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Capt Bathtub · 12-29-06, 08:29 PM

A confessional
For three hours we edged our way from the convoy as 2 escorts circled several miles from us in a rather useless fashion. As a parting shot, Carlewitz starts to sing "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves". This ordinarily strait-laced officer is finally lightening up a bit, though he'll never be invited to the Burlesque Hour that is held in the aft torpedo room every now and then. He's too much of a Nazi.

Just as the boat was being readied for surfacing and a start made on the return passage, a straggler is picked up on the hydrophone, south of the convoy that has long passed. A quick course change and 20 minutes later the periscope is turned towards a large cargo vessel, listing and managing only about 1 knot. It flies the flag of the neutral, US. For several seconds I pondered this but the American-made tanks tied down on the upper deck favoured one opinion only - one eel into the midships, magnetic. She went down fast. Which is what American girls do, apparently.

As the boat chugs it's way back to port and I sit in my office, the deck gun, the past 20 months seems a world away. Our patrols in the U-1, a type II, where we mainly toured the coast of England. Looking at things. It was a fine wee boat though, cosy, intimate. Actually it was rather claustrophobic but as we didn't have much of a range that didn't really present itself as a problem. No, now that we have the U-71 and can roam for weeks, now it is a problem. G.Wissman has taken to yanking the hairs from his nostrils in the pitiful logic that it will help remove the smell. Some of those hairs are extraordinarily long.

But that first patrol in a type VII was an introduction to what a real Unterseeboot is. Before, in the U-1, it was the consensus of the crew that we should remain on the surface as much as possible. This might have been caused by the inelegant demonstration of crash diving conducted by A.Mayer where we...well, bounced off the seabed and re-surfaced. A fine example of the delicacies involved in Modern Naval Warfare. Now the U-71, however, was all class and as A.Conrad remarked in a misplaced but believable New Jersey accent, "She's a regular lady".

We cut our teeth in this boat at the approaches to Hartlepool harbour where we inched forward as far as possible (nets, mines, shallow waters, some destroyers and fishing boats, nothing a seasoned Kaleun like me can't handle) and then lobbed as many torpedoes as we could in towards a large tanker and cargo ship, giddy with excitement. Then all hell broke loose as RN ships came charging in from everywhere, they even built new ships, launched them and conducted a shake-down cruise by depth charging the sheisser out of us. Let's just say that if we'd draped a towel across the conning tower we would have been mistaken for any other fat English nanna sunbaking amongst the barbed wire - this is how we crawled along a beach to safety.

The war seems to be a long and ever increasing list of things we don't ever, ever do again.

12-29-06, 08:29 PM	#11
Capt Bathtub Swabbie Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: in the bathtub Posts: 7 Downloads: 2 Uploads: 0	May 28th 1941 A confessional For three hours we edged our way from the convoy as 2 escorts circled several miles from us in a rather useless fashion. As a parting shot, Carlewitz starts to sing "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves". This ordinarily strait-laced officer is finally lightening up a bit, though he'll never be invited to the Burlesque Hour that is held in the aft torpedo room every now and then. He's too much of a Nazi. Just as the boat was being readied for surfacing and a start made on the return passage, a straggler is picked up on the hydrophone, south of the convoy that has long passed. A quick course change and 20 minutes later the periscope is turned towards a large cargo vessel, listing and managing only about 1 knot. It flies the flag of the neutral, US. For several seconds I pondered this but the American-made tanks tied down on the upper deck favoured one opinion only - one eel into the midships, magnetic. She went down fast. Which is what American girls do, apparently. As the boat chugs it's way back to port and I sit in my office, the deck gun, the past 20 months seems a world away. Our patrols in the U-1, a type II, where we mainly toured the coast of England. Looking at things. It was a fine wee boat though, cosy, intimate. Actually it was rather claustrophobic but as we didn't have much of a range that didn't really present itself as a problem. No, now that we have the U-71 and can roam for weeks, now it is a problem. G.Wissman has taken to yanking the hairs from his nostrils in the pitiful logic that it will help remove the smell. Some of those hairs are extraordinarily long. But that first patrol in a type VII was an introduction to what a real Unterseeboot is. Before, in the U-1, it was the consensus of the crew that we should remain on the surface as much as possible. This might have been caused by the inelegant demonstration of crash diving conducted by A.Mayer where we...well, bounced off the seabed and re-surfaced. A fine example of the delicacies involved in Modern Naval Warfare. Now the U-71, however, was all class and as A.Conrad remarked in a misplaced but believable New Jersey accent, "She's a regular lady". We cut our teeth in this boat at the approaches to Hartlepool harbour where we inched forward as far as possible (nets, mines, shallow waters, some destroyers and fishing boats, nothing a seasoned Kaleun like me can't handle) and then lobbed as many torpedoes as we could in towards a large tanker and cargo ship, giddy with excitement. Then all hell broke loose as RN ships came charging in from everywhere, they even built new ships, launched them and conducted a shake-down cruise by depth charging the sheisser out of us. Let's just say that if we'd draped a towel across the conning tower we would have been mistaken for any other fat English nanna sunbaking amongst the barbed wire - this is how we crawled along a beach to safety. The war seems to be a long and ever increasing list of things we don't ever, ever do again.