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Wah?
The largest number of U-boats that attacked a convoy was 51 boats (some sources say 41) from four wolfpacks against ONS-5 in April 1943. Not a regular occurance mind you.
The 42-ship convoy was escorted by a destroyer, frigate and 4 corvettes.
The end result: 12 ships sunk...7 U-boats lost.
Hardly what I'd call the wreaking of havoc.
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As non-native english speaker I used incorrectly the expression "breaking havoc", but aside from that the wolfpack tactics were hugely important in that by keeping the convoy escort busy they opened gaps on it. In the early stages of the war, even a more or less simultaneous attack by just three or four boats was enough to allow for some chaos in the escrot screen. Schepke, Kretschmer, Prien, participated in some of those actions, sometimes benefitting (And sometimes getting in trouble because of that) from the busy convoy escorts.
The example you chose, ONS-5, is not a casual one. There were certainly more U-Boats than ever deployed against it, (though not all of them simultaneously) but what made the difference was the convoy running into a fog bank, which reversed the situation due to escorts having radar. Oh, and IIRC, ONS-5 only had its ordinary escort for some days, but later an additional support group was drawn from another convoy and increased the escort. BTW, ONS-5 was also the convoy that started the Black May.
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Methinks some people may need to read up on actual Wolfpacks. http://uboat.net/ops/wolfpacks/ gives a nice summary of most (it's incomplete) of the wolfpacks including size and ships sunk. Some romanticists may find the stats surprising...
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Like for example Michael Gannon's well documented "Black May", about how the allies defeated the U-Boats? And specifically dedicating several chapters to ONS-5?
I had readed it long before you ever heard about subsim.com or modding SH3
