First - thanks for the birthday greetings - a naval IH was the perfect present!!

Now - to business. We have 4 planes and they are fighters, so their main purpose is to attack aircraft - most likely Fw Condors. They have a range of about 850 miles and a top speed of about 330mph - so they can probably comfortably operate for about 3 hours. So I would propose 2 hour patrols with the first plane taking off at dawn and then one an hour until dusk when all planes would land. It is December so we only have about 10 hours of daylight to worry about. Most planes would fly twice and 1 three times. A plane would have 2 hours to be refueled and armed. This patern will give us 2 aircraft in the air most of the time, enough to react to any threat.Where possible planes would be spotted ready for take off should there be a problem. Patrol area should be around the convoy - up to 50 miles to the front, 40 miles to the side and 20 miles to the rear. Planes should fly at 3 to 5,000 feet as sighting subs is the top priority. They will be armed with their guns and flare/ smoke bombs on their hard points. If a sub is sighted its position will be reported and then it will be attacked with guns, prefereably from the rear as the sub's guns are on the fore deck. The idea is to drive the sub underwater to slow it down. Once it dives, its last postion will be marked by the smoke float so the convoy's escorts will be well placed to attack it. The other task is to detect and attack patrol planes - Fw Condors - when one is detected, it will be attacked.

I think this will make best use of our limited air asset. As for the carrier, I am inclined to put it close to the rear of the convoy and assign one destroyer as a close escort, leaving the other 2 to reinforce our convoy escort.

Orders for the merchants? - leave the fighting to us and keep convoy discipline. Perhaps we could asign a junior officer to each lead ship per convoy line to cordinate the ships in his group.

Finally - course - I think as proposed before - feingt south west, then north west to keep out of sight of spanish observers before heading for England - I assume Liverpool Franc

Well that is my proposal - what do you all think??