I do what it takes to win
September 26th, 1939
Still somewhere off the coast of Scotland
I sat lazily in my bunk, staring at my wristwatch and listening to the quiet hum of the electric engines.
20:35... It had been ten hours since we detected and sunk the assumed British freighter. Since then the ocean had been quiet as a grave. We had continued northwest after the attack, and we were now in the southeast corner of Grid AN14. The crew had been pumped up for hours, like a bunch of children who had eaten several cakes in a row and then been locked in a giant steel tube. Except we didn't have cake, of course.
While I was having my imaginary cake and eating it in my minds eye's mouth, the sonarman suddenly came alive.
"Contact,
Herr Kaleun, bearing 350! Sounds like a merchant, moving slow and closing. Long range," he added, twisting his dial around to pin down the exact bearing.
Captain Wagner strode into the radio room and towered over the sonarman. I moved beside him and joined in staring intently at the back of the young crewman's head.
"Do you have a heading for the target?" Wagner inquired.
"Not yet, sir, give me several more minutes. Can we come over to the right some?"
Wagner nodded and gave the order. In a minute we were headed north-northwest, and the soundman was busy plotting the contact on a piece of paper.
Finally, he finished his scrambled doodling. "Bearing is constant, captain, but definitely approaching. I think she's headed straight for us."
Wagner grunted, and returned to the control room and began issuing a stream of orders. "Come left to course 270, reduce speed to 3 knots. Come up to periscope depth. Rig for silent running."
Several minutes later he was peering through the observation scope. "
Mein gott... It's darker than the inside of your head, Winkelman," he jested, motioning to my cap. "Down periscope. Bring us back down to 20 meters,
mein schatz." Wagner knew the helmsman hated being called that.
Felix popped his head into the radioroom. "Bearing to target?"
"Bearing is 23, sir. Still approaching." Now that the sonarman had the contact pinned down, he returned to doodling on his notepad.
Wagner nodded, and back in the control room he ordered the boat on a reciprocal course to the target. I stared at him. "What the devil are we doing?"
His left brow slowly levitated at my question. "We don't know how deep the keel on our target is, and we don't have any room left to manuever. This way we might score a hit on her bow, and in this weather it'll be less than 15 minutes before she goes under." With a smug smile he went over to the TDC and began adjusting the solution for Tube 5.
Several minutes later and countless meters closer to our target, he ordered the torpedo tube opened. "
Feuer, fünf!"
We all listened to the loud
woosh of the torpedo ejecting. Several minutes later we decided the torpedo had missed.
"I miscalculated? The great Wagner never miscalculates!" Our captain cried out in agony. As the sonarman fed us new data, I quietly began adjusting the solution on Tube 6. The merchant had apparently detected us at the last minute and turned south. I wondered if they had somehow heard our pinging.
Several minutes later we were moving west into a new firing position when the sonarman came alive once more. "New contact! Long range and closing slowly, bearing 010!" Everyone in the control room stopped for a second. Had our target gotten a message out to the Royal Navy?
As we pondered this new problem, our U-boat continued to creep into position. Finally, Wagner gave the order to fire. Many long seconds later Goldbeck reported an explosion.
"Torpedo impact! She's still going, though, sir," he added after several seconds of listening.
Wagner cursed and ordered tube one fired. This time a homing torpedo was kicked out into the dark water.
"We've got her,
Herr Kaleun," Goldbeck gleefully reported a minute later. "Scratch one freighter!"
We were busy grinning and slapping each others backs when Wagner brought us back to business. "Excellent work," he said gruffly. "Now we can move on to our new visitor." He quickly fired off a series of orders: Reload torpedo tubes, come to course 340, increase speed to 6 knots, dive to 40 meters.
As we lept into action, I wondered if we were heading into a trap of some kind...
Edit: lol that was longer than I intended
