[VonApist]

U-137 continued its dive towards the bottom of the ocean. It was fast, noisy and sloppy. Everybody on board knew that. But, all knew that since they had already been detected by the escorts above, their only chance lay in diving as deep as possible, as fast as they could.

The dive's steep angle had forced all sailors to lean on the hull, on a table or a bunk to keep their footing. There was no commotion inside the U-Boat, but it was obvious that adrenaline hit highs. Her captain could feel it, in the stiffening bodies of the crew.

This was good. Adrenaline sharpened the senses and increased efficiency. It was his duty to keep it flowing but preventing it from transforming into panic. The survival instict makes people give their 110%. Panic dismantles all.

Stephan turned towards his Chief. "Alber, please put a damage control team in place."

"Yes sir" the red-headed LI replied, heading towards the engine room.

"Gerald, depth please"

"Depth 60m descending"

At that moment a muted sound of explosions rattled the boat.

"She is going down sir!" the sonarman reported. "And she's close!"

Faint smiles across the Zentrale, but noone was in a real mood for cheers. The tables had turned. Now THEY were the pray.

"Rudder 15 degrees to port" Stephan whispered.

"Depth 70m sir" Gerald reported again, eyes glued to the needle.

"We need to get down as fast as possible, Chief. Give us all you got. At 100m we will turn silent. We need to get at that depth ASAP"

He then turned towards the sonar box

"Update me on escorts, Jorg"

"Yes sir. We have two destroyers coming our way. The one closer Bearing 055, short distance, speed fast. The other one is now heading 180 turning to our side. Medium distance."

Stephan took of his cap and wiped his eyebrow from perspiration. He needed a moment to gather his thoughts.

Yes they had nailed the cruiser. He wondered if he would be the one and only commander of a Type-II with such a prize under his belt. But there was no time for vanity. Maybe later. At port. Now he had other business to attend to. Their escape.

Thankfully the weather was bad, a fact that prohibited the mighty RAF from patrolling over him as they were relatively close to shore. That was good.

It was him vs the crews of the destroyers. His boat presented a relatively small target. On the other hand their crush depth was limited. In her shakedown trip, U-137 dived down to 167m before taking damage. They would have to take advantage of every centimentre of that.

"Depth 100m" the voice of Gerald interrupted his thoughts.

The pinging sound continued. It was chilling, no matter how experienced one was.

"Chief. Speed 1 knot. RPMs below 100. Rudder zero degrees" Stephan whispered on the intercom. "And please come at the Zentrale"

At that moment, Jorg's head came out of the sonar box

"The destroyer is on top of us sir!"

With this, everybody on board instictively looked upwards, as if there gaze could pierce the 100m of cold ocean and see their hunter above.

"Depth Charges in the water, sir"

"Gentlemen, brace for explosions." He turned to Albert who had just entered the Zentrale. " Chief, notify the damage control team and get ready to move full ahead after the first explosions"

Depth charges interfered with the detection systems of escorts. It usually took some minutes for the hunters to recalibrate their ASDIC in order to launch another search. That left a window of opportunity for U boat captains to change course at high speed and avoid the trail of death.

"Its cat and mouse again boys. And now we are the mice" Stephan adressed his crew at the Zentrale with a grin.

Suddently two muted bangs where heard in succession, followed by another two, much closer.

The last barrage seemed to have exploded right on top of them. The sound was deafening and the small U-Boat rocked violently as the electric lighting failed.

The unmistakable sound of hissing water chilled the spine of Stephan.

"Emergency lights on. Chief, damage report" he shouted as the boat tilted, to an unnatural angle, slowly descending toward's the ocean's abyss...

(To be continued)