[Cptn_Enth]

Para,

I, too had an interesting end to my patrol off the English coast last night. Low on eels, I'd just dived to periscope depth to avoid detection from Tommy obervation aircraft, when my sonarman sings out that he's picked up multiple contacts about 30k meters off to the Northeast of our current position. I plot an intercept course, and move ahead of the convoy as fast as our diesels would take us, and as luck would have it, it's an unescorted convoy led by 3 heavy troop carriers and a small host of freighters and tankers. I plot my attacks on the troop carriers first, and release my eels... a few minutes later, the exquisite sound of torpedo detonations reverberate through my boat, and the crew cheers wildly, as I raise my periscope up to witness the carnage we've just wrought.

All three troop carriers were burning lustily, and apparently I'd missed with one of my fish and hit a tanker that just happened to be in the column behind. It, too, was erupting in fireballs as secondary explosions tore it apart, spraying flaming petrol for a hundred meters and more in every direction. At that point, I was out of torpedoes, but still had a full magazine of shells for my trusty 88, and surfaced about a kilometer in front of the lead freighter, and opened fire...

Nearly 20 minutes later, with my magazines completely spent, I headed NE away from the remnants of the convoy...in all, 8 ships were sent to the bottom and the remaining two escaped with heavy damage...

And like you...my flotilla commander remained disturbingly impassive. No thanks, no accolades for me or my valiant crew, not even a round or two at the O-Club...Nicht. Nothing. Or as our Italian allies would say, "We got gottz..."

Oh well...

I did see something odd during a successful sinking - my torpedo hit a large freighter just forward of the stern mast and in the ensuing explosion, sheared the stern off at the bulkhead. The foreward half of the ship immediately began sinking as the stern half slewed around to port, coming about almost 90 degrees before slipping beneath the surface. My guess is that the rudder was jammed hard to port and slew the aft end of the ship around while the fore end continued on unabated.

Happy times!