Patience Grasshopper!!

[Foghladh_mhara]

I'm playing this game like a novice!!

My 3 month layoff from Silent Hunter is proving detrimental to my health. And that of my crew. My first patrol I got shelled by a tetchy merchant. Not sure what his problem was, I mean I hadnt even opened fire on him yet! My second patrol was unspectacular apart from nearly ramming a patrol boat in the fog down Gibraltar way. 13000 tonnes of shipping dispatched to the bottom. Acceptable I think. This patrol started so so well.

En route to my assigned grid on the Rockall banks I received a message. Large convoy, 8 knots heading west and only 100km away. We were destined to meet and meet we did

The conditions were perfect when we made contact. Broken cloud, slightly choppy seas and 1am. Only drawback was that the horizon was very dark and quite hard to make out any mast profiles until you were right on top of them. The first attack was on the surface with no escorts spotted. A small merchant in the outside column. 1 eel from 2000m, hard to starboard and ahead flank. Immediate sinking and the convoy didn't even zigzag. It was looking promising. Straight around and fired a full salvo at a whale factory ship from 3000 m. Same escape pattern, hard to starboard and full flank at 45 degrees to their course. After a minute or so the searchlights came on so I guess the torp tracks were spotted. The convoy started tacking and I kissed the fish goodbye but 2 of them hit and down she went Then of course the destroyer escort appeared. Wasn't gonna be able to out run him so we crashdived at speed, passed 80m knuckled left and went silent continuing to 120m. Thirty mins of depthcharging but nothing close so up we went and the chase continued. The third attack was submerged since it was starting to get light and I wanted to hit the bigger targets in the middle of the convoy. Thats when it all started going pear shaped.

Mistake #1) Nearly ran into the forward sweeper on the surface at only 1000m but managed to get under somehow. I dont know how he missed me. I lined up a juicy tanker and an Empire type freighter(I think) in columns 3 & 4 and let slip the hounds.
Mistake #2) Except I did it arseways and fired my 2 elecs at the furthest tanker and the 2 steams at the near one Hit the freighter alright but the tanker had well and truly moved out of position by the time the elecs had arrived. I then had some pretty hairy depthcharging but survived. Went back up to periscope depth and saw the freighter dead in the water and listing badly. Not wanting to waste another eel on it I decided to surface and finish it off with the deck gun
Mistake #3) Didn't wait for the escorts to move out of range
Mistake #4) Didn't check to see if the guns on the merchant were still manned. They were.

End result the merchant opened fire on me, the escorts turned back and now I have 2 escorts tag-teaming the hell outta me and no sign of letting go.

I'd like to go home now