December 1940
Returned home after a very successful patrol. Saw nothing until the return leg home, when we received a contact report on a lone ship heading our way. Plotted course, and went on my way when another report came in about
another merchant, also heading my way but from the opposite direction, and closer. So we turned around and headed for an intercept, though the weather was quickly souring. We finally picked it up on the hydrophones, along with two warships in the area... after some maneuvering and more waiting it became apparent that at least one of the warships was an escort for the merchant, so I had to let her slide.
So we turned back around to try to catch the first contact, but after reaching the projected intercept and not hearing a thing for a good long while I gave up, and surfaced the boat. The boat had barely popped up when the watch officer reported a merchant barely 2000 meters to port, happily steaming past us. I quickly turned into a firing position, and sent off two torpedoes - both missed well forward of the ship, but the next two struck home. She still kept going however, so I cut across her path for a stern shot while I dived to periscope depth (both of her ducks guns were firing at us point blank - amazingly, no one was injured), and reloaded two of the forward tubes. 3 torpedoes later the bloody thing finally went down, but was barely worth it at 13k GRT
A few days later while patrolling and adjacent grid, a contact report came in on a convoy
very close by, so I raced to get in front of it. We caught it at 4:30-ish in the morning, but coming at it face-on in choppy seas - no keel shots this time. I pulled a slow turn to try to get into better position, but I barely made it in time to line up my torpedoes - I sent one torpedo each at a pair of large merchants, and then lined up the last two on what I made out to be a tanker of some kind, then dived and creeped away.
Almost immediately the tanker went down, and then the two merchants a little bit later. Meanwhile the escorts had no idea what had happened, and I was able to slip away cleanly. Got some more contact reports along the way home, but I was out of torpedoes and the seas were too poor for the deck gun.
In the end I pulled together 47k GRT - A fleet tender, fast freighter, large merchant and a large cargo.
Needless to say I highly recommend BF15/17 for anyone looking to catch some early war convoy action
