A Week Later


It was only as a matter of principle that we proceeded to our patrol zone and spent 24 hours lying still in the water, listening out for shipping. I am saving these last two torpedoes for the best opportunity target I can find but no luck so far. The crew are pretty tired after the long trip and the constant trouble we get from airplanes and warships but the boat is still in one piece. At least this patrol is a lot more interesting than our recent mind-numbing cruise in the Arctic. On this one we are at least met with our purpose: to find and sink the Allied merchant navy (while staying alive if at all possible). Five ships sunk, totaling perhaps 25.000 BRT. Better than some Kaleuns manage these days but still nothing compared to the aces back in the happy times. I consider it a mildly average score and the crew are refreshingly calm about it too. I'm glad they are turning into U-boot men.


We are going back home now. Bergen is still a week sailing away and we have to cross between Iceland and the British Isles to get there, not a pleasure cruise but at least the water is deep. The deep, where we find shelter, comfort and calm. Amazing how far we have come since 1940 when the deep was a place where you only went as an extreme measure to escape the enemy. Now we blindly put our fate in the hands of U-735 and she always takes care of us. Our boat. Hasse and Anton are going to work on that beautiful camouflage pattern which we are going to steal from the Tommies. I hope FdU will give the green light for it. They allow a lot of freedom when it comes to messing with the boats, especially when it concerns successful commanders. Ah well, we'll see, first we have to make it home.



Oberleutnant Freiherr Beckman
(The Duke to his friends)

The Overhaul
 

Spring 1943, Bergen


Grounded. For a full three months after we came home. I can't believe they are doing this to me now, I was under the impression that the war has reached a critical moment in The Atlantic, the Brits are down to their last supplies and there have been some incredibly costly convoy battles between Greenland and Iceland. Costly for both sides, we have suffered horrible losses but we sunk an unsurpassed amount of tonnage in return. They need every boat they have, every able sailor they can muster. And what do they do? Transfer half my crew to France and dump my beloved boat in the drydock. 'We applaud your eagerness to join in the fight, Oberleutnant, but your time will come. New directive from BdU, all returning boats are to be refitted with improved anti air capability and we also want you to take a load of new recruits under your wing, your experienced men are badly needed in the flotillas sailing out of the French ports.' That's the gist of what they told me when I raised hell in FdU headquarters.


Hans is off to Lorient, can't say I miss him, but they also took Hasse, Kurt (my second officer), Mister Speaker the torpedo officer and half my engine and torpedo crew. Wonderful. Now I am stuck with a fresh platoon of fanatics and only my LI and navigator are still here to look glum about the revival of political talk from the crew quarters. One thing I am pleased about is my new first officer though. His name is, curiously, Hans Bremer. Another Hans but an improved one, so to speak. He is a veteran too but he is one of the old gang, he lived through the happy times and is just now returning to active duty after having spent a year in hospital. He knows his stuff and this time, I have to be the one to inform him about the new and improved enemy which we face. A curious twist.


Oberbootsmann Hasse is the one who I am really going to miss. He saved our skins plenty of times with his repair crew. If we ever get to go out again we will need to do a fair amount of practice drills, we have a whole new technical staff and I need them performing at least as well as their predecessors. Klaus and Jakob are still here, my boys in the radio shack. That's a relief because I know what to expect from them. As for the rest, we will just have to see how they hold up out at sea. They have been told their share of stories about me and they show my plenty of respect, but I can see in their eyes that they are not looking forward to being under the wing of a reckless Kaleun. I don't care, as long as they do what they are told.


Leutnant Anton Paukstadt, my old and trusted LI, came to see me last week. He was working on the camouflage paint job with the boys from the yard when the job got postponed. New orders, a complete overhaul: a new conning tower with three FlaK mounts. We went to FdU immediately and they told us about the new directives from BdU: U-boats are to engage the enemy planes rather than crash dive away from them. To this end we are given a very sophisticated set of guns on the wintergarten and one has to admire the amount of shells which we can now fire up in the air, but I still have a bad feeling about it all. Just when I had learned to fear Coastal Command. Orders are orders, etc, and I understand the need to have the boats out in the Atlantic quickly, without traversing the Bay of Biscay entirely submerged, but I feel inclined to stick to my newly acquired habit of diving the hell away from the RAF.


One good thing about the new conning tower is that we have a new emblem. The swastika that went with the old tower is gone. Instead, Anton took the liberty of doing some homework on his Kaleun and they came up with a rather wonderful version of my family coat of arms. A rearing unicorn. The old crewmembers are happy to identify themselves with what they see as a lucky charm and personally, I love it. I now truly feel one with my boat. The Unicorn. Lucky as long as she is bold.


Here is a picture taken after all the work was done. It is now very late in the spring, we set out tomorrow, U-735 is ready for war once again.

http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/4333/u735op1.jpg

Oberleutnant Freiherr Beckman
(The Duke to his friends)

Explanation for the long wait and the overhaul: GWX 2.1 :arrgh!:

Had to mess around a bit with SH3Commander and a couple patrols with a new career, now we are back in full swing, Freiherr Beckman has his crew organised to satisfaction and we are sailing out of Bergen right now. The date is may 30th, 1943.

I hope your death will be quick and painless. :rotfl:

Good luck, Duke :lol:

Beware!!.....the Q Ships are a coming http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/9708/piratebf4.gif

Journal
 

Hope you survive to see your journal published when we win.

This message just came in from the Fdu, Duke, The U-44 U-cruiser will be joining you in your hunting but will split for a cruise to the coast of Florida.

Late Spring, 1943
 

The sun is setting as we leave the fjord. The bridgewatch should have a sharp eye out for threats, even this close to our home base, but I don't blame them for looking at the scenery. It's quite beautiful, the sea is calm and the setting sun, the sky and the fjord all conspire in a stunning color scheme to make me feel utterly out of place here. A machine of war. My machine of war. U-735 looks good in a gray autumn morning out in the Atlantic, stalking her prey, bringing death and sneaking away. We have no business being the centerpiece of this perfect scene for some French Impressionist painter. I pollute the atmosphere by lighting my pipe and shake any romantic thoughts from my mind. We have a job to do, a gruesome job. A job which I still love, despite the horrors that come with it.

Albert comes up through the hatch. 'Is it allowed, Sirs?' 'No problem, Schaefer, join us for a smoke?' He does and lights up his cigarette while taking in the scenery. 'Pretty, isn't it?' I hum in agreement and organize my thoughts around the new crew with which FdU has blessed me. Oberfahnrich zur See Albert Schaefer is one of them. Officially my third watch officer, he is one of the best gearheads I ever saw. His function on the ship is to replace my Oberbootsmann for the technical jobs as well as being the man in charge of the forward compartments. The House of Lords is his domain but during action stations he'll head up the damage control party. Meanwhile I have Leutnant Anton Paukstadt, my trusted LI, in charge of the boys in the control- and engine rooms. It effectively splits the crew in half. Anton's boys and Albert's boys, together taking care of every single bit of equipment on the boat. Me and my new first officer, Leutnant Hans Bremer, are above it all, making the decisions, while my second officer, Volkmar Vowe, is the gunnery officer. That leaves the boys in the radio shack, my eyes and ears. And my navigator, Hals Petersen, one of my old staff members. He is increasingly worried about what he calls the 'annoyingly fresh looking youths' that populate the forward crew quarters. This morning he complained that they could use a decent depthcharge attack to shut em up for a while. Hmmm, careful what you wish for, Petersen.


We'll do a lot of practice drills over the next couple of days, to test the overhauled boat and crew. I need them all operating like clockwork in good conditions, so that perhaps they'll not fall apart under fire. I've taken to a roster where we have a full watch crew on standby as the emergency damage control party because I've been hearing horrible things from those Commanders who survived the early spring convoy battles. Our comrades sunk a large number of ships but the price has been a tad high. Going out into the Atlantic these days is like transversing Dante's seven circles of Hell. Ghostly tales of new weapons and ridiculously accurate Allied detection systems travel around the crews and get ever more ghostly each time they are told. As tales do. I take it all at face value but I'm guessing some of it will turn out to be true. And now BdU kindly invites us to an old-fashioned shootout with our bane, the aircraft. Maybe I'll consider it. In calm, shallow waters. On our return home. If the boat is not even slightly damaged yet. When Hell freezes over.



The Duke

I wake up and realize I have a cold coming up. Nasal cavity clogged up with slime, raspy breathing and a hurting brain. I sit up and cough, clear my nose and throat and am disgusted by the fact that I sound just like my grandfather in his last days. Not quite the well-behaved gentleman of noble stock. I clear my nose again and it makes Jakob turn his head. He is leaning back in his chair, his feet up on the compass in the radio shack, keeping half an eye on the radar warning receiver. 'Good morning, Herr Kaleun.' 'There is nothing good about it. Anything worth reporting?' 'Contact report on a taskforce in the vicinity, earlier this morning. That's it.' Hmmm I need some coffee but my stomach doesn't like that idea. I stand up, muscles and joints almost audibly creaking, and stumble over to the control room.


A few hours later I feel slightly better but my nose and throat still keep filling up with slime. The doc gave me some pills and I try to ignore the buzz in my head. We took a nice wide turn through the north around the Shetlands and the Faeroer, slipping into the Atlantic between Iceland and the British Isles. That's a 1000 kilometer wide stretch of ocean but it still feels like 'slipping' to me. The gateway is thick with Allied patrols. If we spend four hours without any incoming detection signals we consider ourselves blessed. We always dive when we do get those signals, screw BdU. We are now almost through, a couple hundred kilometers southeast of Iceland. Things will be slightly better once we get out into the wide hunting grounds which stretch out before us. Jakob gives a familiar shout: 'Radar transmissions, multiple sets.' ALAAAARM! Christ, Hans, no need to shout so hard. We level off at 70 meters, turn to the southeast, towards the contacts, the boat settles down a bit, the boys go quiet and I join Klaus who just got kicked out of his bunk to give those excellent ears of his a chance to once again earn their pay.


'Warships moving slow, 8 or 9 knots I'd say. Couple of destroyers, old ones.' I listen with him, I recognise them. 'Fourstackers?' He nods. And there is a wheeze. A high pitched wheeze. Like battleships or carriers have. This must be that taskforce Jakob told me about. A carrier? A phrase pops up in my head and I feel the hairs on my neck standing up. Hunter-Killer Group, an escort carrier accompanied by a destroyer division. One simple task: find and kill U-boats. I can't help myself, the idea of hunting and killing them strikes me as highly appealing. 'Coming more or less our way, Herr Kaleun.' I stick my head through the hatch into the control room. 'LI, periscope depth, silent running, make your heading 100. Navigator, in here. Hans, you too.' I give them my opinion, a hunter killer group has happened across our path by chance. They are not speeding up or changing course by the sound of things, they don't yet know we are here. 'How are we doing?' Hals doesn't have to check: 'Waters here are very deep, Herr Kaleun.' Hans chimes in: 'All systems functional, boat is battle ready, Herr Kaleun.'


Very well. 'We attack.'



The Duke

This is really quite a good read....keep it up Kaleun http://www.psionguild.org/forums/ima...lies/read2.gif

Really enjoying reading this,gets me in the mood to do a patrol and inspires me when the ships are scarce,excitment is never far away:up:;):yep:

Over the next half hour, we get a good idea of what the taskforce is up to. They are doing around 8 knots, on a northwest course. Roughly. There is a bit of a gale blowing and it is broad daylight. Not good. They will have trouble hearing us in this swell but our conning tower and periscope will at times stick out of the sea and make us very visible, if we are slightly unlucky. I should go deep and silent and let them pass, wait until they are out of radar range and either set up for a night attack or just get away from them completely. But our position is too good. We are here now and they will pass across our bow anyway. Might as well give it a shot. Hans and I climb into the conning tower. Up attack periscope. Smoke on the horizon. It is assumed their radar can even pick up on the periscope so we have to get the data from very quick glances. Range on the carrier 4000 meters bearing 59, mark, down periscope. I let the periscope zip up and down a couple of times over the next minutes and we have her number down. Bogue class escort carrier with four Clemson class destroyers lazily drawing circles around her. Yanks. The carrier is on a zig zag, translating into a heading of 308 at 6 knots. I have to time the shots so they hit her on the zag, at full port broadside. 'Action stations.'


We are running at 15 meters, 1 knot, heading 60. Quiet as a mouse, invisible between the waves. The periscope only gives me a periodical glance at them in between the wavetops, which is just how I want it to be. 'Tubes 1, 2 and 4. Spreadshot at an angle of 1 degree, impact pistol, depth 2 meters. Open tube doors' I still do not trust the magnetic pistols, especially in this swell. 'Target speed 6, angle on bow 30 port, bearing 40, range 2200.' 'Fertig, Herr Kaleun.' 'Standby, standby, bearing 38, range 2100.' 'Fertig.' 'Standby, standby.' The torpedoes need around 2 minutes to reach her... that means I launch them at the start of her turn to starboard...don't leave the periscope up too long, you idiot... Shoot a little early, not the best angle but I am confident about the aim... Leaves a little room to play with for a contingency shot from tube 3... 'Bearing 35, angle on bow 35 port, range 2000, standby.' 'Fertig.'
Now!...I think... 'LOS! Down periscope.' '1, los, 2, los, 4, los. Torpedoes in the water running straight and true, Herr Kaleun.' Alright, prepare the contingency while the scope stays down. 'Tube 3, fast running, ladder pattern to port, 800 meter legs, impact 1 meter, initial range...1500 meters. Target speed 5 knots, angle on bow 50 port at bearing 20. Open door and standby to fire.' 'Fertig, Herr Kaleun.'


Almost 2 minutes pass, those torpedoes should be getting close to the target. Klaus doesn't hear the escorts doing anything new. Good. 'Up periscope.' The carrier is right where she should be, bearing 25. But somehow I got my timing pretty much exactly wrong. She is on the zig, coming straight towards me. Or is the entire taskforce making a turn straight towards me? Have they found us? I mutter some random curses, the spread will probably pass her on both flanks. 'Bearing 25, Tube 3, LOS!' 'Tube 3 los.' That's all bow tubes empty, now it's their turn. I give the carrier a last look before we get down deep, when...whoom, torpedo hit! A wonderful bit of luck. The boys cheer and I find myself looking right into a big hole where the bow of the carrier used to be. Like looking a cyclops straight in the eye. I am not at all certain that it will sink her, but it will definitely cause her some trouble, at least. And the last torpedo is going to be running a ladder pattern across her path for a while. Good odds. 'Destroyers increasing speed and turning, Herr Kaleun.' 'Ahead flank, get deep as fast as you can, LI!' Hans and I climb down into the control room and the familiar game begins. Familiar for me, anyway. Half the crew have never been this close to the enemy before.

The Duke

We are at 50 meters when one of the destroyers starts an attack run. 'Launch the decoy!' We hear the increasing noise as the destroyer picks up speed, coming straight for us. 'Deeper, LI! Deeper! Hard port rudder!' We twist and turn out of the way, depthcharges explode above and behind us. These old fourstackers just don't have what it takes to get the better of me. I immediately rebuke myself. Do not underestimate your enemy, sir. Even if they are American antiquities. We drop down below 100 meters. Silent running, rudder zero, maintain planes on dive. Now they have to find me again. No discernible damage from that run and we are slipping down deep. We hear no sign of the last torpedo connecting with the carrier, she got away from the ladder pattern and I can hear the high pitch scream of her propulsion, now to the north of us, making a turn around through the west and probably ending in a southeasterly course, but she turned the wrong way, doing a wide circle around us rather than away from us. That's an opportunity. Perhaps an opportunity too good to pass on. My poor boys are not going to like this. 'Klaus, what are the destroyers up to?' 'Two of them are going for the decoy, the other two are sitting still, Herr Kaleun.' Already they have lost me. Maybe they don't have what it takes, after all.


Navigator Petersen knows exactly what I am thinking. 'Herr Kaleun, please, it's not worth it.' He is right, perhaps. But the carrier is now to our port and still turning. She will indeed pass south of us on her way to a southeast escape. I don't want her to escape. 'Anton, ahead 1/3, planes on the rise, turn the boat around to starboard, make your heading 160. Albert, get to the House of Lords, reload tubes one and two with steam torpedoes!' He looks at me, puzzled, this is not what they learned to do in the academy. 'Verdammt! Do it man, quickly!' He learned how to obey orders, anyway. 'Jawohl, Herr Kaleun,' and he disappears to the forward comparments. In the control room, Volkmar and Hans are just standing there, keeping their mouths shut. They are the rookies. But Hals and Anton have been with me for a while now. They both give me a hard look. Anton only cares about the boat, but Hals has become a good friend over the past months and as such, he has the guts to stand up to me. 'One of these days you'll get us all killed, you know that, right?'


But I know how to fight, you have to keep one step ahead of them, surprise them. Besides, I am the boss. 'Look, these destroyers belong in a museum. They are slow, they turn less well than the Tirpitz. They'll be bombing that decoy for half an hour. They lost us already, they'll lose us again. We'll get a shot in before they nail us, trust me. Now do as you are told.' Klaus shouts out: 'Destroyer heading this way, Herr Kaleun!' Alright, here we go. 'Anton, full speed ahead, level off at periscope depth. Make your heading 90 for a while.' The destroyer comes up behind us, increasing speed while the depth gauge is creeping back up, now once again passing the 100 meter mark. I can hear the carrier screaming behind us, slightly to our starboard, that will soon be a decent shot at her port flank, if we make it back up in time. 'Tube 1 reloaded, Herr Kaleun!'


The destroyer makes her attack run, coming up from behind while we are gathering all the speed we can, heading due east. My plan is to evade this run by turning to starboard and maintaining our ascent, thus bringing us at periscope depth on a heading of 180, which will give me the shot at the carrier while the depthcharges go off in the void behind us. I get into the conning tower again. 'Prepare tube 1, target speed 4 knots, angle on bow 110 degrees for bearing 20.' I'll adjust the settings when I get a good look at her. 'Fast running, impact at 3 meters.' I have to make a guess for her speed, I bet she is slowed down from the water coming in through that hole in the bow. The destroyer has caught up with us, the charges will drop any second now. 'Hard starboard! Get us up there, Anton, periscope depth quickly! Steer due south.' The explosions are not far off, but far enough. No damage to report, no water coming in. She is leveling off on a course of 180. 'Up periscope' and I have a look. The carrier is driving her nose deep into the sea but still going quite fast. 'Tube 2 reloaded, Herr Kaleun.' My guesstimates were correct at first glance, we don't have time to figure it all out. 'Tube 1, bearing 355 range 800, LOS, tube 2 bearing 350 range 900 target speed 7 knots, LOS!' Both torpedoes leave their tubes without problems, the second one will hit if she is going faster than I thought. One of them is bound to be on target, I figure, regardless what speed she was actually doing. I swing the periscope around. The destroyer who just missed us is turning around and another one is heading right for us at high speed. Time to get back down there in the deep. 'Planes on dive, maintain flank speed. Launch a decoy.' Whoom, the unmistakable sound of a torpedo exploding on steel. We got her. Whatever comes next, it was worth it. I get down from the conning tower and join the boys in the control room. 'Come on, boys, lighten up, we just nailed a carrier!' They are too frightened to cheer this time.



The Duke

Half the crew are still in the forward compartment after their frantic reloading operation so the boat is nose-heavy. That's good because she goes down that much faster. Seven knots and the boat is almost at a 45 degree angle. Destroyer on attack run, again. Those guys up there can not possibly get my position right while we are diving like this. But I pushed my luck enough for today, let's be extra careful now. 'Hard to starboard, make it 270.' Anton echoes the order. 'Splashes!' We will be fine, I know that. But the boys look like they are in bad shape after all the action. 'Easy, boys. We will be fine.' I cough as the depthcharges explode somewhere behind and above. The depth gauge reads 140 meters and still dropping rapidly. 'Ahead 1/3, level off at 180 meters, Anton.' Now we wait for the destroyers to pick us up again. Klaus finally confirms the kill: 'Bulkheads collapsing, she is going down!' I make my way to the House of Lords, I have something to share with their Lordships.


Albert, Hals and the boys are lying on the floor, panting, wide-eyed, pale. Exhausted after reloading two torpedoes in under fifteen minutes while under attack. They did great. 'Excellent job, boys. We got her. Our revenge for all those comrades we lost. You can all get into your bunks now, we'll soon go silent and deep. Albert and Hals, back into the control room please.' The boys smile at my praise and they should. After all, they did their duty and we got the kill. And we are still alive, for now. The officers follow me back to the control room, where the depth gauge reads 180 meters now. The boat is not even creaking yet, she is put together well. 'Albert, take charge of the damage control. Hans, you can go off duty.' So now the boat is at what I call dodge stations. A damage control team on duty and all non-essential crew are in their quarters, being quiet. 'Silent running, cut the engines.' And we become a hole in the water.


Now that we are silent I feel my headache slowly throbbing again. I felt a lot better during the action, you don't have time to think about your discomforts. I can't take another pill, that might influence my thinking. -Ping- chug chug chug chug. Destroyers looking for us, centered around the decoy. One of them is heading this way. Ah the familiar game. Trying to scare us into making noise. Or he already got us and the depthcharges are on their way. Klaus knows his job, he has his eyes closed and visualizes the tin can up top. I observe him through the hatch. 'Splashes!' Verdammt, that sonar operator up there knows his stuff. 'Ahead 2/3, deeper, LI!' The boat creeps down ever further. 'Rudder 30 port.' '30 port, Herr Kaleun.' Destroyer now more or less above us. 'Ahead flank.' Those depthcharges need a long time to reach us this far down. Our burst of speed will put us out of harm's way but the other destroyers will hear us now. That's the catch. That's why 4 destroyers operating together, even if only fourstackers, are so dangerous. Enough running. '50 rpm, LI, keep the planes on dive.' It is a good evasion tactic. We keep turning and dropping all the time. How much we turn and drop is dictated by our speed. But we never stay in the same place long, even one knot will make us slip away just a little.


Another destroyer homes in on the noise we just made. We have to pick up the pace again. 'Ahead 2/3, launch another decoy, rudder starboard 20.' I want to make it out of the area in a general southern direction, swinging between southwest and southeast on the twists and turns. We pick up some speed and squeeze out of the depthcharge pattern. But they also have K-guns on the decks, to widen their pattern for just this eventuality. I am listening to the soothing sound of charges going off in the distance when suddenly: a loud crash, all the lights go out, the boat is thrown aside, the glass on the dials around me shatters and half the men in the control room are off their feet, including me. I am being showered by seawater coming in through a sprung valve up above me. Swearing and screaming is the only sound for a second. 'QUIET!' I roar. 'Fix that damn valve!'


Two sailors get the valve to close up again while the rest of the crew in the control room get back on their stations. The valve is soon fixed, the men go quiet, the lights come back on and we all hear it: water rushing into the boat. Somewhere in the aft compartments. Accompanied by a cry from the engine crew: 'Wassereinbruch!' 'All ahead full, bring us back up, LI. Quickly, 160 meters. Albert, I want damage reports!' The charge was close, but not too close. A look across all the dials tells me the boat is still working pretty much as she should, pointing up and rising, though she is going a bit slow for 'all ahead'. I just hope we didn't lose any vital equipment or machinery from the explosion. I can still hear the water coming into the boat when Albert reports back to me: 'Minor leaking in the aft engine compartments, compressor damaged, port electric engine off line. But we'll get it fixed, Herr Kaleun.' 'Thank you, Albert. Get it done.' Several minutes later we are in shape again. 'All compartments secured and operational, Herr Kaleun.' 'Silent running, 50 rpm. LI, get her deep again.' My head is killing me and I am worried about the weight of that water we just took in.

The Duke