Evading escorts later in the war is TRICKY. I have only experienced a few late-war convoy attacks (because life is fleeting in those months), and they are scary as hell.

Often I get detected by escorts before I even attack - they make a solid ring around the convoy, and have a way of picking you up even if you are stopped. I'm not sure how they do this, because they are not using an active 'ping', and i can only guess that it is some high-frequency close-range active sonar that cannot be heard. Anyway, they find you and they come looking for you. I was forced to start attacking from 2nm away - no more of the drift-into-the-convoy tactics. In late 44, early 45, if you attack, they know where it came from and come after you. They can easily pick you up on active sonar, and they will slowly close with you. One of them will ping, and one will listen, and then they start doing the DC runs. There's no good solution. Depth is good, but you can no longer get underneath their sonar cone.

Decoys work - sort of. The way to escape is to wait till they are right on top of you, and then pick a direction that they will scan _last_ in the next sonar sweep. Set a course so that your rear end will face their heads when they finally turn to your direction on the next sweep, and order flank bell. Then pop decoys. If you are lucky, one escort will stay to play with the decoy while the other tracks you. Another such move may stick the remaining escort to the new decoy. You can eventually peel off a whole attacking force if you are very very lucky. Otherwise, they can just DC you all night until you finally crack, go to PD, and try to take them out.

Basically, in the later war, attack from a great distance - fire in pattern running torps and get out before they hit. Don't get picked up by escorts because there is very little hope if you do.

Finally, the most important difference between a relatively safe attack and suicide is the WEATHER. In clear weather with calm seas, sonar and acoustics are great and they WILL FIND YOU and won't lose you. IN bad weather - i.e. high seas, but no fog, you can attack and use the ambient noise to mask your escape. I'm not sure how realistic it is, but the difference between an attack in clear weather and one in rough sea is night and day.

KB