I usually keep track of their courses (Make sure to make a mark on your map wherever you spot them. This will eventually give you an idea of their general course.. more about that later) and try to get directly in front of them. At that point, I go relatively deep, point my relatively toward the convoy, and go silent running at 1 knot. Then I watch on Hydrophone until the first bit of them pass over me. At that point, I creep to periscope depth. Usually by this time, half the convoy has passed over my head and I'm pretty much in the middle. The sound of all the engines will keep you masked pretty well so don't be afraid to burst your engine speed up a little too.
I then pick the closest targets to me and fire. This causes chaos in the convoy and ships will start going everywhere. You will probably have a couple more free minutes to fire at ships before the DD's come plowing through looking for you. What I do is try to just hit as many ships as I can with single torpedoes. Hopefully with a nice gaping hole in their sides, it will cause them to either sink outright or at least slow them down so they will drop out of the convoy where you can pick them off at your liesure.
Try to stay in the convoy until you shoot off all your eels (and get them shot at those ships as fast as you can target them) or the DD's find you. At that point, go deep and silent again and slowly start creeping away. Watch on your hydrophone where the ships are. A good technique is to point your Uboat at the ships directly and when they pass over you, gun your engine for a little bit and then go slow and silent again. Do this also after depth charges explode. Always try to keep the nose or tail of your boat facing either directly toward or away from the ships or as best as you can do if you have more than one DD on you. If you stay quiet, eventually you can get away (and sometimes.. you can't depending on how good their hearing and ASDIC is).
Also.. while you're doing this... mark on your map every few minutes where you hear the convoy itself.
After the DD's have receded, kind of follow the trail of the convoy in the direction of the marks that you made (You can also check out the Convoy map.. see if you can figure out what convoy rout it is and you will also have an idea of where they're going) and look for any of the damaged ships that didn't sink, but got left behind, and sink them.
That's how I usually try to do it. But like a lot of convoy tactics.. nothing is full proof and I've been sent to the bottom in a million pieces more times than I can count going in there. Don't give up. You'll have your moment of glory eventually and return a hero !
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