Another little known tactic is to move all your crew to the forward most comaprtments when running decks awash. This reduces the bow wave as you approach and makes it harder for the escorts and merchies to spot you.
It is possible even in late war to make a surface approach if the conditions are right. Last week whilst testing GWX1.04 I was crisuing in a IXD2 near Freetown in April 1944, when I got a radar signal detected warning. I dived to PD and got a fix on the hydrophones. It was a large convoy moving at around 5kt. I was a bout 15km away and they were heading away from me.
The weather was overcast with little fog and high 15m/s winds. Given that I was testing and not playing DiD I thought bugger it I'll try a surface appraoch to see if I can catch them and make a hit and run on them using the high sea state as cover.
Sufaced, went to flank, moved the crew forward, then set decks awash with the schnorkel up so that the high waves wouldn't slow me down. I got ahead of the convoy spotting them at around 6km distance.
Managed to evade the covette that was on my side of the convoy and ordered ahead slow. I got to around 500m of the Large Merchant I had selected as the target before firing all four bow tubes whilst still surfaced. I then turned 160 degrees an sped up to flank again to get away.
Once the torpedoes hit I ordered PD and went silent. The Escorts milled about a bit trying to find me, bu I was about 3km away by the time they reached the datum that I fired from and they now had no way of finding me.
I shadowed them and struck anohter from a similar position. If the weather is in your favour then it is very possible to cause them some real damage and survive.
|