SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Aggressive enough?

April 25, -41. The BE´s. Lousy weather, -800m visibility.

At 1700 we dived for a sound check. And we had contacts, lots of contacts.
A convoy, less than 5000m away on bearing 290. And closing.
Ok, surface and lets head straight for them, head on. Open all tubes and stand by for orders. The lead escort might have heard us already, but will have to find us visually if we go for an surface attack.
Well, he did, somehow. Suddenly a shell whistled passed over our heads, and there she came out of the fog on our 5. But at the same time 2 merchant came into view, at bearing 10 and 340.
With shells flying and some hitting us we fired 2 and 4 to the right and 1 and 3 to the left. Then a 3´rd ship emerged out of the fog, at 190. Fire number 5. And then flank speed to get behind the ship at our starboard side, heading deeper into the convoy while repairing and reloading. Then we dived, to 20m. Not knowing the extend of our damages we stayed just under the keel of the ships, slipping out the back door.
3 hits was heard, 2 ships breaking up and sinking.
When we thought all ships and escorts had passed we surfaced again, some 3000m behind the convoy, to finish repairs and to reload the tubes for a second attack. Straight into the hands of a Flower, 300m to the right. And so the hunt was on. She called in the rest of the pack, 6 or 7 hunters came for us.
Mayhem. But with the sounds of DC´s and pinging ringing in our ears we got away. God knows how. Surfaced again, now with even more damage to repair. While repairing we set out to search for stragglers. Found 2 and sank them. But then the hunters turned back from the convoy. Going flank speed we lost them in the fog and headed for home with empty tubes and a really banged up boat. We sank 6 ships for 16500 tons in total in this our 14´th patrol. But this boat has been badly damaged 3 times now, she´s had enough and a new VIIc is coming our way.

U-53, Wolff.