After Prien's success in Scapa a few days earlier we received intelligence that the home fleet had scattered in an attempt to disperse the fleet. We had just arrived to our planned hunting grounds in the Irish Sea, just south of the Firth of Clyde and had nearly 24 hours go by before seeing a measly tugboat.
Wondering what the heck was going on herr kaleun ordered us to proceed slowly up the Firth of Clyde hoping that we might run into a convoy that was temporarily put on hold, and just sitting in the Loch Long or Gare Loch. Encountering no ASW patrols something felt out of place, nearing Kilmuth we could see massive fires, on a moonless night it looked as if the port was ablaze. We could easily sneak into and search the adjacent Loch for merchants at anchor waiting to be put to see. To everyone's surprise a single warships profile emerged as we headed east, we dove and moved slowly to find out it was the HMS Nelson anchored.
With all the time in the world to make as precise as shot as possible we sent two eels towards her, the first under the B turret and the second towards the boilers in the aft. The first eel must've been a magnetic impact as the following explosion shook the boat like it just had a full spread of charges dropped right next to it. The kaleun even backed away from the scope as if blinded from the light, he simply said that she was going to go down fast and to surface. Once on the surface it was obvious to us all, we blew up the powder magazine which then ignited the magazines for the A and C turrets causing the catastrophic explosion.
