[Weiss Pinguin]

September 28th, 1939
Grid AN13

"... And fire! Tube five, tube six!" The tension in the control room was as thick as the smell of limburger cheese as Captain Wagner gave the final order of another tense approach.

Within 2 minutes another pair of torpedoes found their target, and another merchant met an exciting end.

By now the business of stalking and sinking enemy vessels was starting to become as routine as brushing ones teeth. Still, that was not to say there wasn't any excitement to be had...

12 hours earlier...

We all huddled quietly in the radioroom, staring intently at the sonarman as he concentrated on the hydrophone dial. He had been tracking the approaching contact, which had been identified as a warship shortly after detection, for almost half an hour now, and it continued to motor along quickly in our direction.
We feared the worst: A destroyer, sent to investigate the area. Or maybe it had already been in the neighborhood, undetected, and it had heard one or both of our attacks.

As we pondered this, U-1337 continued to creep northwest at 2 knots, just barely enough to maintain depth, while the crewmen silently went about their business. There was to be no cooking, talking, or using the toilet, which began to weigh heavily on my mind at an alarming rate. Never again would I consume three cups of tea inside of an hour.

The minutes passed slowly as the ship neared. We hoped the foul weather would interfere with any hydrophones or sonar devices they might carry, while we sat quietly at 50 meters below the surface and listened through ours.

"She's right on top of us!" The sonarman quietly shouted. The vessel overhead might hear if he spoke too loudly, after all.

"Mein gott," Wagner reprimanded, "Contain yourself, man!"

By now the anxiety had spread throughout the rest of the crew, and everybody stood frozen in place as they stared upwards, as though they could see the enemy pass overhead.

The sonarman continued listening. "Heading is constant... No change in speed..."

Wagner popped his head into the control room. "Slowly increase speed to 4 knots, come left to course two-seven-zero." He returned to his spot in the radioshack as the helmsmen went to work.

We slowly began to breath again as the contact continued on its way, apparently oblivious to the drama unfolding below.

After another hour or so, once the contact had passed beyond the hydrophone's range, we resumed our cruise, and I was free to finally empty my ballast tank.