Diary of Manfred Bollmann, 28th February 1941, 23:17, U-104 “Lucky Halibut”, 220km west of El Ferrol.
We picked up a message from BdU about a single ship trailing close to us. Captain decided to intercept it, just to reveal that this single ship has its own destroyer escort. Anyway, the first attack failed miserably – we fired four torpedoes, but none hit the destroyer. The captain claims two of them were duds. Two hours later we tried to reengage, but we were surprised by the escort, which kept hunting us for half an hour. Luckily for us, these men seemed to have little experience with their anti-submarine equipment. Anyone more experienced would send us to the bottom of the ocean.
There was a fight between the captain and Max, but I didn’t hear it as I was helping to secure food which escaped from its net and spilled on the bow torpedo room floor. Anyway, we are hunting this odd pair again. I hope for more luck with torpedoes for the Lucky Halibut.
Note – I repaired some spacing problems and punctuation throughout the story. I also changed “feint” to “faint” on several occasions. Educational gaps everywhere
