Hi,
You have some great insight. I will agree with you on several points, especially too many convoys, however many people may have gotten bored and quit without them, amd the SSI folk had families to feed. I also read a quote from O'Kane where sometimes he would plot a course 90° to the convoy for intercept, saying it was crude but efficient in getting an intercept. Other points are addressed in this page I found a whe back. The link is still good!
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tlm/silent.html.
Jeff