I had a close shave just outside valetta, I had just came from alexandria and en route to la spezia I decided to pay the maltese a visit, after doing so I was caught on the surface by a hurricane, which evidently radio'd my position to the surface fleet, which came swiftly, two hunts, a tribal, a corvette and a pt boat. The hunts made thier passes and took out my aft dive planes, gave me severe flooding in the rear and i started to go down.... and down I came, hard.
I was quickly approaching the bottom (the bottom was 260 metres down, which in a VII/C is rather scarey) the lights were blinking the flooding worsened, luckily i had an engineering officer and the repairs were continuing, I had reached 230 metres and I blew ballast, it slowed my decent, the flooding was soon fixed, but i had no chance of an attack with the bow tubes destroyed and no more forward torps left, so I lay on the bottom, listening to the DC's falling around (I never knew they made a sound till I checked the hydrophone). Eventually they gave up and I raised to the surface, it was dark when I eventually broke the water, I had been down for 5 hours of intense attack, but I survived, but ofcourse I still go patrolling around valetta
