Why do we get sunk?

[meduza]

I recently lost a career in February 1943, on my 22th patrol. I was very fond of that career, had a fine boat and damn good crew, very experienced. Secretly, I was hoping that I'll survive the war... It made me think what went wrong.

So why do we get sunk? Is it because the allied advanced technology is simply overwhelming? Is it because of the chain of seemingly unrelated events that combine into a disaster? or is it a human factor (Bernard on board )?

I made an analysis of my last patrol, you be the judges of it...



Day 5. U-371 on patrol in Mediterranean, near Malta. No wind, visibility unlimited. Located a large convoy. Made an attack at dawn. Sank Aquitania and missed Liberty cargo (I entered starboard instead of port AOB - luckily I noticed my mistake before launching torps at Aquitania). Distance to nearest ship 2km.

The escorts were nasty. They pinged and deptcharged me for hours, but I managed to lost them by going very deep, 270m. No damage. Surfaced and went after them.

Spotted an aircraft, single Kingfisher. I just upgraded my flak guns and didn't want to waste any time for diving, thinking I can handle it. Big mistake. I was so confident, I didn't even made a hard turn when it came very close. I downed the Kingfisher, but after he droped two bombs at my stern, killing all of my flak crew.

This was a crutial moment. Due to the hull damage, I considered dropping the chase. But I was tonnage hungry so I continued. I planed to attack from the distance, to give myself more time to escape.

I attacked in the afternoon. 3500m from nearest ship, 4500m from targets. The flanking escort was far away from the convoy, 3-4km to my starboard.
After releasing eels I went deep and turned starboard, to oposite of convoy's course as I usualy do. When I heard 4 explosions I realized that I brought the boat right into the path of flanking destroyer.

I went as deep as I could with damaged hull, to 170m. The destroyers followed me for one hour, ocasionaly droping DCs but missed every time. For some time there were no depthcharges and I thought they lost me. Then a single hit. I only had time to check the F7 screen. Everything was red. Game over.