I found the Illustrious!
After the initial sound contact, I managed to slip past the escorts in foggy weather and made a visual contact. As a bonus, there were HMS Revenge and the Hood.
Now I was in dilemma, whether to attack the Hood or Illustrious. So i fired 3 eels at the Hood and one at the Illustrious' stern to stop her. All torpedoes hit! Then I paused and minimized the game to check stupid TV schedule. The game crashed
.
I reloaded a previously saved game, and tried to remember my course to find the task force again. And I did! The waves were higher than on previous attemp, but the visibility was better, so I approached more carefully. Attack was made the same way as before. Three torpedoes hit the Hood, the 4th one prematured (I fired a magnetic because I couldn't fire a 90 degrees shot and was afraid of a dud).
The Hood listed to starboard but didn't sink. When the escort left, I surfaced and started the pursuit. After a while I spotted a destroyer behind me. :hmm: I couldn't have overtaken them... After diving, I found it was another task force! They were gaining on me and soon came to visual range. And there she was - HMS Illustrious, surrounded with some cruisers and bunch of destroyers. It was dark, and I decided to maka a long distance attack on surface. I didn't want to waste time, I still had a Hood to catch!
I had only two bow torpedoes, and I realized I forgot to load them!
I set a parallel course, flank speed, while the torpedoes are loading. When they were done, the Illustrious almost passed me. I made a quick turn, launched my eels and disappeared in darkness. I was already far away when torpedoes struck. Soon after she was going down! Mission accomplished.
I went after the Hood and found her crawling at 4 kts. One torpedo was enough to send her to the bottom.