired I went to periscope depth and kept firing until all the internal loads of my IXC were emptied. The final result was 6 Tankers and a couple of Destroyers sunk on the spot for 70,000 tons. Two more tankers were damaged and picked up later with the deck gun (after the convoy moved away) to top up the kills to a total of almost 90,000 tons.

[Brag]

Picked up a convoy north of Cape Verfe Islands ( Early 1941) kept on attacking it, 'til I ran out of torpedoes. The escorts still had a few ash cans left. I got close to 90,000 tons from that bunch,:yep: :rock:

[Umfuld]

Just had it a few days ago. (GWX - 92% or so, but using a later model boat)

Can't resist shooting at a Cruiser when I find one in the middle of a pack, so I took that out and I sunk tanker with a lucky one fish hit on my first go.

Went away and came back after they'd settled down and noticed they only had one escort. Well I set up some big ships for my second attack and was dreaming that the escort would detect me and I'd get it with a down the throat shot. It did!
But I missed with two torps before having to sneak away. First one, impact, bounced off. Second one, mag, missed by a hair.

Came back again, and I don't know if I was coming back too soon and the escort was still on alert or what, but this dude detected me again. (It was spring, 1940, so I didn't like being found twice underwater without making a peep.)
I didn't panic though, and glad I didn't. He sniffed me, but wasn't sure where I was.
Tense moments as he slowly searched and came in front of my boat just a few hundred meters away.
I fired seat of my pants shot and dove, never expecting to hit a swerving escort, but bam, got him.

I decided to leave and let the cargo ships settle down again before coming back. Got lucky again with all my tubes, then popped up and had shooting practice on the unprotected convoy.

Not sure my total, but my total for the patrol was around 113,000 tons. I'm thinking it was close to that.

[TarJak]

Got lucky just outside the Gibraltar straights with 2 large counvoys converging. Scored 5 ships in the first attack, then hid in the confusion. Shodowed the convoy on it's way out into the Atlantic and over the next 3 nights hit them again 6 times to leave them with 3 DD's and 4 small freighters from a total of 24 merchants and 4 escorts.:arrgh!:

[CaptainAsh]

Yesterday evening!!!
Maybe not my best tonnage score but my best feeling ever in that game :D
GWX Realism 100%, type IXB, from 2 august [edit: got a PM to ask me how fast I m sailing to do such travel from 2 september :P] 10PM to 4 september 7 AM, 3 attacks.

It was my transit mission, leaving from motherland for Lorient sub base. Went north to pass over scapa then south, aiming for a hunting ground I like : the place between madeira and azoren. Found some opportunity target on my way so I reach my hunting ground with only 10 fishes left in bow and 3 fishes left in stern. Was already at something like 35-40K tons. Doing my hunt, went on a medium tanker... 2 fishes gone with him. Then a small merchant... one more fish. So got only 7 left in bow when my radio receive a report about a large convoy, south of us, 130km, heading straight north, 7 knots. That was the perfect repport for me! I was already on his way, just have to decide the interception spot I wished. I decide for a spot where the convoy should be by 10 PM same day.
Weather was not good, light rain and medium fog so I got the convoy on hydrophone long before I can see any ship. 2 escorts, one in front, one in rear. I move myself in position to attack from the right of the convoy and to be at 400-500 metters from the front right ship when he would cross my heading. With the bad weather and the pitching of my scope in an almost pitch black night I was completely in the impossibility to see the whole convoy but I did recognize at least 6 columns of 4 ships. Maybe 300 metters between each columns, same between each ship in a column. Still, I managed to spot some really big ship and some smaller in that formation. The front right ship was a Large Marchant so I wanted him to be on my first run. Problem was, as he was the closest ship, the blank shot were not giving me a lot of opportunity to make another attack in the same run. after watching carrefuly, I saw that the front left ship was something rather big too. After some tracing on my map and some test solution I found that I could have a shot at the left target with 3:50 minutes in the water when my primary target would be at 400 metters of the spot where I need to take my shoot at him. It was perfect because at 7 knots, a ship is doing roughtly 400 metters in 4 minutes so I could exepect to have impact on both target in a short time range and then avoid missing one because of zigzaging. Then I took my shots in this scenario. Went almost perfect. Almost because the front ship of the column before the left one saw the fishes and the sky went suddently clear because of all the flash light ;). Still, my fishes were almost at home were he did so it didn t change the result. 4 torpedoes impacts! All in an interval of 10 secondes!
I did not actualy eyes witness the impacts because I learn my lesson long time ago. As soon as you re compromized : DIVE!!! My evasion move on such run is almost always the same, as I m close of the first column, I dived flank speed to reach it and take the same heading as it so I escort would have to zigzag between the convoy's ships.

The left ship happened to be a large cargo and sunk immediatly. yahoooo 10K tons more :D
The right ship did not sink immediatly but as I had a nice visual on him when I did my shot, I targed one fishes on the engine comp and one on the stern to knock out the propeler. As expected, on hydro I heard him stop. Diving to 140 metters I went silent mode, waiting for the convoy and escort to leave my target alone to finished it. Actually he sunk by flooding 25 minutes after impact as I was still deep (8K tons). Once the escort abandon the hunting, which was quite fast, I surfaced.

For my second run on that convoy, I decided to do it by day for 2 reasons. First was the bad weather. It was covering me and helping avoiding the escort, right. But it was also avoiding me to do nice identification by night. Second was that I was affraid to lose the convoy because of a heading modification (I m used to it :cry:).
So I planed an interception for 3PM next day... something like 170 kilometers away from there. Got only 3 fishes left in bow so I was planing for one shot but on the more juicy target of the convoy. I decided to attack from the right one more time and went into position.
By day, identification was easyer and I spoted really nice stuff in there... 2 medium tankers, some large merchant, etc... For a moment I was sad about having only 3 torpedoes bow and 3 stern. I wanted to do the closest tanker but every tanker was on the central column and I was affraid of a long shot because of 2 things. First, having my fishes spoted too early. Second, hitting another ship on the way. So I move silently into the convoy, I manage only to be beetween the first an second column, firing on the fourth one, 1000 metters away... 3 fishes, spread shot angle 2°, fast, depth 5 metters. My second fear went as expected, the two first fishes passed at less than 20 metters from a ship in the column before my target and the third one it that damn ship which was a small merchant. Still, the two others wishes were enough to do the job on the tanker and he sunk few minutes after. Same evasion move, some depth charge but not even close. 1 hour after I heard with some pleasure the small marchant sinking himself. At least he got it right! Where am I in my calcul...oh yeah! 14K tons more :D

But I really wanted the second tanker so I decided for a third run with a full stern shot. I went right that time, planing to cross the convoy path and shooting on the tanker then running my ass on the right of the convoy. I planed to intercept it on the first light of the morning to have some beter visibility than just smoke. As the night and weather was a good cover I decided to shadow the convoy for a while on surface, keeping an eyes on his trail. And I did it right because the convoy changed his heading! I changed my interception path, went ahead full and right as planed.
Few to say about that one. Went in the middle of convoy path, all stop, depth 15 metters... waiting silently, as the convoy was starting to have big hole everywhere, I did not have any issue with taking my shot. Went down as soon as the fishes were into the waters. Still I got only one impact, as it was a spread shot with small angle and at short range I was surprised but I could have been a bad torpedo. Still, surprise but not too worry about the future of my target as for the first one of my mission he was a firecracker one ^^ booom kabooooooom. I dunno what was into this tanker... 11K tons more :)

Take my heading to Lorient after a 6 weeks patrol, a convoy for almost 50K tons and a total score of 91K tons. One of my two biggest scores I think. Went home with one stern fish and just less than 25% of my fuel.

[Deathfrombelow23]

GWX 1.03 -- 100% realism. August, 1941. U-452 (VII-C). I was patrolling South-West of Ireland just off the shelf where it starts to get deep. Radio reported a large convoy about 150 KM distant, heading our way... so I sped off to investigate. Fog and rain heavy. Visibility 400-450 meters. I found the convoy using hydrophones and made one pass through the middle on the surface. I sank a Large tanker (18,000 GRT) and a 10,500 ton tanker each with a single torpedo (they blew right up). I then pumped a fish into a 9,000 GRT ammo ship and 2 more took out a Large Freighter (11,500 GRT). Weather was too bad to attempt another attack on that convoy (i consider myself lucky to have even found them in that weather... and got inside right past the escort screen.) On that one pass I got about 49,000 GRT to my credit. We kept patrolling to the north-west and ended up with about 70,000 GRT total. Weather was too poor for most of the patrol to use the deck gun at all. :ping:

[Jimbuna]

GWX v1.03 88%....120km off halifax 'Tanker Convoy' early dusk, sea state calm 153k...ran out of eels but couldn't surface to use deck gun because I'd left the escorts alone :cry:

[Hakahura]

Any engagment I survive I class as sucessful

[Deathfrombelow23]

Excellent point!! I was so worried about tonnage during my first few careers. This one I started in April 1941 and I'm playing at 100% and really treating it like real life. And I've begun to feel that way too... that I'm lucky to come out of a battle alive. You especially feel like this after a close call or two!

[scalelokt]

Well this doesnt qualify as my most successful attack, but I thought I'd tell the story because it SHOULD HAVE BEEN my most successful attack. I picked up on a convoy early war. Stormy weather but they were getting closer to air coverage so I figured its now or never. I take a shot at the first ship I see through all the rain and sure enough its a destroyer. Next I spot a medium merchant and take it out. With one torp left I start looking through the rain for one more victim, and out of nowhere there is an escort heading my way. I take a moment to aim and LOS!. Direct hit and down she goes. Now here is where it gets interesting. That was my last torp, but I had full deck gun ammo. But you'd have to be crazy to take on a convoy on the surface, at least for any extended period of time. So I track the convoy for a while and the rain clears up but the seas are still rough. With my new visibility I take a look at what targets there are and I realize something. I killed the only escorts they had. There were at least 8 more ships, totally unprotected, early war so they didnt have their own deck guns. My eyes lit up like it was Christmas. I surface the boat only to find out that seas are too rough for the deck gun. I couldnt believe it. So I followed them for 2 days and then they got close enough to England for planes to start showing up and waters start to get shallow. I about screamed. If it werent for that damn weather I would have come close to clearing out that entire convoy myself. As it was I got two escorts and a medium merchant. That was the first and last time I was ever able to get a convoy unprotected, and I couldnt even do anything about it. I thought about ramming them to try to get some kills, but that would have just placed me at the bottom of the ocean with nothing. So frustrating! :damn: