Date: The early evening of May 7th, 1943. Location: Grid CF83
Ship spotted!
A couple of freighters identified as a small merchant and a Granville type freighter. Since they're unescorted and it's dark, I order tanks flooded and make a decks awashed approach. It should be small, but easy pickings. U-519 is not too proud to take the low hanging fruit.
Mother Nature, however, has other plans.
Verdammt!
The watch crew loses them in the squall. The night is soon too dark to see anything past a couple hundred meters. Luckily my funker has picked them up on radar. We continue our approach.
When we get about 600 to 700 meters away, the looming shapes of the two hapless merchants just barely appear through the UZO. Having tubes 3 and 4 loaded with the new FaT torpedoes and not wanting to waste them on such small targets, I order tube one fired at the lead merchant and tube two fired at the second. I order periscope depth, not wanting to face the wrath of the armed merchants spotlights and deck guns.
After a few ticks of the stopwatch, a dull roar is heard, soon followed by a second. Two hits!
The Granville freighter continues making headway and our underwater speed is too slow to get in position for a coup de grace. The small merchant, however, has drifted to a stop. Not ideally what I was hoping for, but perhaps she'll flood enough to sink. The thought of surfacing and finishing her with gunfire passes through my head briefly, but no. The rather large guns that all of the merchants are sporting nowadays cures me of that thought quickly. We circle the listing ship for a half hour to 45 minutes with no change in her condition. Her spotlights allow for the use of the periscope. I take a look at her.
Grudingly I order tube 5 opened. I hate wasting another torpedo on a glorified dinghy, but it's an easy target.
Rohr funf...Los!
The torpedo hits. However, the ship doesn't react. No more listing. No fires. No nothing.
We circle around the ship for another half hour to 45 minutes. Nothing!. Cursing my luck, I fling my cap across the Zentrale. The thought of wasting a third torpedo on this damned speck of a ship is out of the question. I order the navigator to return to our original course to Freetown. I hope that our luck will return there.