What to do...Quick!!!
 

Transiting to my patrol area in BD74 and I've quite literally stumbled across a convoy in BE86. Its 1943 and the contact report arrived minutes before I started detecting radar emissions. Its travelling at 6 knots and I'm perfectly positioned on its port side and about 10kms ahead of it. In fact I'm probably a little too well positioned if thats possible.

Managed to get a few sneaky glances with the scope and it seems to be a fairly large convoy with about 7 columns. Can make out some large ships in there. The problems are threefold.

The convoy columns seem to be at 500m spacings rather than the 1000m I've come across before. This scuppers my usual approach of submerging between two cols because I figure I'll get spotted or rammed, if I stay where I am I will get rammed cos one of the columns is pointed right at me!

The other problem is that its now 0900, sun is coming up and the sea is like glass.

The final insignificant detail is that before I dived I was picking up 8 radar emissions around the convoy.

Should I:
a) stay inside the convoy path and shoot from short ranges
b) withdraw outside the escort screen and pick my targets at long range
c) run away and pretend I didn't see them

I'm playing DiD and I'll admit to being a little nervous

It's a simple question really ...

Do you want to be remembered as a heroic skipper with a legacy that will install pride in generations to come?

Or do you want to be remembered as an old man giving interviews to the BBC?

If you are confident penetrating the escort screen then get in close BUT don't hang around at PD, dive deep as soon as you loose the torps.

If you are worried about the needed proceedure to get inside the screen, fire from distance and high tail it away again and set yourself up for another attack.

Good hunting:up:

Convoy of that size, that close together... I'd probably loose the first couple of fish from outside, then break contact towards the convoy while reloading/looking for another shot. The escorts won't have as easy a time of it looking for you, and the threat of a collision for them is quite real with all those ships scattering, so fire, run deep, bolt in, come back up to PD "amidst the sheep" so to speak, and loose another pair of fish/ Make the escorts run around, and you might just get lucky.

Convoy by that description sounds orgasmic.

What kind of fish are in the tubes?

I dont want to be remembered as a skipper who got his conning tower ripped off by a liberty ship thats for sure. Infiltrating the screen is simply a matter of staying where I am, staying quiet and hoping that the lead escort who's roaming out front isn't actively pinging cos I'm roughly in line with the second column. Its just that I cant raise my scope and check my position until the lead escort has passed me and if I happen to be out of position the main bunch is so close behind I'm gonna have to make quite a bit of noise to get out of someones way.

Now if I had a load of FaTs in my tubes this would be perfect...

Well its hit the fan now. I spent so long dithering about what to do that it was too late to do anything except hold position and pray. Lead escort passed me by and up scope. Spotted two large tankers in the middle of the convoy so I fired 2 magnetics at them. At that point I spotted the lead escort running back at me so I blindly fired off 2 impacts at shallow depth in the general direction of the herd hit flank and pressed D repeatedly! Heard 3 explosions and a Large tanker appeared in my logbook. Am now running at 1 knot with depth charges going off but not too close, I get the impression that they cant run at me because of all the merchants up top. I guess when the crowd thins and if they pick me up I could be in trouble.

Next time load up on FaT's and fire from outside the screen

IMHO, you should try to take a 90º angle possition, pick the juiciest targets form long distances, fire your eels and dive deep and move ahead of the convoy in paralell, that might give you the chance of reloading and making a 2nd attempt.
if you are at a good distance, if you dive as soon as you fire your torps, escorts might not even detect you. If they do, you have more than enough distance to run away completely safe. :know:
I hope it helps you.
CapZap

Daylight + sea like glass = no go... I would get the hell out of there, too many bad experiences with these conditions. Or try a "Hail Mary" fan shot from far away ?

kill them

Pity you were so close to start or you could have shadowed
Well as you have already stirred up the hornets nest lets hope they loose contact
and allow you to escape
DiD is enough to get you nervous
1943 is a tough time and getting tougher

Fingers crossed Kaleun

Well, what happened?

Perhaps he's taking DiD to the extreme, once sunk you can't talk to anyone else about it :dead:.

:lol: :lol:

I will search for him tonight in my VII at BE86, hoping to find any survivors...:hmm:

...but I'm not in the year 1943!:damn:

Maybe I'll wait those 3 years just to see the outcome of it!:D :D :D