By now, the convoy is zig-zagging. In fact, I think this started earlier, at the point the escorts seemed to be reacting to me. Maybe this contributed to my misses.



Meanwhile, I'm still diving slowly to the north. I can hear occasional depth charge explosions, but nothing is coming close to us.



The reason for this is that the escorts are searching for me in the area from which my attack originated, on the other, southern side of the convoy.



As well as the destroyer, there's two of the little but handy Flower Class corvettes. A third corvette is sticking with the retreating convoy. The ones hunting me seem to be keen to use their searchlights, perhaps suspecting I'm on the surface.



Down in U-100's control room, everybody is fully occupied but calm, outwardly at least.



We level out at 90 metres, still on silent running and heading slowly north, away from the hue and cry.



I make sure the hydrophone operator is tracking the nearest warship. The picture that's emerging is that the convoy is drifting off to the west, while the escorts are still searching me to the south.



My 'escape and evasion' plan seems to be playing out quite well. It's tempting to come up to periscope depth to get a better picture of what's happening. But that will come later, when the risk level is a lot lower. In the meantime, I start edging around to port. My intention is to come around eventually onto a westerly course, so I can resume the chase of the convoy.



SH3 does a marvellous job of recreating the felling you get from the U-Boat memoirs of playing this unique, slow-motion, half-blind game of cat and mouse. One moment you're the cat, the next, the mouse. There's nothing quite like it, at least if you don't face the penalty for failure that the real U-boatmen did, immersion in a quite different sense. Lest we forget...

...to be continued!