In my first patrol with a brand new IXB, I had hunted down a small convoy and was looking for stragglers. The destroyer escort had gone away according to my hydrophone operator so I was feeling pretty safe when I rose to periscope depth and saw one of the ships sitting dead in the water.
Surfaced and realized I had surfaced about three meters from a V&W destroyer. No time to dive, so I manned the deck gun and started firing.
The destroyer got off one shot that missed, I got off three, before the destroyer sank. That was pretty tense.
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