Stay on the surface

[bigboywooly]

Originally Posted by joegrundman

I find it easy enough to make a surface attack against convoys, and i get really close too, but i find that within 5 - 10 secs of torpedoes hitting I'm picked up by searchlights pretty much 100% of the time.

I always crash dive at that point, so in the end i end up underwater anyway

Crash dive is like ringing the dinner bell
If you are going to dive do it at the speed you are already going or less and slip beneath the waves quietly
Hitting C ramps speed up to flank - if they havent seen you till then they will with a burst of speed

[joegrundman]

I should change that 100% to 75%, because it certainly has been the case that I have slipped away and come back a couple of hours later for a second attack, and it is indeed a marvellous feeling. In those cases I usually launched my attack from quite far out, say 2500 - 3000m.

But usually I get picked up by searchlights if my attack is within 1000m, which is what i try to do.

As regards the dive times, since the GWX manual points out that all units communicate with each other, I always figured that being illuminated by a searchlight meant they knew exactly where i was, so getting down fast was top priority. I'll avoid that next time.

Thx for the replies.

joe

Granted, it's March 1940, but still . . .

Wind 1 meter, clear sky, unlimited visibility. I'd already attacked this convoy once, around five hours prior, and before that had been detected (and chased!) three times while shadowing and pursuing.

This is a five-column convoy, with 9-10 ships per column. At the moment of this pic I'm heading towards the front third of the convoy, decks awash around 7.8 meters and at ahead slow. The closest ship is 1,100 meters, and they still haven't detected me! Around 50-60 degrees relative port to me is a destroyer, at 3,200 meters, and she hasn't detected me either.

I can't begin to describe the feeling this approach is giving me!



(pic has been edited to lighten it up for better visibility/viewing)

[Schwuppes]

Nice pic Albrecht Von Hesse!

Trust all went well!
Does the convoy not have any starboard or port escorts?

Oh and do you use manual targeting? If yes, how do you do it?

Originally Posted by Schwuppes

Nice pic Albrecht Von Hesse!

Trust all went well!
Does the convoy not have any starboard or port escorts?

Oh and do you use manual targeting? If yes, how do you do it?

Thanks!

So far so good, yes. From what I could determine after almost 24 hours of on-and-off contacts and shadowing, plus heading straight down their throats the first time (and only seeing neutrals!) then an outside intercept the second time (and Yay! finding British!) they'd started off with four escorts. But during the day, while I was shadowing them to stay in contact, three different times escorts spotted me when around 16km away. The second time one of them came out for a peek somehow they'd managed to zig instead of zag and got a ping on me. --mutters-- But they were just stooging along, not quite sure where I was, or even if I was there, and they . . . ummm . . . wound up eating a torpedo.

So now the convoy only has three escorts, and I seemed to have lucked out and been on the one side the escorts aren't. However, considering the lead escort passed by me at 2,800 meters while I was surfaced . . . --grins-- . . . I'm going to be cocky and say I'd still have snuck past 'em!

I finally got within 1,100 meters of the outer column. By then I could visually ID flags, and so . . .



Two torpedoes each into a granville-style freighter and a large merchant. Both went down in under 30 seconds!

I usually run manual targeting. Lately I've been doing auto and concentrating more on surface attack approaches, etc. Plus I've been practicing using OLC GUI, and I don't feel comfortable enough with that --yet!-- to do so in a career.