[Bosje]

December 31st, 1939. U-2, grid AN47 (just a few miles off the English North Sea coast)


-9:30 am
Soon it will be a new year, I wonder what it will be like: new year's eve in wartime, in enemy waters. If I can cause a nice big explosion somewhere around midnight, that would be great for morale. But morale is very high already. We have not taken so much as a scratch so far, while we have sunk quite a few vessels, including 2 warships. This is our fourth feindfahrt and the second one in our new boat. Still a Type II but an improved one, it has an unbelievable operational radius and it's supposed to be able to go deeper as well. We have never gone anywhere but the North Sea though, and we have never had to dive deep out of necessity. I do not like this boat, the bridge is very crowded and crammed full of stuff, it means the watch crew can't do their jobs properly. And it's still a coastal boat. A patrol craft, really. Wait until I get my hands on a proper fleet boat, then the Brits better watch themselves. I am getting way too cocky. It's part of the image I project towards my crew. The cocky young boy who gets away with murder. Except it's not murder, it's successful war patrols. I still fail to feel guilty, we have a simple job to do.


We are all starting to get routines. As seamen everyone is highly superstitious and everything is either an omen or a ritual. The stupid grin on my face as we run away from the scene of the crime is one of them. The crew are starting to get used it, and love it. It means we put it to the enemy with just a handful of lads in a tin can of sardines. This lingo is very silly but it's all part of the game: the first officer makes a point of grumbling about our crowded can of sardines every time he climbs down from the bridge, so now our crew are sardines. As long as I grin, the boat is happy, if I light a cigarette in the control room, we are in trouble. They are also getting used to seeing me retreat to my quarters whenever we have to wait out for some time, looking for contacts, taking up a position, whatever. I worried that the officers would feel bad about the commander bailing out on them while the enemy was know to be present, but as it turns out they are happy about being left in charge in those situations. As long as I don't go writing while we are being depthcharged, but we have not yet experienced that. In fact, the only enemy combat units we have encountered are 3 destroyers (1 of which we sank on our first patrol, the other 2 were only heard on the hydrophone in very heavy weather) one patrol craft, not much more than a trawler with some guns welded to her (which we sank) and 2 aircraft coming in on a bombing run (one of which we shot down). So far, this is all going much too easy, there has to be a catch.


I want to write about my officers and crew but now is not the time. It's a beautiful clear winter's day which is a bad thing for U-2 and I need to check on our sound contacts.


-10:30 am
Bah, the contacts seem to be moving away but they are so far away, Karl can't be sure, all he can give me is 'screws' but I can hear that myself. When the boat is completely silent and still, that is. I like to do this, listen to our prey together with him. He sometimes explains how he can hear the approximate speed and course and I love it. Very much the predator in me, I suppose.


Anyway that's why I'm here. To sneak up on their sheep and slaughter them, perhaps have the odd head to head with one of the guard dogs. My mind wanders off and I need to have a smoke: I could run on the surface at full speed for an hour or two, the weather is absolutely wonderful which gives my flak gun a decent chance. Especially after Konrad has gotten his flak gun certificate and is now our official sharpshooter (sadly, the medal for Gottfried still hasn't come through. BdU maybe has doubts about giving a machinist credit for shooting down a hurricane.) Anyway, running on the surface in these conditions right under the noses of the RAF is just a bad idea, I am not that cocky.


-4:30 pm
Ok, so I am that cocky after all. The boys are dying to end the year with a loud bang and, frankly, so am I. We ran on the surface all afternoon, recharging the batteries and waiting for the enemy to show up. Nothing. We dived just now to have a thorough eavesdrop on our surroundings but again, nothing. Might as well just go a bit deeper and have a toast to Winston Churchill and his crew of bowler hats. If Otto, my navigator and hustler extraordinaire, hasn't got some booze smuggled onboard and stowed away somewhere I shall be very disappointed. Now I'm off to the bridge to watch the sun set on 1939.


-5:00 pm
Things are sure heating up! As we surfaced 10 minutes ago, a radio message came in from BdU. Standard contact report on a lone merchant making around 9 kts due north. If we steam due east we shall run into his portside for a lovely shot abeam. The boat is doing 12 knots and the watch crew are aware I do not want to be surprised by anything that might disrupt my fireworks setup. Otto just came back to me, he heard the crew whisper about stalking it through the evening and blowing it up at midnight, but I think that may be pushing it just a bit too much. We will attract the hunters soon enough anyway, I am sure they are around but we have not yet picked them up on the hydrophones. We just had a little dip below to listen on the phones, screws are churning 45 degrees off our starboard, exactly where they should be. Looks like he is doing 8 knots, that gives us a nice little edge to play with.


-6:10 pm
We are at action stations, ship sighted 5 kilometers away, our plotting has been extremely accurate and we are still well in front of her. I shouldn't be in here, scribbling away, and these will be my last notes of the night, but I thought I should write this down because it is a special night. Happy new year, happy hunting in 1940!




January 1st, 1940. U-2, grid AN73


-4:00 am
The party has long been over, it's the end of my watch, I'll have a sip of schnapps and go to bed. Oh, we sunk the merchant at 18:20 but it went down without a fuss. A single torpedo, a flash and rumble through the shrouds of fog that had begun to float eerily across the water, and she went straight down. We were looking for a lifeboat or some other sign of survivors, to at least give them some food and spirits as we had given them the worst possible new year's party, but we found none, it just went down too fast I guess. It wasn't an anti-climax though, we got one after all. Now I am tired.


-10:30 am
What a mess. We picked up a sound contact, intercepted it, ran a surface dash to get into firing position and lined up tubes 1 and 2. It was yet another small English merchant. Suddenly she started to zig-zag. So much for our firing position. We were still the faster though and we ran around her just to prove the point. Periscope depth halfway through the flanking manouvre, she now had no idea where we were. Turned round, and went for a quick launch while she still showing us her full port flank on her zig. This is the 'conversation' as far as I can recall:


1...fertig...1....los! 1 los! I yelled 'Verdammt Udo, los!' At last, a hiss and the eel was gone. 'Udo we were still coming around, that one is going to miss, line up 2 straight away! 2...fertig...2...los! Los! Udo what are you doing down there!'


The torpedoes had been set to run fast and were both past their estimated impact time and we were not seeing any great explosions. It did not surprise me as they had been fired on the setting we'd been on 5 seconds previously and we were still coming around to port. 'Udo line up 3 and make sure it runs true or I will personally come down there and manually can every last sardine in there! Nonsense of course as I am quite small but I am still the captain of this tub. Rudder amidships, line it up, fertig? I heard the yells coming up through the the hatch: 'Why the hell is it closed? Well open it up again! Now!'


Udo, fertig? Jawohl Herr Kaleun, 3 fertig. 3 Los! 3 los, Herr Kaleun. That was a new one, he never called me Herr Kaleun while we went through the quick salvo of orders which is typical for hectic situations, there just isn't enough time. As we later found out, the tube doors had all been closed before we launched the torpedoes and only the nco who had to hit the firing switch noticed this as he was ordered to hit that switch. He quickly cranked open the relevant door but it was already too late for an accurate shot. This was bad enough but it happened again, 10 seconds later on the second torpedo.


This time I was the shopkeeper and the crew were the naughty schoolboys, but they weren't grinning.
'Well, all of you miserable sardines. At least we got her in the end and we are still alive, that's what counts. There will be no keelhailing just yet. Now let's figure out how this happened and make sure it won't happen again. 'Maybe it was the schnapps, Herr Kaleun'
I roared 'Schnapps my sterntube! What are you laughing at!'


Bad call, I was losing authority here. (mental note: don't use any running gags while you give the crew a tough talking to, everybody knew about me and my sterntubes. The ones found on fleet submarines, that is. I desperately wanted my commission of a Type VII and on our last patrol I heard more than one crewmember announce they were gonna fire one from the sterntube as they went to the head)
It was as much my own fault as it was theirs, both the s****** during the reprimand and the bad shooting. And it was new year's day. 'Well men, I trust our last torpedo will suffer no such embarrassing fate?' 'Nein Herr Kaleun!' 'Very well, get out my sight. Udo, get me some coffee and bring it to my bunk, will you?' And he did.


As it turned out, we were so cocky that when we found ourselves thwarted by this little merchant and her zigzags, we were all so surprised that nobody thought about opening the tube doors in the pandemonium. Here endeth the lesson, I suppose. Better shape up from now on, after all it's only a thin bit of tin around us sardines.




January 3rd, 1940. U-2, grid AN98 (just off Wilhelmshaven)


-8:00 am
We are almost home and the grin is back on my face. We sunk another small freighter with our last torpedo and went home in good spirits and good weather. This patrol has been a lot different from our second and third patrol. The weather was horrible throughout both patrols, which is why I have not written in this journal on either of them. We have sunk a handful of merchants and one small patrol craft in total, while trying to keep the boat in decent shape in the storm which seemed to just always rage around the English coast. You can never see beyond 600 meters and you are wet, cold and miserable all the time. I tried to write an entry in this journal on our second patrol but everything was just so wet I decided against it and keep the journal safe and dry in my locker. Oh I got the Iron Cross after the third patrol, the crew made a fuss about it but I'm not impressed to be honest.


Leutnant zur See Vom Bosch,
KaptanLeutnant Type IId U-2