Patrol III
The 14:th of December it was time to roll out again. Again the weather was fine. It bothered me that we hadn't been out just ten days before. It looked like we where going to celebrate christmas at sea. But I guess it's true like Rimkus an Heinz "the suck up" Beugholz says. War doesn't belive in Jesus.
This time we were heading for AN21. Yeah, great... Up there again. Like Gottfried Heymann said "Britain has got to be bending over, 'cause the ass is right up there." I know that it really doesn't matter where we're going, but there are something I really dislike in that area.
We had a couple of contact reports on our way up there, but Rimkus ignored them. He didn't want to waste time on ships with too much of a chance to be a neutral. He just wanted to reach the patrol grid, do some sinking and go home. I could't agree more.
We reached the PG in the morning of the 19:th. Weather had changed this time too. To the worse off course. Seven meters per second and a cloudy sky. That means it is pitch black from six in the evening, to about nine or ten in the morning. You can't se sh1t.
We cruised around three days in that god forbidden area. Without being able to spot a single ship. We had a three or four hydrophone trackings but none of them gave anything. They either changed course while plotting or was just too far away.
On the 23:rd at 00:30, we got a radio contact about a ship which should be in our reach. We got into the ships expected route - which was SE - and traveled towards the contact at periscope depth. I was ordered to the torpedo room. A dirty job, but someone's got to do it. Karl Berns let us know what happened in the helms. We where waiting to get hydrophone contact with the target, which came around 01:00 and Rimkus started to plot it down.
Normaly when you've got a contact report, you know the targets position. All you've got to do with the hydrophone is to find out its course. And then you'll know pretty exact where the target is and where its going. Do I need to tell you that this was not the case this time. Rimkus was taking it easy, while some where along, the target must have changed course. Because the plotted course didn't fit with the posision of the contact report we recieved earlier.
Rimkus ordered ahead full in a panic attempt to find out the targets posision. He got it, but we all knew it was not reliable. And if we don't have a precise posision, we can't calculate a reliable speed either. But Rimkus was set for it.
After twenty minutes he could spot some masts and the control tower of a ore freighter in the dark. But he couldn't se the hull. So fixed wire was almost impossible. He tried and noted the speed of ten knots. He plotted the angle in which he should fire - he never uses the TDC but in exceptional cases. We shot two torpedos at the target with thirty seconds in between and got one hit. We surfaced, ran ahead and closed in on the freighter which had started to zig-zag. We came as close as seven hundred meters and finished her off with a keel hit.
Three torps down and two to go. Rimkus set sail for a raid (? with two torps) on our way home. Hoping to spend the remaining ones.
At christmas 1800 hours H. Beugholz wanted to sink a coal vessel with the flak. We though that it was christmas and we should have let her go. What difference could it possibly make? But Beugholz insisted and got hes will through. Rimkus intercepted and Beugholz brought her down at 18:23 after sixty rounds. What a jerk.
26:th we sunk a coal freighter and 27:th a small freighter. Both with keel hits.
Finally... heading home after the best mission so far with 13600 christmas tonnage.
Me (and Friedrich Bieler down there) at Christmas Day,
somwhere in AN44.