Q: Did you find that convoy?
I’m not sure if that was it, but we did find something. At around noon - which meant in cold, misty twilight - we picked up a hydroacoustic contact somewhere to the southwest of Kiberg. They were moving into the fjord, and I quickly realized that we wouldn’t be able to catch them before they sailed off to Kirekenes nearby - so I thought we could at least report them.
We surfaced very carefully and observed a small patrol ship - likely the trailing escort, sailing away from us. We sent a radio signal, and soon after, the ship suddenly turned in our direction. Careful not to get caught, we immediately turned away and opened distance on the surface. Soon, he disappeared from view and we headed back out of the fjord.
Less than 3 hours later, however, we ran into a transport moving into Varanger-fjord in the vicinity of Kiberg. We also spotted what looked like a small guard cutter sailing as escort ahead of him.
It was already very dark by then, and we began our approach on the surface. However, with drifting mists, after we got to about 3.5km of him in favourable position, I decided to not take the risk of being detected, and submerged the D-2. 15 minutes later, the ships were approaching and we were busy setting up our standard 17-13-9 comb shot. At last, I raised the scope for our final observation, preparing to call out “pli!”
[“fire!”] to the torpedo room.
...when suddenly, I heard strange noises all around the conning tower. I turned the scope to the left, and saw the little escort cutter firing a machinegun right at my periscope!
Well, that was certainly irritating. However, we were so close to firing that, after momentarily lowering the scope, I raised it back up and, through a hail of machinegun bullets, fired our salvo of three torpedoes. We were so close to the transport that, although he did seem to maneuver, he had no chance.
Just over half a minute later, all three torpedoes hit the ship and it exploded in a series of loud explosions, again suggesting that it was likely carrying ammunition for German troops on the shore. His escort dropped two depth charges off our stern, but to no effect.
The escort then went silent, and 10 minutes later we went up to periscope depth to check, and observed him still in water among the wreckage left by the exploded transport, shining two spotlights all over the water near him. It’s likely that at that point, he simply gave up on attacking us and was trying to find survivors of the wreck in the icy waters of Varanger-fjord.
To be continued...