Fair Enough U48's 8th War Patrol took us to AN81, again just of the small port of Lowesoft, in Mid July 1940. After reaching our patrol grid we received reports of a convoy to our north west, making its way around Norfolk as we moved up the coast to investigate we spotted a asw trawler silhouetted against the rising sun at 7500m, Using the shroud of darkness we closed to within 3000m before opening fire with the deck gun on our unsuspecting prey, she barely got a shot off before exploding in flames and sinking to the bottom, Charging off to the NW we soon sighted a Black Swan leading 2 lines of merchants, sending off a quick contact report we dived to periscope depth and engaged, the Black Swan was soon dispatched by a single eel, rapily followed by a Large Tanker, One in the bows and one in the stern had her down, Next a large merchant received one in the side as did a granvile type freighter, tho both remained afloat, at this point a Black Swan which had been trailing the convoy appeared on the scene, a snap shot out of the rear tube missed, but some skilled piloting put us in the middle of the confusion of the 2 burning merchants and a coastal freighter that had gotten tangled up and alowed us to evade his depth charge attack, just as goerings boys turned up and missed everything However whilst manoeuvring to fire at the Luftwaffe the Swan put itself across our stern tube which due to some herculean efforts from the reload crew was ready to shoot again within 5 mins, down went the swan, and with the convoy now unescorted, it was surface time and let the gun crew loose.
Once the convoy was a sequence of flaming wrecks we turned out to sea to return via our original grid to Kiel, only for our lookouts to spot smoke on the horizon, another ASW trawler escorting a coastal merchant, with only 40 rounds left for the main gun we closed on the trawler and opened fire, again dispatching it before its unsuspecting crew could draw bead on us, before turning on the coastal merchant for a bonus victim, Once the action was over I took a look over the side only to spot
The upper works of the ASW trawled we destroyed at the start of this less than 3hrs previously, 45000 tonnes, not a bad mornings work