Well U-93 completed her 4th patrol tonight. our original orders were to depart from kiel and proceed to brest. I decided to run the gauntlett and run surfaced through the english channel at night, much shorter trip across and would give us valuable range should BDu decide to send us out hunting - likely given the fact we left with a full tank of gas and a full load of torpedoes..
Arrive in the grid for brest, and soon enough, word comes through that we are to hunting at my discression....so I turn our boat towards the irish sea.
As we get up into grid am97, we get a report of a convoy nearby. I head towards the convoy and only reward I get is to run into a nearby Hunt class destroyer! must have been the outer convoy screen, She nearly runs us over, but we get deep enough.
I creep upto 13m and manage a stern tube shot when she is around 500m and am suprised to score direct hit! SHE's GONE!
Later I head south towards the isle of man where I get back in touch with the convoy. however not before I manage to sink a lone modern merchant, for 7400GRT. Upon discovering the convoy I thought was in existence, it was marely sister ships, a large merchant and a medium cargo in tandem.
Sailing at break-neck speed in stormy seas we shadow them for some time before a shot becomes possible. I manage to somehow sink both of them!
Med Merchant @ 4405GRT
Lg Merchant @ 7496 GRT
Quite disappointing totals but we will take them anyway and they add to the great score achieved in my last patrol (#3). Soon we are chased by an annoying CD class destroyer, apparently named "HMS Duncan".
She makes quite a large number of runs on us and manges to cause a fair bit of damage to us and takes out one of my diesel engines, the other was able to be repaired!
Soon I began to lose patience with her and brought myself upto periscope depth. I fire a bubble-less type 2 torpedo and order a crash dive to 50m. an explosion is heard which sounded like a depth charge going off...however upon settling at 50m my sound-man indicates no more contacts!!!
disbelieving him I jump into the hydrophone seat and put on the headphones, and slowly rotate the dial! He's right! there isn't anything more! "Zero deipher!" Is ordered and we proceed upwards to periscope depth again.
Up scope and the view yealds a blank sea!
So I goes onto the tannoy to tell the boys of our great luck! we've bagged a second destroyer this patrol through our balsy rear torpedo tube technique and I am sure I also scored a similar kill on anti sub vessels on my last patrol too!
We all stand down from battle stations and beer & wine is served to the lads, with me and one of my XO's sipping on me best chardonnay i've been saving!
We turn for home and arrive back at brest some three days later to find the scharnhorst and gniesau are in! quite a sight they are too!
Our next patrol I think will be in a few weeks once u-93 is repaired....DT grids are apparently on the list for our next patrol..........I've never been THERE before!!
