Another Career Down the Drain. (lesson to be learned!)

[Kaptlt.Endrass]

Back after a long break and wanted to share this tidbit.

Going home to Lorient after a relatively unsuccessful patrol in the Gibraltar approaches. My trusty VIIC/41 is plowing through pouring rain and high seas off of Portugal, late at night in fall of 1942. My inner kaluen is thinking this thunderstorm may well turn into a hurricane.

Not to mention the uneasy feeling.

We go to 70 meters and kill the engines, running an acoustic check. I change the watch to the more experienced crew and man the hydrophones. Nothing. After a good hour, we surface and hit the radar on. I don't want to take any chances, despite being less than 15 kilometers from neutral shores.

Theoreticaly, there should be minimal, if any, traffic, and mostly people NOT out to kill us. Hence the reason we choose this route on the way home with a damaged sub, having been escorted from a convoy by some lively English chaps who shared my love of things that go BOOM.

But I digress. The thunderstorm is really whipping up, with 28 knot winds and waves crashing over the deck. The officers agree that we should take cover in a neutral port, and a course is laid in for the nearest inlet: El Ferrol, I believe.

36 minutes later, we are 2 kilometers away when a shape rises out of the gloom. The bloody Nelson and Rodney are sitting five hundred+ meters away. As far as I can tell, their escorts had their radar and recievers off and we had been at a perfect angle to slip in between them.

I don't care about medals, tonnage or promotions. That inner kaluen is taking over as 18 VERY BIG cannons point at us as the radar finally picks up 14 contacts. One carrier and 11 DDs. Sadly, a single volley is all it takes.

My u-boat is lost with all her gallant crew.

And the only Bernard I can blame is in the radar factory. The only thing I can think:

Murphy's Law of Combat 75(?): Radar tends to fail at night and in bad weather, and especially during both.