Q: What was your new plan there?
My new plan was to do what we’d tried further south - to try and penetrate a little ways into the fjords themselves and see if we can spot some inshore traffic. By evening on the 8th of July conditions were favourable, and I took the boat into the mouth of Porsanger-fjord. I submerged as soon as we got close to the shore, and we got to within about 30 kilometers of Honningsvag, by which point our batteries were about ¼ of the way drained and I turned back around. It was on our way back out of the fjord that we finally got another contact.
Q: What was this contact?
Well, would you believe - it was a pair of ships, a German armed tug at the front, and a small motor merchant at the back. Just like our previous successful sinking! The seas, too, were getting choppy, like they were the first time. I started maneuvering for attack, with the exact same plan - fire a “comb” of 3 torpedoes from close range at the merchant. We were in attack position by 6:50 in the morning.
Q: Did it go just like your last attack?
Well, almost! I fired the comb right on the mark - 17, 13, and 9 degrees offset. Just like last time, the first torpedo missed - but this time, the Norwegian coaster’s crew must have seen its wake, because before the next two torpedoes got to it, he made a very steep turn right into them. Very smart, that skipper. Our aim was still good, but the 2nd torpedo passed under his keel without exploding, while the third hit at an oblique angle with a “thud” but no explosion - well, it blew up a little while later after hitting the fjord bottom and made a racket.
I wasn’t done with him yet, and ordered a sharp turn to bring our stern tubes to bear. But that didn’t work either - the Norwegian kept turning, and I’m sure he was trying to ram us. I ordered a dive, and it was a tight squeeze - we’d very narrowly cleared both the merchant’s bow and the fairly shallow bottom of the fjord, which we fortunately had to foresight to “ping” with our acoustic depth meter during the maneuver. I wasn’t ready to give up, but by the time I managed to get the boat to periscope depth, the merchant had turned tail to us and was getting out. There was no way we could catch up.
Q: Was it frustrating to see him get away like that?
Honestly, I don’t remember having any bad feeling about that attack afterwards. We’d got into perfect position and the shooting was accurate. We ran into a very good Norwegian skipper who acted smartly and saved his ship and crew, and I have to congratulate him on that. Our shooting was flawless otherwise, and as far as I’m concerned, that was 2 out of 3 torpedoes fired on the mark - a good record, even if they didn’t explode or sink anything.
Q: How did you feel about the torpedoes?
No particular way. They were based on Italian-made Whitehead designs and we didn’t really have much choice in them, they were all standard 53-38 type. I know some crews were a lot more experimental with their torpedo shooting, but kept my approach to them very simple - I knew that as long as we fired them at their slowest speed setting (30.5kt), moderately shallow depth (2-4m) and from a good close position (below 1km), they would sink ships. So I stuck to that. The two lowest apparatuses
[tubes] in the front room typically had their torpedoes set to their fastest speed off 44.5kt just in case, but I preferred not to use them.
I know one thing that our crew definitely felt about the torpedoes after that attack was… they were glad they had more space in the forward room! By that point we used up 7 of our 14 torpedoes on board, meaning all of the reserve torpedoes in the forward room had now been loaded into their tubes, and apparatus 1 was empty. This meant a lot more space and less chores for the crew there. By that point we’d also eaten our way through much of our provisions, so the boat got noticeably more spacious. Relatively, of course.
To be continued...