Grats on your new Uboat, unterseeman.
Highlights from Patrol 4
Nearing the year 1940 now, and it is my fourth patrol from Wilhelmshaven. We are in the Channel, roughly 80 kilometers southeast of Portland. Encountered a handful of merchant shipping, beginning from what I believe was the coast of Belgium and leaving a sparse trail of wreckage along the southern coast of England.
I do not remember precisely where on the map, but at some point I thought I would play chicken with an Elco. Ordered the gun and both flak mounts to be manned. It was headed straight toward us, so I decided to empty a bow tube at it. They saw the darn bubble trail and swerved to avoid it.
Didn't take long to close with them. We were dropping 88's all around them. I manned one of our flak mounts and ordered rudder full to port, to get my sights on them and still be able to fire. The engagement lasted probably 20 minutes or so. Toward the end the Elco ran straight away from us. I learned from earlier experience that a bubble trail will get them to turn hard, which bleeds energy and helps shorten the distance between boats. We can't go as fast, but in smoother waters my gun crew can be fairly accurate. We managed to score enough hits with the 88 to sink the bugger.
The following morning we were in pursuit of two contacts moving west out of the Channel. Hopes of catching them were fleeting at best, as we had picked them up late the afternoon before. At some point my Watch Officer yells out "Enemy ship engaging us, sir!".
I thought, "Well that's odd. There's nothing on the map but those two benign contacts...". Went up top to see what was happening, asked the WO for a bearing and he had nothing. Could hear shells flying overhead, so I tracked around with the UZO to our portside and saw a V&W with a full head of steam coming straight at us. She was less than 5,000 meters from us and the weather was clear. How could we not have seen it?
I'll keep a long story short. We were being shelled and had to get under pronto. The destroyer had a moments-old fix to rely on, which gave us enough time to evade with minor damage. After maybe fourty minutes I took a peek around through the periscope and saw an opportunity to sink our adversary.
Took three torpedos total. They evaded the first, took the second one under the stern. Thought that would do the trick, but it wasn't enough. She zig-zagged toward us, slowly, and I think maybe there was some damage after all. Within about 800 meters she seemed to be turning sluggishly away, so I set the third torpedo to run fast and fired. That did the trick. That was the first opportunity I've had to see up close and personal what a torpedo under the funnels will do!
Here's a screenie of her, snapped just after the keel had collapsed back into the water.
