Q: Did you succeed?
Well, not quite. We weren’t in a great firing position,so I ordered the boat to dive a little deeper and make a dash at 5 knots to get in position. When we got to periscope depth again, it turned out that I overshot the planned firing position, but the Vorpostenboot also turned and then dropped a pair of depth charges somewhere far off our stern. He must have heard us at some point, so I certainly underestimated his abilities!
Q: You were depth-charged in the fjord, then?
You could say that. The Vorpostenboot’s attack was nowhere near accurate, but his minelayer friend nearby also interrupted his duties and came. There was one tense moment after the minesweeper dropped his first pair of charges far off our stern, he ended up passing directly over our actual position. If he’d dropped the bombs then, we would have had a lot of problems. But he didn’t. They both just circled somewhere behind us for the next hour, sporadically bombing the water, and we slowly snuck away at 40m of depth, quiet as mice.
We spent the rest of the day getting out of the fjord, and then at midnight reported back to HQ by radio, detailing what what we’ve seen there.
To be continued