reignofdeath

I have not played too far into the war yet but I can give you some general convoy tips.

When you spot one, stay at max distance and try to manually observe it until nightfall, depending on year, you can make a much nicer and cleaner attack at night.

Use range to your advantage, if you plan on pulling a hit and run, fire your torpedoes from at least 3km out if possible and on slow settings, this gives you time to (Especially if your on the surface) sprint away to come back later for a second round.

DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT GET GREEDY! The idea of fighting a convoy is sort of like guerilla tactics, hit and run, hit and run, hit and run. Just because you see 10 tankers doesn't mean you can stick around, the destroyers will get you. You always can find the target later.

If you must like FK and Pisces said, if you are trying to speed away, try diving into the convoy at flank and then turing to its 180 and silent running when you're deep enough, its a nasty trick to use all of the convoy's ships as a screen.

Another tactic to help with using the convoy as a screen is to infiltrate and fire from inside the convoy you can usually poke your sub out through the back corner if you have a 4 destroyer screen.

The main thing however is being greedy, that has killed me more than once, another huge thing with convoys is observation. Let me tell you a story about the latest convoy I had in my latest patrol, I got report of a medium convoy and moved to intercept. I got there about an houre before them and found they changed course (by submerging and listening to hydrophones) so I sped off in their direction a few hours later I made contact. Now this is where the boys are seperated from the men, the boys want to rush in as soon as they see and do a quick scope of everything. The men (and women ) wait, they stay back and observe the convoy maybe for days at a time before they make their move.

[I quote probably the truest short story that could relate to submarines like this in a sense. There was a bull and his young son standing on a hill overlooking a flock of female cows, the son said to his father "Lets race down there and **ck one of the heffers" the father replied "Or we can calmly walk down there and **ck them all"... this should be your philosphy when attacking a convoy of almost anysize, save unescorted ones.]

I decided to sit back and wait and observe, seeing as how I had to any ways since I had manual targeting on with WO assistance. So I ID'd all of my targets and all ships and took a look at the map, I then picked out the 2 most valuable targets that were in a row and decided to attack them. Once night came, I sped ahead of the convoy about a kilometer or so, and turned perpindicular to their course at about 4.5km out. I got my solution for the inner most ship of the 2 I picked and set my scope on gyro, the bow passed the crosshair, fire one, the middle passed it, fire 2. The same once the outership (on my side) passed my crosshair. I then, being on the surface, kicked it to ahead flank in the convoys course direction. I got 3 hits, and 1 miss, by the time they went off, I was 4 or 5 km ahead of the convoy (They were moving at 6 knots) Their searchlights didnt even spot me, I decided to sprint further ahead and set up for a second attack. By the time I set up, I found one ship sunk and one was crippled to be moving at 2 knots, so I picked the next 2 most valuable targets right next to eachother and waited. Once they crossed my hairs, I fired and sped ahead. I did this from 11pm until 3 am and bagged almostt 10 ships without having a single depthcharge dropped on me, the escorts couldn't find me.

As others have said though, if the escorts do find you, run deep, as deep as you can get, sure they can reach you at 200m, but from the time the charges drop to when they actually make it to you, you have plenty of room from them by then.

Also to truly run silent, click silent running and switch your speed dial to the knot meter (is that the technical name??) and select 2 knots, this sets you too 100 rpms, which is needed for true silent running. However if you have h.sie's hardcode fixes then when you click silent running this will happen. Also, 5 to 10 degree long curving S's are a big thing to do also, maximum speed with almost maximum side to side movement.

Another key is when you hear a DD on the hydros ramp up speed kick it to flank until the last DD blows up then set it back down to 2 knots again, wash rinse and repeat. Hope this helps!!