This was one doggone determined merchant

Ok, I'm returning from my patrol in AK with only 6 torpedoes left: 3 bow, three stern. I run across a convoy (gawd, a nice one too!) and set up my approach.

Several hours later, after flushing all three bow and one stern torpedo I'm shadowing the convoy from behind at a distance. I got four good hits, but only one went down (in a big way, too; a huge ball of fire). After about an hour I start noticing three ships slowly falling out of formation and being left behind. An hour after that, and I sank the tail end charlie, then surface to catch up with the one in front, who by now was around 10,000 meters off. I bypassed the middle one because, as best as I could tell, she was either doing 1kt or was dead in the water. So she'd probably be sinking soon on her own. An hour later, ignoring the radar detections I was getting (figuring they were from the warships of the convoy now far ahead and out of sight) I gradually caught up to the listing liberty ship, slipping alongside at around 1,000 meters and had just turned to get a good shot with my last stern tube when . . . they opened up on me.

That one went down, too, leaving me with the final one: an Empire-type freighter. Recharging my batteries to full I then submerged and lurked, waiting until it went down to confirm her sinking.

And waited . . .

And waited . . .

And waited . . .

And moved, too. She was still doing about a knot, and so I just crept along and shadowed her. The weather (of course!) was too rough to finish her off with the deck gun, but surely as badly as she was listing it wouldn't be long.

Three and a half days later, and about 220 km from where I'd first torpedoed her, she abruptly, withut warning, just blew up and went down. By then, with the weather still crappy, I was considering offering her Captain to take them all aboard and see them repatriated if he'd agree to scuttle!