[StarTrekMike]

We have been heading home in this foul weather for what seems like many days while I plot a very wide coarse that will take us as close to the british isles as we can go and still maintain enough fuel to get home. The food is stale but not rotting yet and the stench has come on full force now.

I sit at my bunk making some fuel estimates while Karl comes over with a cup of coffee that has more in common with bilge water than makes me comfortable and sets it down at my small table.

"any word on a convoy?" he asks as he sips at his own cup.

"no...BdU has not sent word of anything close enough to us to make any difference, I do however think we may get lucky and spot something." I say taking a sip with no small fear of vomit coming after.

He sits down on the bed next to me and sighs, "what ever we get is enough for the mission...the real goal now is to get home."

"I just want the men to feel good about it...they need to feel the joy of getting a big score and names on the wall at the officers club...hell I need it!"

Karl pats me on the back and heads to the control room while I lay back and tell Joachim to put a record on the turntable, the sound fills the boat and seems to put me at rest enough to sleep.


"Contact Merchant!" Karl yells with his head sticking down from the tower.

I leap out of my sleeping state and grab my hat and a pack of smokes. When I get above deck I see nothing but a small grey dot on the horizon that could be smoke.

Peter the watch officer looks intently through his binoculars "no sight of the flag yet but I think there may be more that we can't see yet...I can almost see more smoke."

I order flank speed and wait till we can get a better view of the target while Karl orders torpedoes ready and all tubes to be ready for solutions. the dot gets bigger and I begin to see more ships in my binoculars...could this be it?

"I can see a british flag Kaluen!...it is a convoy!" Peter yells with excitment as I notice that the water is calm and it is almost like god himself made the tide steady for us.

"Plot and maintain a coarse that will put us ahead and a'beam of the convoy...dive as late as possible" I tell karl as I light a cigarette and take a minute to steady my fast beating heart.


A hour or so passes as we reach a position that will get us a good firing solution and a reasonable chance to escape while we wait for the large lines of ships to get in range.

"depth at 12 meters Kaleu" Karl states as I peer through the periscope and pick out my targets and keep a eye out for warships.

"set all torpedo speeds to fast and get damage control ready just in case" I say while leaning against the scope.


"Contact warship...moving slow and on coarse with the convoy...bearing 194 degrees." Joachim states while he slowly spin the hydrophone wheel with one hand and keeps the other against his headset.

I bite my lip at the though of a warship...we need to strike fast and hope all the eels hit on the first try. If we get caught we could be kept under for hours while we wait for them to give up...or we could be killed.


After some waiting the ships enter range and the sun goes down, I notice a destroyer that is close enough to hear us if we start moving underwater...would it be worth trying a surface attack?...could we dive in time to avoid the deck gun fire?

Karl looks at me with concern as he can see that I am considering a surface attack while we have the new moon and a dark sky to hide us.


"Surface the boat and get ready for flank speed...get the deck gun crew ready while we fire the first wave of torpedo attacks." I order as I hear the rush of compressed air blowing water out of the ballast.

We spend the next short while sneaking around trying to find a entry point where we can fire our eels and make possible deck gun kills on any small merchants while we make our run.

"The destroyer has spotted us!" karl says with a tinge of fear in his voice.

"flank speed forward!...torpedo tubes one through four fire!" I yell as everyone starts doing jobs we have been waiting to do. "I want to make a clean dash and fire our stern tubes at any targets we can...it may be a blind shot be it is worth a try".

"Lets hope it is worth it tonight...we may make the papers anyway" Karl says with a wry smile.

I see the torpedo trails meet hulls with only one miss and three hits on two ships, one is split and will sink while the other lists to the side and stops it's screws (this is a big one). The deck gun crew wait for the last possible second to fire while we ram right into the center of the convoy. The moment they open fire on a small merchant I hear at least three guns reply from the convoy.

"Some of the merchants are armed!" Karl yells as he takes cover from a splash off our port side. "destroyer bearing 310 and another at 194...they are fireing!"

"Hold us steady on coarse and fire stern torpedo tubes on my order...tell the gunners to finish that big one before we have to dive and lose it."

The gunners fire true shots that send the damaged ship to the bottom and then finish the small merchant with as few shots as possible...the destroyers shots get closer and the merchants are also filling the sky with shells.

Loud clangs erupt from at least two points on the boat as shells make glancing blows against the hull, the destroyers are close enough for accurate shots.

"one of the destroyers is approaching our stern!...ready a shot!" I yell along with TDC data with hopes that we can kill one more before we absolutly have to dive.

I look through the UZO as it inches to firing position at 320 meters. "ready...ready...Los!" I yell as the boat lurches from a near miss off the bow.

The torpedo trail is visible as it slams into the destroyer right below the stack and it lets off a spectacular explosion...I can't tell if it is sinking but I know it won't be going anywhere.

"We have to dive sir!...we can't take the pounding up here anymore!" karl yells over the explosions and gunfire.

"Crash dive and then silent running at 130 meters". I order as I head down the ladder.


The boat inches below the water and slips to 100 meters before we start hearing the pings of sonar...still faint but probably enough for a blurry return. we engage silent running and everything becomes a low whisper.

This is where things get rough.



More tomarrow when I have had some sleep.

let me know what you think so far.


Mike