Bad Timing

[the.terrabyte.pirate]

I started a new career with GWX 2.1, and began in the August peace. I took my type VIIB from Wilhelmshaven and headed out to our assigned patrol grid BF 17. "Ahh", says I, "Let's do a channel run now while it's peacefull and take in the sights." So I head on through the channel watching the merchant ships sail hither and thither without a care in the world. My crew and I practise some torp attacks to break up the boredom. We get to our patrol grid, spend 24 hours looking for whales, and then head back up through the channel at ahead full, and back to dock at Wilhelmshaven. We were in a hurry to head back as we'd run out of hot chocolate.

After returning, we put back to sea on the 28th of August. Again, our patrol grid was BF 17. There must be something in that particular square of ocean that interests my superiors. "Well", says I, "It will be quicker to head back through the channel again." Rumours of war are circulating, so this time I decide to conserve my fuel and we head out at 8 knots. We are approaching dover on the 31st when we receive word that early the following morning we will be at war with Poland. Well, we won't have enought time to retrace our steps, so we decide to go ahead. I figure that even if Britain declares war, it won't be for a few days, but tensions are on edge so we submerge and continue through the channel. i hope we'll be on station at the outbreak of the war.

Well, seems that I should have paid more attention to my history class. I get a message from BDU advising that we can now target british shipping. I take a look at my map to discover that the friendly green neutral britain and france is now an angry red britain and france. I'm now halfway through the channel, surrounded by enemies, at the start of the second world war. The fat merchants I saw on the first patrol have vanished and been replaced by fleets of asw trawlers and elco torp boats.

Everyone on U-51 now thinks I'm an idiot, and we're all about to die on the first day of the war. How inglorious.

[mcf1]

Bad luck!!!
Imagine visiting an english port, like Dover, surrounded by destroyers and
suddenly the war starts.

[the.terrabyte.pirate]

Additional...

If we're going down, we're going down fighting. We were submerged at peri depth and travelling at 3 knots, waiting for it to get dark to surface and make a final run out of the west end of the channel at flank. Suddenly my hydro operator picked up a merchant sailing at slow speed towards us. When it gets close I pop up the peri and see a small french merchant. I position the boat next to his path of travel, and wait. His path of travel takes him within 700 meters of our position, so we wait till he reaches 90 degrees from our angle of bow, rev the engines to ahead full, surface the boat, and then start pumping deck gun shells into him as we travel on a parallel path next to each other. In less than a minute he's sinking towards davy jones locker while we're running on the surface at flank speed, getting the hell out of dodge before we'll drop to peri depth and crawl away.

1 merc sunk on the first day of the war with France. Not to shabby, but there's still a lot of channel to go.