[Rambler241]

You've had a lucky escape and learned a lot. One of the most important things IMHO is to use sonar both regularly and frequently - you've got 30+ km hearing range. Plot a few adjacent 8 km circles in the English Channel with the compass tool, then a couple of touching 32 km circles and see the difference. To get more than 20 km range (a limitation of the AI with sonarman listening) do your own scans.

On my last mission, from Brest to AM32, NW of Scapa, more than 2/3 of contacts were picked up using sonar, and tracked to a successful conclusion. If you don't use sonar, and use it as a matter of course, you're sailing with blinkers on. I get a map contact - it's 50 km away for example. First thing I do, unless I've just done a sonar check, is to do one right away. That contact may be just a 2k tons ship. Takes up no more than 2 minutes, and may reveal several things, like there's a warship en route to your likely intercept point, or there's another target along the way or just off, perhaps even jucier, or another within range - a convoy perhaps. I'll do another check on the way to that 50k distant target, or more (about once every hour or 20-30k) if further away.

Whenever you do a sonar check, check the whole 360°. Your lookout crew are constantly scanning all round - follow their example and do the same with sonar. Just sunk a target? Drop down for a sonar check - there may well be at least one warship coming to investigate, or another (or two, or more) target(s) within sonar range. Putting some distance between your boat and the sunk target is wise, but you need to know whether you're going to run into a distinctly unfriendly warship.

Doing such regular and frequent checks (and doing them yourself) may be looked on as micro-management by some, but it gets results, and in my experience, lots of 'em.