(Thanks

I was starting to believe there wasn't any real interest)
The tenth of August offered the captain of the U-431 a warm cup of coffee.
"Danke, Matros." the twenty three-year old captain growled back, though in not too threatening a tone. He reached for something that would support him in his quest to rise, and found a long, wooden edge somewhere above the ceiling of his bedspace. A tired, wet cough came from his throat, before his eyes reluctantly opened all the way. A quick look to both the radio and sonar officer told him they had nothing to report. The morning had brought the captain out of his rest, but he wouldn't have been able to keep sleeping. His officers needed to be checked upon, he assured himself, and went to treat his sanitary needs.
Ulrich made yet another thoughtful face. A scritching sound could be heard from where his palm rubbed his face. There was nothing in the periscope, nothing on the listening device, and no further reports about the task force or other targets in the Atlantic. The navigator was certain they were in the sector AM14 now, in the very spot that he had predicted the ships would be. If they had followed a straight line.
"Herr Kaleun." came the mutter from Ulrich, as Max's face entered the corner of his eye.
"Guten Morgen, Herr Oberleutnant." His officer turned to salute him, choking a yawn to its death.
"Nothing new?" Max asked, and received a short "Nein". Ulrich was sent to his bed, and Max resumed command over his boat.
It had taken Max two hours to decide what to write in his letter home. He had forgotten to send his last letter, so this one would have to be sent as soon as they returned. His eyes followed the lifeless words on the paper, studying them and contemplating changing some of them. He came to the conclusion that he was in no mood to continue writing, and stood up from the bed. The radio and sonar officers were sitting the way they always sat. Remarkably quiet, focused and obedient. Certainly, they must daydream a lot, Max thought to himself. He wouldn't blame them for it, if they did.
Max looked at the watch on his wrist, and made his way back to the command room. The clock was nearly eleven in the evening, and they had to surface. They had been alerted of aircraft with radar, and two boats had already been lost to what was possibly Allied bombers with them. This didn't matter much now, though. They were in the outskirts of the suspected air cover, and in such dark and stormy seas there would be problems finding them anyway. Max corrected his unruly hair and looked to the helmsman.
"Surface, Oberfähnrich. Full ahead." The reply came quickly from the well rested officer. Max sent his eyes to the navigator, who seemed to be fiddling on a piece of paper, perhaps writing a letter home as well.
"Plot a course to our patrol zone, herr Kühn." The reply came just as quickly as from Bülow.
Max's eyes scanned the inside of the conning tower, holding himself firmly by the ladder due to the heavy seas. He did not at all envy the watchcrew. He could hear some talking, but no laughing above him.
"Wetter!" he called through the hole, in the hope of that the weather could have changed within the two hours they had been surfaced.
"Scheisse, herr Kaleun" was the unorthodox and hardly hearable answer he got. It sufficed, and Max was forced to smile. By God, what horrible weather he had experienced. The wet streets of Bergen were beginning to resemble the beaches of southern France, in comparison to this! The rain whipped hard on the metal, creating a very distinct and familiar yet hard to describe sound. This mixed with a faint sound from the gramophone below, where someone were playing a song Max had not heard before. Max stared at the wall, for a few seconds only taking in the impressions he could feel; the rolling, the sounds, the smell, and his hands holding the ladder firmly so he wouldn't be tossed aside. It took him a few seconds, but in time he could find peace in it all, and a harmony in the controlled disaster that was this uboat and this war. This harmony was about as shattered as glass under a hammer as a voice from above called out the word that Max did not want to hear.
"ALAAAAARM!"
The three men Walter Forstner had with him came running down the ladder, nearly expecting to fall in Max's head. Max, however, had already tossed himself out of his relaxed state of mind and hurried down the ladder.
"Flugzeug! Flugzeug!" the sailors shouted as they went to their compartments and posts, Walter coming some ten seconds behind them.
"Gott und Himmel.. FLANK! Emergency dive!" Max shouted out at a helmsman who just found himself regretting he did not join the airforce.
The alarm had within seconds spread to all corners of the submarine, and people rushed ahead to give added weight.
"Report!" Max shouted to Walter as he went past him.
"No idea, herr Kaleun! Engine roar!" Max was in no desire to get further details out of the man, and allowed him to run towards the fore compartments. The commando room became a room filled with anxiety. As the sonar man emitted a terrified call, there was also a not too remote sense of fear.
In the rolling seas, the submarine had only barely begun to sink below the surface. A lack of foam on the waves left the trail of the U-431 quite clear for the three Avengers, who all dropped their bombs simultaneously. They raised the noses of their aircraft after dropping, and were not able to track the submarine by eyesight as they slipped past it. Soon enough, however, the remarkable explosions gave a good impression of where it was.
The thunder that rolled through the boat would be enough to make a grown man piss himself, and several on the boat had already. The effect was truly frightening, and shook the boat around. Max saw an officer run by him to assess any damages. The man returned within fifteen seconds.
"No damage, herr Kaleun!" Ulrich reported. He looked awfully tired, that poor man who had just gotten his peace of mind and body shaken to bits.
"Let us get to seventy meters, herr Bülow!" Max ordered the helmsman. In a matter of seconds, the captain had regained most of his calm exterior, and kept it through a second wave of waterbombs, that were a tad further away. Slowly, men from the bow would return to aft compartments, and they flattened out at seventy meters to hear the boat make a long, deep and whining sound. Max took deep breaths by now, resting his back on the ladder. Very, very faint sounds could be heard as a third wave of waterbombs fell from them.
"Ahead slow!" Max ordered, not long after the tenth of August passed into the eleventh.