Well, my last patrol again fell short of the 100K mark. That's the bad news. The good news is that my new XXI is
awesome! I mean, wow. This thing is the real deal.
I won't go into all of the details, but I set out to patrol AM 49, riding the Hebrides Straight (sp?). I took on multiple single or twin solo-ships before reaching my patrol grid, touring it for 24, and returning to AM 53. I get plenty of solo-ship action, but all the convoys I run into are simply too big for me to take on. Even with 6 homing torps on board (cashed in my renown), I can't take on 7+ escorts. I wouldn't even want to take 5 or 6 in case I miss. I also passed on a small carrier because it had 6+ escorts. Not worth it.
So I'm almost out of torps, thinking about Lock Ewe or another raid. But I decide discretion is the better part of valor and sail out into the Atlantic so I can make a clean save (don't you all just LOVE the save game bug?
). But, as fortune would have it, I run into a small convoy of 10 merchants escorted by three escorts! A fourth turns up, but my now 5 homing torps (used one to finish a damaged, but fleeing medium merchant) make short work of them. I'm glad I had an extra because one homing torp went after a nearby merchant instead of the targeted destroyer! Once they're demolished, I have the convoy at my mercy. Sadly, the biggest ship is a medium tanker, followed by a small passenger cruiser and a medium merchant. I have three torpedoes left. I hit the first two, but my magnetic torp fails on the merchant ship (this is '44, that shouldn't happen!). Sadly, I also don't get credit for the medium tanker, despite watching it blow up and sink in front of me. That also happened with a large cargo ship that I hit, and watched sink, earlier. Rather frustrating.
Another frustration is that convoys are everywhere! This means that as I'm finishing up this convoy, another one is running right towards me, with its gaggle of escorts. Thankfully the beautiful underwater speed of the XXI gets me the hell out of Dodge. So a total of 2.5 weeks, 70K tons. If this keeps up, I might not crack 100K per patrol, but I should be able to keep up the same overall tonnage!
My usual tips:
1- Decoys work kinda well, but you have to lay them well in advance of your opponent, and leave a "screen" of them spread out so that a slight deviance of course by the pursuer won't open up a clear view of your boat. I also use them when "dogfighting" up close with escorts as a way to throw off their aim, or sometimes, to get them to stop dead in the water. BOOM!
2- Homing torps are SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET. My new operating procedures are to take on lone merchants and/or convoys with 5 or fewer escorts.
3- The snorkel is useful primarily as a means of high-speed underwater dashes during pursuit. As a recharging tool, it remains much more dangerous than actually surfacing your boat. Airplanes are drawn to it like a magnet, and you don't get to see them coming. Once, I detected the plane coming in even though I was submerged with scopes down. I don't know why, but I did dive deeper and evade!
4- Have I said how great the XXI is? This boat, in numbers, is a war winner. Two of them could rip a convoy apart, no problem. Especially with a few homing torpedos to take out the escorts. A wolfpack of XXIs in the mid-atlantic would cut the UK off, no problem.
5- Having not been around the UK since early 1940 in my VIIB, I'm happy to take any suggestions for good hunting spots.
So that's it for now. Like I said, I'm happy to take any good UK hunting suggestions. Also, are there mines along the West coast? I'm avoiding the East coast of the UK because I seem to recall it being heavily mined after 1941.