August 12th, 1942
On my 5th patrol out of Brest I was assigned to patrol BE 57. As I had 30000 tons under my belt from my last patrol I was quite confident of a repeat performance. I completed patroling my square in horrendus weather and decided to visit and old hunting ground, Rockall banks. About 8 days later the weather had not stopped and the crew were a bit restless when all of a sudden I notice that my TC had gone from 128 to 1. Apparantly some B24's decided to pay a visit and forgot to alert the watch crew
. Luckily nothing hit and I dive immediantly. This was repeated through out the entire jounrny to Rockall. There we were set upon by some P38's who simply dived into the see, much to the crews amusment. By this time my batteries were low so I decided to surface. Literaly 30 seconds later some PBY's and P38's appeared and started to attack. I decided to give them a fight. My senior petty officer and No1 managed to deter the PBY's and shot down 1 of the P38's but his partner managed to hit the forward deck and basicly screwed up the ship. I dived, evaded and repaired.
That little action cost 2 men killed, 1 wounded (radio operator) and destroyed the batteries, radar, radio, deck gun, flak guns and bow torpedo's. I decided to return home, no eels fired with only 22% hull integrity.
After that Bdu "retired" me to a nice desk job.
