Ok, now this is just truly hysterical.
Sept 5, 1940, I and my valiant crew are on the way to DJ12 when, in CG42 at 0129 we receive a contact report: large enemy convoy.
Plotting it we're less than 40km away, with them heading right towards us on their SE course. Plotting an intercept we arrive and spot them less than 30 minutes later.
Again I'm on the surface, and again I decide to go to periscope depth as a black swan meanders my way.
This time, however . . .
Something starts sounding weird as I follow them on the hydrophone so I decide to take a quick peek with the observation 'scope, and my jaw drops (as do a few choice words) as I see the entire convoy going through a course change! Instead of heading reasonably right towards me, they've appeared to have altered course about 45 degrees at a point around 3 - 4km ahead of my position. Sheisse!
Don't have a lot of choice here, so I gradually bring us up, surface and go to ahead standard at decks awash. Somehow --no idea how-- I approach the port outside lane to within 1,500 meters.
Around 3KM I can unmistakably identify the silouhette of a large tanker and I start getting buck fever. I have two G7a and two G7e in the fore tubes, and one each in the aft. This really sucks as I also have, closer, what appears to be a large cargo and a large merchant, the cargo in the outermost lane adjacent to me and the merchant the next one in.
Coming to a dead stop I start trying to calculate eel run times. Not exactly easy to do when you're expecting that nasty escort to notice your conning tower bobbing up and down at any minute.
I'm still not sure how I managed it, but I fired both G7e at the tanker, counted down the seconds, fired the first G7a at the merchant, counted down again before finally firing the last G7a at the large cargo, which was now dead ahead of me and less than 800 meters away.
Having learned my searchlight lesson from before (see above!
) I immediately dove and turned, and was just going under when the first torpedo exploded. In fact, all
four exploded within 15 seconds of each other!
Now here is where is starts getting hysterical. I'm at 30 meters when I start hearing from above the unmistakable sounds of main guns firing. I figgered they were firing star shells but, after hearing ten rounds, I went 'Huh?'. So I peeked up using external and started laughing.
There were, yes, star shells above. Probably at least twenty. But every escort but one (and one of the bigger merchants) were
all firing all the way to the other side, at some poor dumb warship!
Don't know what the outcome of that was, but it gave me a lot more time to duck and run!