Q: Did you make it out of the straits safely?
Oh, we did far better than that!
For a few hours, everything was quiet. We ran down our battery to less than half capacity by then, and were looking forward to surfacing once it got darker. I would take the boat up for periscope checks every once in a while, but on the surface all we got was rough waves, lots of spray and mist, and broken cloud. Then, just before 5 o’clock, we picked up a hydroacoustic contact to our southwest, and soon determined it to be a convoy.
We again came up to check the periscope, and to my surprise, a huge tanker loomed in the mist, accompanied by a small armed vessel. We were already on their port beam, meaning that we wouldn’t be able to get ahead of them in a submerged position, but I decided to close distance and try our luck as best we could. At 17:10, I estimated the tanker’s distance at about 4.5 km away. The sea mist was fairly dense, and the boat was pitching hard, making measurements difficult (in fact it was even difficult to keep depth), but I knew we wouldn’t get a better shot. So I risked it.
At 17:13, I released a “comb” of four torpedoes, firing at the target passed 21-17-13-9 degrees off our bow. Because of the distance, the intervals between torpedoes fired were larger than usual. Then all we could do is cross our fingers and hope our estimates were right. Fortunately, the tactic did not let me down - 3 and a half minutes later, two torpedoes hit, much to our exhilaration. That meant that they ran for some 3200 meters - not bad for a shot based largely on guesswork at a foggy target!
When I raised the scope, I realized that the hits were less than ideal; we’d hit the target right in the bow and stern, not causing heavy flooding or structural damage. However, this mattered little, because it seems that the stern hit disabled the big tanker’s screw, leaving it helpless in the water. It had turned slightly before stopping, and I decided that as we had some time, we would turn around and finish it with a shot from a stern tube.
Escort ships - turned out there were two of them - came to its aid. One seemed to approach the tanker itself, likely to help rescue the crew; the other dropped depth bombs somewhere far from our actual position. At 17:31, I fired a single stern shot; a couple of minutes later, the tanker
exploded in a big fireball. All of this happened close to within sight of shore - quite a sight.
Q: How did you feel about blowing up a tanker like this?
Quite good, actually. We figured that the tanker must have been carrying aviation kerosene, because it detonated very violently when hit by the last torpedo, rather than simply burning up. This gave us some satisfaction, having taken our share of air attacks and being threatened by German air superiority over the front and our base as well. I estimated that tanker to have been about 10000 tons in size, and we knew that the Germans did not have many such ships - so this was an important victory for us.
The tanker crew had some 20 minutes to evacuate between the two torpedo attacks, and the convoy’s escorts seemed to give up rather quickly, perhaps to pull the survivors from the rough seas as quickly as possible. We left the area, reloading our torpedoes underwater, and avoiding all further contact. By then our batteries were ⅔ drained.
I called “otboi” [secure from battle stations], and we were safely surfaced just before 9 in the evening to listen to the evening news. We reported our own news on the radio to base, which I’m sure was greeted with approval.
To be continued...