The close shave of das Doppeltes Sieben

After a fantastic start of our forth patrol, we endured a week of absolute no contacts, made worse by the fact we had crystal-clear, perfect weather. That was nothing to sneer at for January, I might add.

The atmosphere inside our boat became electric and supercharged after we plotted the contact update we received via radio:



The result of that interception has been already reported. But we left off with das Doppeltes Sieben enduring a long and arduous depth charging. Would U-77 ever see St. Nazaire again?

After several hours we finally managed to give the remaining two black swans the slip. Considering both were still ablaze, and one had finally come to a dead stop with the other's top speed 5 knots, slipping wasn't all that terribly difficult. Turning to place them at our stern I gave the all ahead full order, remaining at 15 meters depth, intending to run for at least two full hours, dropping to ahead slow after fifteen minutes in order to conserve the remaining battery charge.

Good thing I did, too. After 30 minutes I popped the observation scope up, to make a 360 scan, only to discover a third black swan heading our way, this one completely undamaged and feeling frisky.

Although it was over 9,000 meters away, it still detected me. Mostly my fault: I chose not to maximize efforts at silence and evasion, sure it had no idea we were in the vicinity.

Heh.

The following three hours was Hell incarnate. No matter what I did, or tried, I simply couldn't lose it. Five pattern passes . . . ten . . . fifteen . . . I was gradually being battered, losing systems and power, until near the end my maximum speed was 1 knot, I was slowly rising up, and my surviving batteries almost drained.



Finally, unable to manuever quickly enough to attempt keeping my profile aspect narrowed, I came to all stop, silent running . . . and did nothing. Just floated.

For the next two hours I was treated to the sounds of it continuing to circle . . . ping . . . aim . . . surge forward at high speed directly over me . . . and repeating that again and again.

Thankfully without dropping any more ashcans.

I was dead meat, and by all rights and reasoning we should be littering the ocean floor, the legacy of das Doppeltes Sieben short and bitter. Instead, our hunter gradually drifted further and further astern, finally abandoning its search and steaming off. I've no idea why, but I'm extraordinarily thankful.

We finally surfaced, burying our one lost crewman as we frantically continued repairs. Nothing would fix our one diesel; the yard dogs would need to dig their teeth into that. The same with our aft batteries. Whatever battery charge we had remaining was all we had; there was no recharging.

Running our one remaining diesel to ahead full we set our course for home, first radioing in a contact and a patrol report. About an hour later we updated our maps upon receiving a new contact report:



We might not have been able to finish off the crippled black swans, but it seems as if one of our pack members will do the job!

Never have I been so thankful to finally snub against the bollards and come to a rest. Our slip has never looked so inviting! I'm not sure how my superior officers are going to react to my after action reports, but I've been completely honest in them: U-77 returned safely not due to my actions but due to luck. And while I've garnered a respectable patrol history, unless I want to see that log end with only four successful patrols, I'm going to have to show a bit more caution and wisdom in the future.