I don't know what it is about the small merchants, but with the NYGM damage mods those buggers seem to be made of cork. Virtually all of my attack approaches have me within 500 meters of the target, with a bearing between 330 and 30 degrees, and AoB of 65 - 120 degrees. Normally that has the critical areas appear on the target registry book, but even if it doesn't by now I've a pretty good idea where those are and I'll manually target for them. A good half the time the cargo and tankers go down in one shot, and half of those times they explode and break in half.
Not so those dratted small merchants. I can hit one with a perfectly placed shot, and watch it drift to a dead stop, sunk down to its gunwales . . . and bob . . . and bob . . . and bob . . . for hours. And keep floating after two more torpedoes, carefully aimed so as to evenly distribute the damage (i.e. if my first one impacted just ahead of the funnel at 3 -4 meters depth, then I aim #s 2 and 3 about 20 meters ahead of stern and 20 behind bow).
Cork . . . gotta be cork . . .
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