February 1943 .
This time , I left Lorient with a good torpido load but unfortunatly , no acoustic Torps .
BdU sent us to Grid AF 47 , near Scopa Flow .
After a long chat with my No1 , I decided to use the British Channel .
We could have sailed to the Atlantic and simply go around Ireland but it would have cost us a lot of fuel .
The VII-B is not known for its very long range and I thought "better to cut short" . The problem is :
#1 : The depth is only 180m at most and sometimes as low at 80m
#2 : Those costal waters are heavily patroled by the RAF .
To this extent , I took one more week off to make sure I had at least 2 good Warrant Officers qualified in Flak gunnery to man our 2 light Flak guns .
That ended up being a good move !
We left Lorient in good weather , which is a shame as I was counting on bad Seas and fog to cover our advance through the Channel . Sometimes , you just have to get along with what you get ...
As soon as we reached Grid BF 2. , we started to get heavy Air contacts . Mostly Catalinas . My watch crew did very well and spotted every incoming Aircraft in time .
We soon started to take them down as they came .
...
After 3 days at Sea , day time under and night time on surface , we had gunned down no less than 10 Aircrafts (!) .
7 Catalinas , 2 Sunderlands and 1 Hurricane , and without suffering any damage or casualties .
That was 10 too many ...
And we were only third way across the Channel , near Southend on Sea . At that rate , we would have taken down no less than 30-40 Aircrafts before to be in the clear , up in the North Sea .
I did not want to bet on such luck , so we turned around to head back for the Atlantic . The british Channel in 1943 was just too heavily guarded for a boat like ours to go through ...
We lost 6 days at Sea , and the fuel , without seeing any Ship .
To be honest , I don 't think U-Boats are made to take the mighty RAF down .
We 're now back into open Ocean , heading for our Patrol Grid .
End of message .
B. Goelf out .
Cheers .
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