Well, here's the info. June/July 1942, I sank 18, yes 18 ships, in a radius of 30km! Where you might ask? The north entrance to Trinidad, near Port-of-Spain. It's a small channel that funnels an INCREDIBLE amount of traffic, much of it American tankers (a lot of neutral tankers too- Venezuela, who turn Ally late in the war). Including two ships sunk at nearby Barbados (Bridgetown is THE best harbor to raid- incredibly deep ALL the way in!!!), my total for the trip was 118K.
I got a lot of deck gun kills (4-5 I think), 6 tankers, 2 warships, and 12 cargo ships (mostly smaller ships, some liberties) in my IXB. The surface opposition was very light, consisting primarily of patrolling single destroyers (15% of the time), single antisub trawlers (15% of the time), and twin torpedo boats (70% of the time). Ironically, I saw a stationary trawler and went in to take it out with a close-range torpedo shot. For some reason (I got too close??), it heard me and started pinging like mad. It caught me off guard, ruined my shot, and forced me to surface and engage it with my flak guns. It was too shallow to dodge depth charges, and too maneuverable to torpedo. My twin 20mm took care of it fairly quickly, but not before it killed 6 of my men, including an experienced flak crewman, and my watch officer who had every medal but the purple heart.
But that was my own stupidity and arrogance. I should've left it or taken a longer shot. I was able to easily slip in and out of Barbados twice, under the nose of two trawlers (took out a big destroyer first time, modern tanker second time, both British). The
MOST DANGEROUS hazard was easily the airplanes. I had to crash dive perhaps twelve times, was bombed almost every time, and was strafed a couple of times. By mid-cruise I would not surface without my decks awash. I think they were fighters, they often came in pairs, but no matter what they were they came screaming in- even at night, so I suspect radar. Once after I sent a patrol report, sometimes out of the blue, quite often after (or during) an attack on surface ships, so it was risky every which way.
I bragged a bit in my 100K Club thread about how this was my
3rd 100K+ patrol, but upon reaching home, it was closer than I thought. Between the pounding the little trawler gave me, close misses and strafings from airplanes, and the odd hits I took in my gun engagements (freakin' Liberty ships have an 88, a 100, and two 20's!), I ended up with 6 dead and about 35% hull integrity- my lowest ever!
The good news is that I didn't need to test it, or my new decoy capabilities (that were destroyed by the trawler!). The surface defenses were very, very soft. I was depth charged twice I think, otherwise I wasn't even detected while operating within sight of the coast. But man, those airplanes are going to be the death of me. I hope it's just that they have radar, otherwise they really are every where! Thank goodness I now have some radar detecting capability installed before my next trip!
Any how, it looks like this is a real gem of an area in mid-1942, so long as you are very respectful of the local airpower. Lots of British and US targets to be had in single, unescorted ships, and double, unescorted ships (I only saw one small convoy my whole time there, and couldn't reach it). Happy Hunting!