It will not kill them out right but it will cause mass flooding and the faster they come at you the more water they take on. It will render them less of a problem while you focus on any other destroyers out there.

Follow the golden rule while they are pinging they are not hearing you so that's the time to move, no pinging they can hear you so do nothing.

Carefull with this advice. Somtimes the destroyers will work in pairs. One will thrash about pinging and dropping charges while the other sits and listens.

Using TMaru or RFB I've hit merchants a lil forward of the pilot house and MOT with more than 1 torp and they burn forever and their bows sink below the gunnel with green water up to the portholes on the wheelhouse, but they butts stay afloat and rejoin the convoy; however, I've accidentally hit merchants abaft the wheel house with one torp and they DO become dead in the water and slowly sink. The large tankers seem to slip under with one torp when hit in the abaft superstructure at the stack.

I use the torpedo explosive power 2X mod, does wonders for 1 shot kills....

JIM

It's good to remember that each torpedo has a certain random element to it as well, not every torpedo does the exact same damage each time, there is a small variation in exact damage. I don't recall how much it varied by though.

Personally, I found bow shots woefully inadequate in 1.2. I had engaged a Large Modern Composite Freighter and hit him in the bow with 5 torpedoes and it didn't effect him at all. No damage was visible, no speed reduction, no fire, no flooding. Perhaps that's been fixed in 1.3, I don't tend to play chicken all that often, in the case above I was just getting rid of all my torpedoes before I returned to base and ended the patrol. That was with the mod that increased torpedo damage by 25%. :-?