My Most Dangerous Moment with Aircraft
I had been creeping up on a convoy in poor weather when I got pinged. I immediately went to 179 meters depth, but with three escorts circling me one of them always seemed to get in a lucky ping. Finally, after almost 3 hours, I shook them off.
The convoy was long gone, but I surfaced in 9 km (moderate) visibility and began following the escorts as they headed (medium speed) back towards the convoy. After two hours I had kind of located the convoy. I knew that it was somewhere to the southeast of me because I saw an escort come from that direction doing its little search dance. Meanwhile the three escorts were SSW of me as I was threading the needle trying to get close enough to the convoy to see a cargo ship and determine the exact course so I could go out and around to take it on.
It was at that moment that a fighter aircraft showed up heading towards me from south by south east. Obviously, as you know, the real danger was not the aircraft. The problem was all four escorts immediately made a beeline for my position.
I did not crash dive. We manned the flak gun and we fired at the onrushing plane as it strafed us. It didn't hit us, and we didn't hit it. As soon as it passed we crash dived. After another hour in the depths of the ocean they gave up on us and I surfaced to find it raining heavily.
I gave up on the convoy and went in search of better weather.
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