Torp Damage vs lg merchants

[Karl-Heinz Jaeger]

Originally Posted by Eagle Eye

Hail all Captains!

While on patrol I sighted a single large merchant In calm waters. Licking my chops I fired a pair of steamers at her running magnetic and both exploded perfectly under her, I hit her directly under the stack and just fore of bridge near what I thought would be a fuel bunker. She kept steaming with a slight loss in speed and no list or increase to her draft. I stalked her for awhile thinking it would just take a bit for her to go down...but nothing! So I lined up another shot, this time impact, hit her again bringing her to a stop but still no sign of taking on water. eventually I turned and hit her with my aft tube. and she rolled over and went down after about 15 mins. This is in early 1940. I've had this happen previously with a lg merchant are they usually this tough? Or am I aiming at the wrong spots? I took out a crusier with two shots and I figured an armored warship would be harder to take down? Anyone else run into this or any better tactics to use. I don't want to use 4 or 5 fish to take down one merchant.

Even the best shot can be ruined by even a slight rise or fall of the target ship in the water. For medium to large targets, I always use a salvo shot, as close as I can, set to one or two degrees spread, depth three metres and fire dead amidships. I very rarely have to man the deck gun after doing this. It really depends on hit location, but generally speaking two fish is usually enough to send them down to the depths.

A little off topic, perhaps but I'll post it nonetheless is the torpedo mishap that befell me last night against a Large Cargo. Fired a two fish spread from <800m, only to watch them both bounce off the hull. Duds! Verdammt! I readied my two other bow tubes and fired. One premature, and the second another dud. Bernaaaaaard! I wasn't about to let her get away, so finally I swung the boat around and fired both stern tubes, almost exactly the same shot, this time a little over 900m and those last two sent her skyward. Bah! Six torps on a single ship. Oh well, I guess it's historic right? Lol