Need Advice From Fellow Skippers

[Fish40]

After sinking three freighters in the Formosa Straites, I get a radio message of a large convoy which will transit my area in two days time. I meet the heavily escorted convoy, luckily in the middle of the night, right on time. I position myself for the attack, and fire at two 8k ton freighters with 3 torpedoes each. All six fish hit, and both went down. After a prolonged but ineffective counter attack, by the escorts, I'm ready to run down the convoy again for another attack. Here's my delemma. I only have 1 bow torpedo left, but a full complement of stern torpeoes. Would it be wise to make a deliberate attack useing the stern tubes, or RTB with 9 torpedoes and be satisfied with my 25k tons sunk?

[Diopos]

Go for the attack! You're a trained commander of a US sub and you know to how shoot from your rear end!!!

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You say that you positioned yourself to attack the convoy but you could have easily planned to attack with your stern tubes and placed yourself accordingly.

If you have the opportunity for a deliberate approach and attack there is no reason not to use the stern tubes in my opinion.

[Hylander_1314]

Nice thing about the stern shot, if you do them right, the fish hit after you've had time to dive, and leave the vicinity!

Fire those fish, dive as deep as you dare, as fast a speed a setting will allow without the escorts hearing it, and you can sometimes get away without even one ping or DC being dropped in your immediate zone.

gain some distance, and start the reload and surface again, and do another end run on them if you can, and take out whatever ships you still can.

In the early part of the war, if you're lucky, you can reduce the escort size and leave them with a gap in their coverage, from which you can make repeated attacks. It's not 100% foolproof, but before taking out convoy ships, I like to knock at least one DD first if i can. After that, the merchant vessels will sometimes slow to a crawl, and you can damage or sink them out right.

Place an "X" on the navigation map, as to your location of the attack incase you disable a ship. Dive down deep and avoid the the escorts remaining, and when you get away, come up for air, and reload the tubes for another attack. Usually, the escorts won't cover the position of the lost DD, so you can pick them off piecemeal at your chosing, and be gone before the other escorts get to your area, and then you can repeat the process.

Which is why i leave autoloading off. Once I know I'm in the clear and the escorts are off on a wild goose chase, I start reloading the tubes, come up for air, run passed the convoy, and set up for another attack.

If you time it right, you can usually be far enough away quickly, and attack the merchants while the DDs are still some ways off, so you can take your time, and fire the torpedoes with good setups to maximize damage.

Once you're out of fish, as long as you've marked the map where you made attacks, you can double back and pick off stragglers with your deckgun. Even if the DDs try racing back, you can finish off a target and be heading away from them at Flank Speed while you head to finsih off another disabled ship. Pretty to see flares at night from way off, as the escorts look for you in vain, as you're gone before they get there.