To bad for me it was her lucky day, I was at a perfect 90° angle at 600 meters. Waves were 3-4 meters high which made it hard to keep her in my periscope. I launched my forward two eels with 1 going for the center turret setting medium speed at 10 meters depth and i put the second between the bridge and the smoke stack. with the eels gone I made a hard starboard turn at flank speed. The two eels hit home but the Rodney didn't seem to be botherd with it, there were no secondairy explosions but i think she was crippled because the smoke from the smoke plume from stack was gone and the cruisers were starting to make circles with more lights than a christmas tree so were 2 VW destroyers which kinda made me want to rush things as I could hear a faint ASDIC comming my way. When I finally turned round I popped the scope back up, I did a 360° quick assesment of the situation, A VW comming staight for me, I could've better put a "here I am" sign up running at flank
.I saw the Rodney plodded off at slow speed with no listing I quickly set up for the stern shot. Due the fact that i could just see her stern had no idea what distance nor the speed And I didn't have the luxury of time, an asdic getting louder in your ear certanly makes me want to rush things. I took a guess shot and orderd a hard right dive to 50 meters. Went deep till at 30 meters I got the doomsday message "steur lauft an" and the following "wasserbomben". Here we go, they went off pretty close shaking us like a wodka martini. I could hear the leaks the muffeld swears especially from the bow torpedo room and I'm pretty sure my Chief engineer left a package in his trousers by the cramped way he was standing and the weird way he was looking at me. Went to the bow to check the damage and it wasn't pretty, my ankles in the water due to a nasty leak, tube 1 and 3 destroyed and a bunch of wet sailors who would like a not so friendly word with their idiot of an Oberleutnant z. S.. And all for nothing as I looked at my stop watch noticing the neelde was allready well beyond the estimated impact time. A huge barage of swears went up the could be heard not only inside the boat but also throughout my house. As my chief called out 60 meters I thought he was starting to crack under pressure because I only orderd a 50 meter dive. As I reminded him of his duty's he reminded me that the extra ballast in the bow was making it difficult to keep the boat level even on flank speed. The navigator also stepped in to reminded me of the echo lot reading, 70 meters, I orderd before we made the attack. As I processed the data provided by my 2 crewmen. I could only mutter all stop acompanied by a br..... Next thing I rememberd was lying upside down in the radio room with my chief telling me we are at 50% battery power because of the damage done to the forward batteries. As I thought could this get any worse it did as the destroyer turned round and I could hear the faint ASDIC's message of impending doom. Lucky for me the English were to busy playing with their searchlights upstairs that they missed me completly my boat didn't even wiggle when the charges went off, but that could've been credited to my bow which was stuck nose deep in the sand. As my boat settled nicely on the bottom the leaks were fixed and repairs were made the crew relaxed a bit with the comfort knowing the depth charges were getting dropped farther and farther away. After a few hours there were no more sound contacts so I orderd the boat to periscope depth. Surfaced after a quick 360° sweep and plotted the cruise home. I docked with my bruced ego, although 40K's of shipping was sunk on my watch, I could only hope to meet the Rodney again when I have a full complement of loaded bow tubes. And reminded myself that my quest for glory nearly meant my untimely demise and I was lucky it still was '39.
(En het is inderdaad plezant om een Belg te zien)