Picking up where we left off, in pursuit of an unknown cargo ship off of Scapa Flow. We spent hours and hours surfaced in the rough seas to maximize our speed in order to close the distance between U-52 and the cargo vessel. It was rough on the crew, but it paid off in the end. Eventually, we started getting close enough to get a glimpse of the flag...
We continued at ahead full, continuing to close the distance. No signs of other ships in the area, so we continued surfaced without concern though with watchful eyes in all directions. Eventually we made a positive identification - Great Britain! We immediately took a few shots with our deck gun in hopes of slowing it down to close the range and make for an easy firing solution.
A few hits slowed it down to around 4kts, and we thus quickly closed in for the kill.
We opened tube 1 and revised our firing solution now that we were in a good position. Closing the distance certainly made for a much easier time dealing with the rough seas (will this storm pass already?!?!). Sadly, even with the close distance, I still had to use three torpedoes, with a successful impact on the third.
We passed by to watch what we couldn't have begun to imagine as we set out on our patrol. Our very first contact turned out to be an unescorted cargo ship from GB, and we managed to sink it!
We rotated the crew out for some much needed rest. We continued on our patrol towards our assigned grid of AM19 after sending in the report of our successful attack. While our technique I'm sure will likely get us killed in the future, we learned a lot and will revise our attack methods (open to advice!). By far the most difficult part is getting close enough and making a positive identification.