What is a "neutral convoy"?

[RoaldLarsen]

What exactly is a "neutral convoy"?

It is March 4, 1941, and I'm in BE33, SW of Ireland. I am about to head home, since I've used up all but one of my torpedoes, and most of my deck gun ammunition and am getting low on fuel, when I get a contact report of a "neutral large convoy" a couple of grid squares away. I have seen such contacts before but ignored them. What's the point in wasting time on neutrals? This time, I decide to go have a look. Maybe I'll see an American escort ship for the first time.

I intercept the convoy and find 17 merchants escorted by a lone Royal Navy corvette, which fires on me when I get under 1km away. I sink the corvette, then start checking flags on ships in the convoy.

Only two neutrals. All the rest are British, Canadian or Greek. One of the neutrals is an American C2 or C3 with a load of British warplanes. It is positioned at the front of the centre column. It has a deck gun, but doesn't shoot at me, so I leave it alone. At the back of the centre column is a British C2 with a deck gun which does shoot at me, so I disable the gun and sink the ship with gunfire.

Now I have 14 targets but only one fish and about 70 rounds of 88mm ammunition. I manage to sink a T2, a small tanker, another C2 and a small merchant. I return to base having completed my first patrol in a VIIC with a tally of 70,000 tons sunk, 15 merchants and a corvette. I got full reknown credit for all the ships sunk from the "neutral" convoy.

It seems "neutral convoy" doesn't mean what I had thought. The escort is not neutral. It shoots at me. Most of the ships are not neutral. The only thing that seems neutral is the ship in the commodore's spot: front row centre. (And it was carrying war supplies!).

I have no idea whether the weak escort was a function of the convoy being "neutral" or just the luck of the draw. (I once encountered a large convoy in 1940 that had no escort at all.)

Does anybody else have any information about "neutral convoys"?