That was a gripping account!
Congratulations and safe return to St. Naz

Wow! Nice one! That had to feel pretty damn satisfying- it felt that for me living it vicariously!

Good story and a safe trip home!

Actually, I'm reading Clay Blair's 'Hitler's U-boat war' (part 1 - the hunters - until 1942) now, wich I can recommend to anyone btw...

I think I remember Donitz ordered to take out escorts first in 1941, when it came to Gibraltar convoy's ;)

Back in my SHI days I used to do sound shots on Destroyers all the time. They loved to use the wheel attach in that game so I learned to watch for the stationary pinger. I would rotate to line up with him, float up to firing depth, and shoot straight ahead shallow depth. After I sunk two or three of them the rest would usually run away!

Great read!

By the way, if you had taken out the destroyer, it would have resulted in yet another routine conovy run, instead of the adventure you wound up with. As long as you survive, then its a story for grog mates and grandchildren!

Ha, and everyone he told the story too, from grog mates to grandchildren, would ask "...but why didn't you sink the escort first?" :damn::rotfl:

Great story and you were lucky, incredibly so, my last career ended with the third string from a Flower, first one was a miss, the second rocked my boat with no damage and the third destroyed bost diesels

Ok - so we made it back with no scopes. That was a major relief. The engineers reckoned we had 85% hull integrity. But BDU had a cruel sense of humour about it - they sent us right back to ET13. Once again we encountered a convoy in the gibraltar approach moving at 5kts. Protocol dictated that we attack. So we did. This time in fog and rain. Luckily, based on radio reports, I had their course charted almost exactly. We move in. I attack from what I thought was 3km. It turned out to be about 2km. I hit with 3 torps and sunk a troop transport for 16k, and a small freighter for 1.6k. But then we were detected. Relentless ASDIC ensued. I sunk an V&W with a T5. I was DCed right to hell - port propeller destroyed! Decoy Launcher destroyed! I limped away at 1kt (and discovered that even with a destroyed decoy launcher, you can still launch decoys). We made it back to port on 1 screw. I've updated my GWX 2.0 lessons - now I'm only bringing T1 FaTs, and I'm attacking from 4km min. It's just way too dangerous to get close now. (Dec '43).

Or else...later in patrol 13, attacking a Casablanca class in an HK group from fairly far (~3km), I sunk her with three hits and then got detected by a snooping escort far on the port side of the convoy. It is as if he knew where to look - he had broken formation and was snaking out near our position. After a long depth charging, we took heavy hits and had flooding in almost all compartments. We sunk to 250m, and had to blow ballast to level off. With the flooding stopped, we were still heavily damaged and could only pull 1kt at flank bell. The fatal DC destroyed the stern torpedo room and that was it. U-97 sunk with all hands somewhere in Grid AL29, Dec 31, 1943. In 13 patrols, she sunk 78 ships (14 warships) for a total of 591,386 G.R.T.

Great one man! You really had the lucky day didn't ya?

Desperate needs have desperate measures.

That remember me the film "Duel in the Atlantic" with Robert Mitchum and Kurt Jurgens, well the end is quite different, the U-Boot is always alive and not rammed by the Buckley class DE.