A funny ocurrance last night.

[maillemaker]

So last night I hit another small convoy off the east cost of England. 50m of water under the keel.

Two columns of ships, 4 destroyers. I made a perfect approach with a perfect spread of 4 torpedoes at 2 ships. Fired at the far ship with steamers at slow speed, and 2 at the near ship with steamers at medium speed.

All 4 torpedoes struck almost simultaneously - perfect!

Unfortunately, one was dud on both ships, and neither sank!

So then I duked it out with the destroyers, which were V&W class. I nailed 3 of them.

The final destroyer would not engage me! He stayed on his flank patrol position on the north side of the convoy, some 4500 m away!

So I surfaced and ran flank at the convoy. The destroyer was firing at me, but did not chase towards me. I made a run and torpedoed one of the trailing ships in the convoy, and then moved north to torpedo (last torpedo) the second trailing ship.

As I did this, the destroyer began firing at me, but hit the cargo ship instead!

I hit that ship with my last torpedo, but it did not sink. So I reversed course and ran away (all out of ammo) at flank speed, keeping the cargo ship between me and the destroyer, hoping that the destroyer would sink it (and shield me).

Eventually, the cargo that was shielding me sank. But the destroyer could no longer see me, I guess, because he stopped firing.

So I'm boogying away at flank speed with my ass pointed at the escort (I'm going roughly south). I'm on the bridge, looking aft.

Suddenly, on the left side of the boat, IS THE NOSE OF A WRECKED BURNING SHIP!

I mean, we passed within 20 m of it. I almost ran smack into the wreckage of a burning ship while at flank speed!

You'd think one of my lookouts would have tapped me on the shoulder and sayd, "Uh, captain, you might want to look out for this..."



Anyway I got home and had enough renown for a shiney new Type IX.

Steve