[MantiBrutalis]

Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 5th January 1941, U-104, somewhere in the Atlantic.

Finally, the captain has what he wanted. We are finally making for a large British convoy south of us. When I delivered the contact report to the command room, I briefly watched the Navigation Officer make a lot of weird lines and circles on the map. I asked how precise can he be with determining the intercept course. He probably didn’t hear me, because the captain answered for him – “Magically. Now get back to your work”

We sank a small merchant yesterday and a bigger one this morning. Both of them with same procedure – sneak up in the darkness below water, check their flag and armaments with our periscope… And then the deck gun. It is really being put to work this patrol, it is responsible for 22000 tons of merchants so far.

We are some 800 km east of Canada now. I hope that we can make a fast attack on the convoy and go finally home. We are even getting close to having just enough fuel to go home, although we still have food enough for some 2 or 3 weeks. Large and British – means a lot of prey with lot of escorts. Max is quite superstitious, he thinks that attacking a convoy with a nameless ship will bring us bad luck. Or a depth charge.