A cruiser attacking lightly protected merchant shipping shows why a convoy without a sufficiently strong escort can concentrate targets for a surface raider. Submarine escorts are much lighter than the forces required when Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, or Gneisenau might appear. Older battleships could provide that protection, but too few were available to accompany every convoy. Convoy organization is therefore a force-allocation problem rather than an automatic answer to every threat.
Notable Point · 5:15-6:40
Why surface raiders complicate convoy protection
A raider attack in the campaign leads into the historical problem of protecting convoys from both submarines and powerful surface ships.