Well in the most recent patrol i was going to the north coast of Ireland, or atleast that was the mission.
Along the way I decided to move close to the british coast in order to pick of some coastal merchants.But that was not to be the case since an two engined aircaft came (i think it is anson but i never verified it) and well since the depth was only 29 meters i decided that going unerwater was not very good solution.The plane attacked my boat probably 5-6 times at that time we fired 800 !!! rounds with some hit but the plane just could be downed.Pretty annoying indeed.
No damage was suffered however and that was the good news.Along the way some 200 kilometers SE from scapa flow i saw what i believed to be some ocean liner.Funny though i got wrong solution and fired(and indetification) at the ship, it happen to be not a liner but empire freigher.However the torps hit beacause later when i tried to repeat the measurments with the true ship it happen to be just right
Later we came to a large mearchant (this time succesifuly identified) and was launched toward the bottom.
Anyway some 80 km NW of scapa flow at bright daylight i come across another airplane.First thing to do (with only 200rounds) was to dive but after i saw it was a swordfish i toldmyself "Pff a swordfish, we gonna send it to the bottom", well as you know the KMS Bismark crew probably was thinking the same.Next thing to happen was to surface the boat , fire few rounds them BANG the bombs fell just left and right of the sub barely missing us.No really major damage was done but quite scary experience.THe plane was set no fire but they managed to retreat.
There havent pass one hour after this encounter and this time 2 swordfishes came.Since we detected them early i decided to engage (i forgot that i had only 51!!! munitions left) By the time when i understood why the gun stoped firing they were almost above us (one was downed however) we dived and a bomb detoneted just behind the bridge ! The whole sub had some floodings and quite a damage to repair that we couldnt fix before we came back to Wilhemshafen.For the next 2 days i was constantly hunded by swordfishes and better yet my sub could stay at constant depth below 2 knots.
Funny though after i finaly got to the base (i though my hull integrity was below 50% because of the extensive damages to the subsystems) i saw that it was 98%. I was quite annoyed considering that with only 4 torps i sunk 16k tons i the patrol seemed to be going quite well
It seemed that the reason for the small hull damage was that beacause we were already below the water the bombed detonated at some distance (however there was quite a whole in the external steel hull)