Circled the wagons

[Herr Russ]

Running patched vanilla..

Got a nice Christmas present from BdU. Was plotting my approach on a lone Coastal when I received a radio message about a convoy. It was two grids west and one grid south, traveling North and slow.. It's 1943 and I turned my IXC towards a possible intercept point and opened it up.. When I finally hit the intercept point there was not a single smoke column to be seen. I submerged to 30 meters and re calculated the convoy speed and direction.. I should have been right on the mark and an hour ahead of the convoy..

I went to grab a cold one and returned to several sound contacts approaching from the South. After a quick peek at periscope depth I counted over 15 merchants, cargos, tankers and troop transports. Covering them were just 4 destroyers and destroyer escorts. Having an almost full supply of eels (Used 1 to sink a C3 earlier), I decided to take on the escorts with some electrics and hopefully be able to pick off the other ships at my leisure..

I manuevered into position and had a destroyer off my bow and an escort off my stern. Two shots later and they were burning. By then, the merchants were zig zaging around me and the two remaining warships were trying to find me. I started selecting the choicest targets (Troop transports, T3's and Liberty Cargos) and pumped 1 fish into each. Most were disabled and ended up circling me and becoming stationary. I noticed a J class circling the convoy in a steady clockwise direction, so I moved into position behind a listing transport. Just like clockwork, the destroyer came pinging around the edge at 15 kts. One electric eel later and I had just one escort left to deal with. By now, the protective circle was failing since some of the ships had sunk. The remaining J class destroyer came charging in at 24 kts, and made an expected beeline towards my exposed scope. Little did he realize that traveling at 30 kts right towards him was an electric magnetic eel It took his bow right off and he became an entry in my logbook. I pumped my remaining eels into the scattering ships and had to leave the area so I could surface and load my externals and repair some minor damage to my guns and watch tower. While reloading, I had my deck gun crew pummel the remaining ships until they were out of action and sinking. Then it was a quick sprint North to catch up with the fleeing convoy. This was just enough time to recharge my batteries and rest some of my crew. I had my medic qual'd petty officer in one berthing area and my medic qual'd officer in the other. I don't know if that helped with the fatigue, but everyone was rested by the time I slid into position. With my remaining eels, I took out another troop transport, T3, T2, and a Liberty Cargo. With only ammo for my flak gun left, I had to let the few remaining ships continue North and I headed back to Port instead of my patrol grid. I ended up sinking 13 ships from the convoy (Including the 4 warships), the C3 from earlier and had over 71,000 tons for renown Sure beats the last Patrol where I limped home w/ 2% hull integrity..

[bigboywooly]

Nice story
Sometimes luck can be on your side