Q: Did you receive any instructions on what to do next?
Initially, no, but in the evening on the 24th we did get a report of enemy convoy leaving Hammerfest and heading west, so we decided to try and stake them out at the exits from Soroysund. That night, a situation report from fleet suggested two German ships sunk by our forces off Norway - I wondered if those were from that same convoy. There was yet another, eastbound convoy reported around midnight on the 25th of August, but we were not able to catch up to it due to the heavy seas.
By morning on the 25th, the weather cleared a bit as we approached the exits from Soroysund, which did not help our cause as it only exposed us to air attack, so we spent that day patrolling submerged, surfacing only at sunset. Overnight we moved deeper into the straight, and again submerged in the morning. Finally, at 9:15 on the 26th of August we got our first ship contact.
Q: What was the contact?
It was a large German transport ship, and it was very close, heading into the strait of Soroysund from the west. I immediately raised battle alert and maneuvered for position, ordering our now-usual torpedo “comb” shot to be prepared - 17-13-9 degrees offset, depth 4 meters, standard 30.5kt speed. After about 15 minutes of maneuvering, I discovered that - perhaps due to the somewhat heavy seas - the enemy ship was going slowly, perhaps 5-6 knots, so I adjusted the torpedo offsets to 13-9-5 degrees instead.
At 9:41, 26 minutes after we spotted the ship, we were in excellent position off his port beam and I released the torpedoes. After a brief run, the first two hit, and the third passed astern - still a good record. The transport quickly flooded, submerging by its stern and going down in less than 5 minutes time. Her boilers blew as the ship went down. I noted with some satisfaction in our board [war] journal - very large transport sunk, about 8000 tons.
We spent the next hour reloading the three torpedo tubes used in the attack, taking a heading out of the straits, so we don’t get trapped here by any responding ships.
To be continued...