Well here is the patrol report of the second War patrol of U-49.
We were waved off at the pier by the Flotilla Commander and other high rankers.
When we had only just left the pier i noticed that the Blucher had layed anchor during the night in port.
We had unaventfull passage through the Kiel canal and and returned the hellos and waves of the people of Brunstbuttle as we clear the canal in to open water.
Not long after breaking out into open water we spotted some locals out on a pleasure cruise. My number one jokingly said we should give the deck gun crew something to shoot. But we both knew the deck gun crew would have there fun in time.
After clear the channel that leads to the Canal we put the enigines to ahead one third and went through the normal drills to keep the men fresh and on the ball.
Five days after leaving kiel we were just North West of Lerwick and it was late evening and we were conducting are hourly hyderphone check when i got the call that we had a sound contact moving in we altered course to what should give us our best chance of shot should i be an enemy ship. Just after 02.00am we up the scope and there just under 1000m of our bow was a large british merchant. A nice juicey target to get the patrol off to a great start.
At a range of 900m we let lose with 2 torps everyone had there fingers crossed that the attck would be sucessful.
Then right on time expolsion followed by another YESS to hits right amidships the ship stops dead in the water. She starts to sink by the bow then is slips under the waves and is gone.
After the sinking of the large Merchant we continued on our course to our patrol grid of AM 76, For the next 5 days we did not see another ship or even pick up any contacts on the hyderphone. But we did play crash dive games with the enemy planes that seem to be hunting for us after the sinking of there ship.
The days of no contact changed on the 9th of Nov when we were on are hyderphone check we picked up a faint contact at a constaint distance. We surfaced at once and ran off on a interseption course after 2 hours at high speed the look outs spotted smoke on the hirszon. We closed into a range of 2000m and open fire on a british small merchant, The deck gun crew went to work and in the early morining they sunk the second ship of the patrol with just over 20 shells.
After the sinking it was back on our original couse to our patrol grid we had been on course for three days after are last sinking without sighting so much a fish ,
When we pick up yet another sound contact we surfaced and set off on a course to find the contact it turned out to be yet another British small Merchant, we closed the gap to her to around 1200m then opened up with the deck gun in worsening weather. After and 30min action the deck gun crew had her heading to the bottom this was turning into a good patrol.
After the sinking it was off to our selcted patrol grid we patroled there for the ordered 24 hours then i desided that we would turn back north to the hunting grounds northwest of Ireland. We had only been in that area when we ran into a outward bound pryo ammo ship. We closed the gap to her and opened up with the deck gun. After only a few hits she was a blaze but the weather was getting to bad to aim well enough so i desided to finsh her off with a torpedo the fish malfuctioned so we fired another and it hit with a big bang amidships.
The next morining we spotted a small merchant trying to make her way to England.
She was sent to the bottom with the trusty deck gun crew the victors yet again, though we only have 60 rounds left for the beast now.
Stay tuned for part two