Night surface attack inside a convoy.......

[suitednate]

I've been playing GWX for a few days and just conducted my first successful night attack and squirmed my way into the convoy on the surface ala Kretschmer (I think). I think it helped that conditions were perfect too. Well "nearly". They weren't perfect for torpedoes not failing.

Conditions were December 1939, nearly midnight, wind speed 10 meters per second, overcast no stars, visibility moderate. You couldn't see a ship until you were about 1500 meters or so away. Convoy ended up being 5 columns wide and about 4 or 5 rows deep with maybe the trailing rows being about 3 deep in the middle. During the attack I also saw an escorting submarine. (Do these guys do anything by the way?)

I spotted the lead escort and let him pass while I was about 2000 meters to the port side of the convoy. Then I started to get closer to the main body itself to try and spot some big ships to go after. Mostly small merchants and tramp steamers on my side and then I saw a medium cargo in the second column, second row. Was hoping to see some bigger targets but I figured this would be good for my first target. Incidentally, medium cargos would be the biggest prey this convoy had to offer.

Stayed to the side and let the first column pass then I rushed in towards this target. I let go two eels at about 800 - 1000 yards away and turned to port to get deeper into the convoy and pass the targeted ship across his bow. Both torpedos hit their mark and he was instantly going down. My men cheer. Then the lead escort far ahead in the fog puts a couple star shells in the air to the area outside of the convoy behind me. This is pretty much when I smiled and was like "HA, Fooled You!!"

At this point i was amazed that the merchants did not put up any searchlights of their own (I was going by these ships on their sides and across their bows at only about 200 meters at times).

I then spotted another medium cargo in the 4th column and decided to 1 eel into her but it bounced off. Fired another one as well that failed and ran way under the ship. While I'm doing this there were more flares and escort searchlights going off to my rear outside the convoy or in the first column. Since the seas were too rough I then had to dive and reload so I dove right in the middle of the convoy.

Only then did the escorts know where I was and this is also when the merchants who had them popped on their searchlights as well. I was thinking, "why didn't they do this before?" There were 2 frigates and I had some near misses with depth charges and almost had my scope snapped off by one of them making their DC run while trying to find a new target after reloading. Also got another shot away but this eel also failed and ran way deeper than it was supposed to. After this, I actually happened to let a magnetic shot go on another med cargo I had spotted right when a frigate was bearing down on me. AOB was about 150 degrees starboard so it was kinda a prayer shot. I then dove and hit full speed and hard to port because the frigate was literally right behind me. He scraped the top of my conning tower and no damage luckily. The shot found it's mark and there was a loud secondary explosion. Second one going down.

At this point I dove deep (150 meters and silent run) and headed out of the convoy to the rear and will pop back up and go in for seconds on the same night when I get home later today.

Anyone have any insights on how I could go so long on the surface without the merchants putting their searchlights on me and then they only turn them on once I'm submerged? Anyone with similar experiences? I was inside that convoy for quite awhile it seemed weaving between ships.