Q: What was your next fight like?
That same evening, we spotted a couple of small vessels off Kjolle-fjord. We moved in to investigate. One towards the north looked like a fishing boat, so we left it alone for a bit; the other turned out to be a Vorpostenboot in the shallows near shore. We cautiously headed towards him. As it turned out, he was moving very slowly through the shallows - almost not at all. I’m not certain what he was doing - perhaps laying mines, perhaps something else. Nonetheless, I wasn’t going to question the opportunity, and maneuvered to try and attack him.
It was a bit misty in the evening, with the sun low in the sky. I figured if we approached him from just the right direction, the glare of the sun would actually prevent him from seeing us. I ordered some of the ballast tanks pre-flooded, and headed in with decks awash. We got to within 4km of him on the surface, and then dived to periscope depth. He did not see us. At 3km, I decided to take a chance and fire a torpedo. It missed.
However, he did not see it pass by him, making it possible for us to continue approach. The sun still hung low in the sky, and almost 40 minutes later, we were able to maneuver within 1200m of the guard ship and launch another torpedo. This time, it hit. He was gone within moments. Fearing a minefield, we surfaced and set off back to the north to see if we could find that fishing boat again.
Q: But you said you didn’t want to attack Norwegian fishermen?
War is war. We had to at least check, and it is our duty to deny communications in enemy territory, whatever they are. In any case, it turned out it was no fisherman. We found him in about an hour - it was a small motor schooner, just a little 100-ton boat of that sort that shuttled passengers and supplies to the many remote villages on Norway’s arctic shores. I’m not sure what brought him out of Kjolle-fjord that early morning of the 14th of July, but he was in our sights.
We positioned ourselves in a way that cut him off from the shore, and then I called the gun crews to the deck and called full speed ahead. We quickly raced towards him and fired a warning shot over his bow from the range of just under 3km. He responded immediately with his light, flashing at us brightly - which I was worried would give us away, but he fortunately turned out to be cooperative. We gave them a generous 20 minutes to evacuate into a lifeboat, then approached to close range and dispatched their unfortunate little vessel with a single shot from our 100mm cannon, and five from the 45mm AA gun.
Q: Were the crew of that boat alright?
I think so. We did not approach their lifeboat - our only exchange with them was a short signal to them, ordering them into their lifeboat in the first place. There was nothing in our standing orders about taking Norwegian prisoners, and they were only about 15km from the coast when we sank them. We denied communications in enemy territory, and that was our only business with them. Hope they made it to shore that same day, and told their countrymen to stop helping the Germans.
From there, we set off back towards Nordkapp. Our main problem was still German airplanes - that irritating waterplane, Arado I think it was, kept coming back and bombing us every once in a while. By this point, however, our fuel and supplies started running low. I decided that by morning on the 16th of July, we would depart the patrol area.
To be continued...