U-2 War Journal

[Bosje]

September 7th, 1939. U-2, grid AF87.


-9:40 am
Udo gave me a strange look 2 minutes ago, as I went to my bunk. I have left him in charge of U-2 for the upcoming half hour, all he has to do is steer the boat due east at full speed for a bit. Of course, strictly speaking, he is my Weapons Officer but Fritz is still asleep and I did not see any need to go to battle stations just yet. I have half an hour of time to kill and I decided to kill it by starting my war journal. I doubt I will be able to sleep much anyway and I shouldn't, considering there is a merchant vessel some 20 kilomets away from us.


I picked up this little writing journal about a week ago, when the war started. I do not know much about war but I am assuming that, as an officer in command of a boat and crew, I will not be at liberty to share or even show my emotions much, even though I am sure I will be scared, petrified or even mortified sooner or later. So, listening to the advice of my Naval Academy tutor who served on U-boats in '14-'18, I will entrust my doubts, fears and frustrations to this journal while I act the part of fearless and cunning commander in front of my men. Leutnant zur See Vom Bosch, most promising graduate from his class in the Academy, part of the elite on paper. Nice, all I can do from there is to disappoint, really.


So much for my first entry, it's time to submerge and listen in on my sonar contact.


-10:45 pm
Well, I am feeling disappointed but I had better get used to it; it is to be expected when one patrols the sea just off the Norwegian Fjords north of Bergen. As I went to periscope depth, to check on our contact, there was already a plume of smoke on the horizon right where it should have been. I positioned myself in textbook fashion for a kill shot with my last eel, but the red flag on the mast winked at me with a hint of blue lines. Not the red ensign after all, a simple Norwegian coastal freighter. I left it alone.


Several hours later a tugboat crossed my path, I let it sail away but the crew are starting to get bored. We are not a fleet submarine after all, we do not have the facilities to cruise around the oceans for weeks on end, looking for fat targets. We are a Type IIA coastal U-boat, fit for short aggressive patrols, put the 5 cigars into whichever hull we come across and be back home in time for tea and sausages. That seems to be the general idea, anyway. Well, the crew may be bored now but we are already successful on this, our first feindfahrt. This is our 5th day at sea but we already sent an enemy ship to the bottom. Perhaps the first kill of the war, who knows?


We were on our way to our assigned patrol grid when Martin got a radio message from a patrol craft, indicating an English Merchant steaming from the Skagerak to England. My boat is not very fast, at best it can do 12 knots, but after some calculations together with Otto, my navigator, we figured we should be able to get within visual range after 3 hours of steaming at full speed. As it turned out, we were right and a huge merchant appeared on the horizon almost exactly where we had expected it to be. We positioned ourselves for a textbook shot and at noon on the 5th of september, I fired my first ever torpedoes in anger. 2 torpedoes set up for a 3 degree spread at 90 degrees off her port bow. I had my third tube lined up, just in case,


I preferred to hang on to that fish though, because it was one of my two type 2 electric eels. At least 1 of the torpedoes hit home and the crew cheered but the ship seemed unimpressed. I was still positioned to fire the third torpedo if necessary and after 10, 20 seconds of nothing happening to the ship at all, I let it loose. Waiting longer would mean losing the advantageous position. It hit the merchant in the same spot, just afore the bridge and exploded but still the merchant ploughed on through the heavy swell, now zig-zagging but still doing at least 6 knots. That's all 3 of my tubes empty but I am not inclined to let my first ever prey get away without a fi...


Lookout reports visual sighting bearing 341, it should have been to my starboard so I'll have to finish this entry later.


-11:30 pm
It was another Norwegian, of course. I don't want to sink neutral fishing boats and tugboats with my precious last torpedo so I have decided to head for the English coast instead. We have been lying in wait here for 24 hours, as per our patrol orders, we have intercepted 3 merchants which we picked up on the hydrophones, all 3 were identified as insignificant Norwegian coastal ships and I have left them all unmolested. I could just go back to base with one solid kill in my log, but I want to spend this last torpedo, preferably on a fat limey. We have almost ¾ of our fuel tanks still full so we are just gonna make the crossing and look for targets near the British port of Hartlepool. This gives me plenty of time to properly finish my previous entry.


The merchant we hit was identified by myself and confirmed by Udo as a British C2 cargo vessel of around 6400 tons. It was surely damaged by my two detonating torpedoes but still floating and even sailing away from me. I ordered all hands to the house of lords, to reload tubes 1 and 2 with my last fish, but it was taking them forever. We were all quite tired and the windspeed was some 15m/s so they were not having an easy time. It had to be done and quickly, however, as I was not inclined to get my first ever prey get away like I was about to explain an hour ago. Meanwhile we ran at flank speed on the surface, trying to again get into a good firing position by the time tube 1 would be ready. My whole crew looked like they had been in a marathon but they did not complain, we were about to strike 6400 tons of shipping off the charts, after all.


Finally it was done, fire tube 1, jawohl Herr Kaleun, boom. It hit exactly under the bridge, just under the waterline. With a spectacular explosion the ship immediately broke in half, the stern end keeling over and disappearing in seconds, the bow end following suit soon after. The ship was gone even as we all ducked on the bridge to avoid our heads getting cut off by the shrapnel from the blast. Wow what a rush. I failed to feel sorry for the poor bastards, we had our first kill and a spectacular one it was, too. Even if it had cost me 4 out of my 5 torpedoes.


That was 2 days ago. No, 3 days as I realise, looking at my clock. It's 1am, september 8th. Well, I am off to bed now. My LI, Fritz, is back on watch to take the boat to the English coast with only a small crew of sailors on duty in the control- and engine rooms while everyone else is getting some hard-earned and much-needed sleep.




September 10th, 1939. U-2, grid AN54 (14 kilometers east of Hartlepool)


-10:50 pm
I hope this is at all readable later, the boat is vibrating so much it's hard to keep my writing steady. Or perhaps i'm just trembling a little. We are running at flank speed on a course due east, this time on our way back home to good old Wilhemshaven. I feel just like I felt years and years ago, when I was a little boy. I had just nicked a bar of chocolate from a shop and very exitedly ran away as fast as I could, not daring to look back to see if I was being followed. As I turned a couple corners I started to believe I had actually gotten away with it and with this strange mix of triumph and disbelief I ate the chocolate, hiding in a back alley. The guilt came later. That is exactly how I feel right now, a very naughty boy who is getting away with it, except this time I'm not expecting any feelings of guilt.


It all happened quite fast. Exactly an hour ago, at 21:50, we were at this same spot, only facing the other way. The English port of Hartlepool lay right in front of us, we could see the lighthouses dimly through the fog which crept over the water. It was a beautiful clear night, still is, and the sea is as smooth as a mirror. Adolf, my 1.WO, stood beside me on the cramped bridge. Herr Kaleun, you have a very mischievous look on your face, he said. I smiled and replied that I felt like a child in a sweetshop. We could not yet see the docks but I was sure there would be an good target for our last torpedo.
Well, Herr Kaleun, conditions are excellent for a surface run on an undefended port. We may even be able to use our 2cm gun, Adolf said. Hmmm, lets first check if it is in fact undefended, shall we? Periscope depth, ahead 1/3. Battle stations. Jawohl Herr Kaleun. Once back inside the boat, I told Fritz: LI, make it 15 meters at 1 knot, silent running. Then I looked to Karl on his sound station. Several minutes went by, I was about to give orders for a surface run into the port when Karl whispered: Warship, bearing 341, closing at medium speed. Damn, that was going to mess with my little party.


This, I figured, was a lone destroyer, probably very bored with patrolling up and down the English coast, and it was probably going to pass very close to our position. I turned theboat to meet it head on, while making it back to periscope depth, I then pulled up the observation scope and waited. I didn't have to wait long, there it was. A destroyer, at first glance V or W type, leisurely sailing along the shore. If I was going to fire my last tube at a merchant vessel, I would have nothing to defend myself afterwards and the destroyer would probably start to look for me actively. I only had about 10 meters left under my keel and little submerged speed or range to play with. Ok, so I would fire at the destroyer. It was an electric T2 so he probably wouldn't see it coming and even if I missed, chances were the enemy would never even know they had been fired upon. That was a longshot filled with 'ifs' and 'probablys' of course but I had been mostly correct in my assumptions to date, even back at the academy. Besides, I needed to boost my own morale.


The destroyer was going to pass very close, to my east, so I lined up the boat towards the southeast, waited for the destroyer to present a decent angle and I had Udo set up the fish. Flood tube 2, Torpedo depth 4,5 metres, magnetic pistol, set range 1000 meters, 10 degrees starboard angle, target speed 12 knots. I double checked it, Udo double checked it, it was all set up as well as could be. The crew held their breath in the red glow, Fritz looked at me and gave me a reassuring wink which I answered. Fire 2! It was so quiet in the boat that I imagined all of England hearing the hiss as my last torpedo sprung out of it's cage. 10 seconds, 20 seconds, BOOM... torpedo treffer! Oh yes, I have crossed fists with the Royal Navy and the first round very definitely goes to me! I raise the scope again to witness his fate when Karl shouts: Screws! Moving fast, closing, increasing speed! Bearing 240! **** **** what is this? Why has Karl not picked them up before? Were we all too focused on our target? We are now defenseless apart from the little bb gun on deck.


My first panicked impulse was to flank it out of there submerged, as close to the bottom as possible but before I gave the commands, I remembered something I once heard a veteran say: 'when you're suddenly in the ****, don't do anything at all for a couple of minutes, just smoke a cigarette. It seemed nonsensical but there was a very clear point in it. As the crew all had their heads turned at me in expectation of the emergency orders, I leaned against the observation periscope and lit a cigarette. They all looked at me in disbelief but a sense of calm came over the boat after the exuberant screams when we destroyed the destroyer. If the kaleun is taking the time to light a ciggy, it can't be too bad after all. I could only have gotten away with it after sinking the 2 ships as we had done, but I didn't do it for them, I did it for myself. Smoke the ciggy and consider all the information you have.
Karl, follow that contact, Fritz, 110 grad kleine fahrt. Maintain silent running, maintain periscope depth. Jawohl Herr Kaleun. Well if we can only hear it now, that means it must be quite far away. I certainly don't see anything in the scope. If I run too fast submerged, he'll hear us while we won't make much distance to show for it. He certainly hasn't got us pinpointed, he's just running to the scene where a comrade just went down. And it's smooth and dark outside. My cigarette was finished, I dropped the butt into the puddle that had formed into the observation scope housing from all the dripping inside and gave the good old hit and run commands. Blow ballast tanks, ahead flank on the surface, everything you've got, LI! Let's get the hell out of here. Jawohl Herr Kaleun. And congratulations Herr Kaleun, he adds with a grin to match mine. It is this grin which has been on my face for the last hour and I imagine it will still be on my face when we get home. If we get home. No, when we get home.


Fritz just knocked on the wooden panel outside my bunk. Yes? Herr Kaleun, I was wondering, a shot of rum for the crew? Not yet, Fritz, if we are still clear by dawn, then yes. Let's just keep running at full speed until then. As he went back to his station I called after him: and don't recharge the batteries yet, I want as much distance between us and that coast as possible. Very good, Herr Kaleun. This grin is giving me the cramps in my jaw but it's the most pleasant pain I have ever endured.




September 14th, 1939. U-2, grid AN95 (5 hours from Wilhelmshaven, the weather permitting)


-7:30 am
It is a beautiful day, the weather has been perfect ever since we left the English coast. Presumably, God is quite partial to his creations killing one another. We will dock on a very sunny late-summer afternoon, it should be a great welcome home after our first war patrol. As we watched the sun rise, 3 days ago, I ordered a shot of rum for the crew and announced we were going home. That went down very well. Like I said, we are only a small boat, with a small crew. Going to battle stations means every last man has a job to do if not several jobs, reloading the torpedoes means having all the watch crew and all the off-watch engine personal working their sterns off in the house of lords. Ok the boat is not supposed to reload during combat, standard procedure would be to submerge and maintain just a little speed and depth while the crew goes to work, but as we found out on our very first engagement, we need more than that. I plan to have Udo train a set party of crew until they can reload the tubes as fast as humanly possible, even in less than favourable conditions. I also plan to have an additional man for the sound stations because Karl has done a great job on this patrol but he is utterly exhausted after we track a couple of sound contacts for a couple of hours. I don't blame him but soon we should all be more efficient at and used to our wartime duties.


Also I am going to put Gottfried up for a medal. He shot down a jabo the morning after our adventure in Hartlepool. Despite the rum. Or perhaps because of the rum. He wasn't even on the watchcrew, he was just having a smoke as he came off his engine room watch. He spotted the planes before the watch did, leapt for the flakgun and he was putting shells into the hurricane before the alarm was even sounded. It's a good thing we had kept the gun ready to fire all throughout the night, washing a couple of ammo boxes off the deck was the least of my concerns in a crash dive. There was no need to crash though because the hurricane pitched violently left and right to avoid the tracers. I suppose it was a first time for him, too. By now I had been called to the bridge to decide our course of action and the first thing I saw was a great big black pill dropping from the plane, it splashed into our wake more than 2 boatlenghts away and the plane sputtered away with trail of smoke coming off its right wing. As the engine roar was quickly fading it suddenly stopped just before it should have faded away and we watched the smoketrail plummet down, hitting the sea with a visible splash somewhere between us and the horizon. Its mate had disappeared rather than seek revenge. 5 minutes later we dived, just in case. Ran at a 90 degree angle for the rest of the morning, also just in case, and resumed course back home at nightfall on the surface to finally charge our batteries.


I have to expect any subsequent RAF adventures will become more and more fruitful though, it is great to shoot down a jabo but I shouldn't push my luck. From now on we will have standing orders to crash dive upon aerial contact and we'll just take things from there. The days of waving at each other and trading Dutch brandy for German beer with fishermen are over.


For now, however, we are back home. Lookout reports the Wilhemshaven harbor heads coming up on our starboard and I have to put on my uniform for the cheering spectators. This journal will remain here and I will write again the next time I am forced to sit out some hours of waiting for contacts.


Leutnant zur See Vom Bosch,
KaptanLeutnant Type IIa U-2

[Bosje]

December 31st, 1939. U-2, grid AN47 (just a few miles off the English North Sea coast)


-9:30 am
Soon it will be a new year, I wonder what it will be like: new year's eve in wartime, in enemy waters. If I can cause a nice big explosion somewhere around midnight, that would be great for morale. But morale is very high already. We have not taken so much as a scratch so far, while we have sunk quite a few vessels, including 2 warships. This is our fourth feindfahrt and the second one in our new boat. Still a Type II but an improved one, it has an unbelievable operational radius and it's supposed to be able to go deeper as well. We have never gone anywhere but the North Sea though, and we have never had to dive deep out of necessity. I do not like this boat, the bridge is very crowded and crammed full of stuff, it means the watch crew can't do their jobs properly. And it's still a coastal boat. A patrol craft, really. Wait until I get my hands on a proper fleet boat, then the Brits better watch themselves. I am getting way too cocky. It's part of the image I project towards my crew. The cocky young boy who gets away with murder. Except it's not murder, it's successful war patrols. I still fail to feel guilty, we have a simple job to do.


We are all starting to get routines. As seamen everyone is highly superstitious and everything is either an omen or a ritual. The stupid grin on my face as we run away from the scene of the crime is one of them. The crew are starting to get used it, and love it. It means we put it to the enemy with just a handful of lads in a tin can of sardines. This lingo is very silly but it's all part of the game: the first officer makes a point of grumbling about our crowded can of sardines every time he climbs down from the bridge, so now our crew are sardines. As long as I grin, the boat is happy, if I light a cigarette in the control room, we are in trouble. They are also getting used to seeing me retreat to my quarters whenever we have to wait out for some time, looking for contacts, taking up a position, whatever. I worried that the officers would feel bad about the commander bailing out on them while the enemy was know to be present, but as it turns out they are happy about being left in charge in those situations. As long as I don't go writing while we are being depthcharged, but we have not yet experienced that. In fact, the only enemy combat units we have encountered are 3 destroyers (1 of which we sank on our first patrol, the other 2 were only heard on the hydrophone in very heavy weather) one patrol craft, not much more than a trawler with some guns welded to her (which we sank) and 2 aircraft coming in on a bombing run (one of which we shot down). So far, this is all going much too easy, there has to be a catch.


I want to write about my officers and crew but now is not the time. It's a beautiful clear winter's day which is a bad thing for U-2 and I need to check on our sound contacts.


-10:30 am
Bah, the contacts seem to be moving away but they are so far away, Karl can't be sure, all he can give me is 'screws' but I can hear that myself. When the boat is completely silent and still, that is. I like to do this, listen to our prey together with him. He sometimes explains how he can hear the approximate speed and course and I love it. Very much the predator in me, I suppose.


Anyway that's why I'm here. To sneak up on their sheep and slaughter them, perhaps have the odd head to head with one of the guard dogs. My mind wanders off and I need to have a smoke: I could run on the surface at full speed for an hour or two, the weather is absolutely wonderful which gives my flak gun a decent chance. Especially after Konrad has gotten his flak gun certificate and is now our official sharpshooter (sadly, the medal for Gottfried still hasn't come through. BdU maybe has doubts about giving a machinist credit for shooting down a hurricane.) Anyway, running on the surface in these conditions right under the noses of the RAF is just a bad idea, I am not that cocky.


-4:30 pm
Ok, so I am that cocky after all. The boys are dying to end the year with a loud bang and, frankly, so am I. We ran on the surface all afternoon, recharging the batteries and waiting for the enemy to show up. Nothing. We dived just now to have a thorough eavesdrop on our surroundings but again, nothing. Might as well just go a bit deeper and have a toast to Winston Churchill and his crew of bowler hats. If Otto, my navigator and hustler extraordinaire, hasn't got some booze smuggled onboard and stowed away somewhere I shall be very disappointed. Now I'm off to the bridge to watch the sun set on 1939.


-5:00 pm
Things are sure heating up! As we surfaced 10 minutes ago, a radio message came in from BdU. Standard contact report on a lone merchant making around 9 kts due north. If we steam due east we shall run into his portside for a lovely shot abeam. The boat is doing 12 knots and the watch crew are aware I do not want to be surprised by anything that might disrupt my fireworks setup. Otto just came back to me, he heard the crew whisper about stalking it through the evening and blowing it up at midnight, but I think that may be pushing it just a bit too much. We will attract the hunters soon enough anyway, I am sure they are around but we have not yet picked them up on the hydrophones. We just had a little dip below to listen on the phones, screws are churning 45 degrees off our starboard, exactly where they should be. Looks like he is doing 8 knots, that gives us a nice little edge to play with.


-6:10 pm
We are at action stations, ship sighted 5 kilometers away, our plotting has been extremely accurate and we are still well in front of her. I shouldn't be in here, scribbling away, and these will be my last notes of the night, but I thought I should write this down because it is a special night. Happy new year, happy hunting in 1940!




January 1st, 1940. U-2, grid AN73


-4:00 am
The party has long been over, it's the end of my watch, I'll have a sip of schnapps and go to bed. Oh, we sunk the merchant at 18:20 but it went down without a fuss. A single torpedo, a flash and rumble through the shrouds of fog that had begun to float eerily across the water, and she went straight down. We were looking for a lifeboat or some other sign of survivors, to at least give them some food and spirits as we had given them the worst possible new year's party, but we found none, it just went down too fast I guess. It wasn't an anti-climax though, we got one after all. Now I am tired.


-10:30 am
What a mess. We picked up a sound contact, intercepted it, ran a surface dash to get into firing position and lined up tubes 1 and 2. It was yet another small English merchant. Suddenly she started to zig-zag. So much for our firing position. We were still the faster though and we ran around her just to prove the point. Periscope depth halfway through the flanking manouvre, she now had no idea where we were. Turned round, and went for a quick launch while she still showing us her full port flank on her zig. This is the 'conversation' as far as I can recall:


1...fertig...1....los! 1 los! I yelled 'Verdammt Udo, los!' At last, a hiss and the eel was gone. 'Udo we were still coming around, that one is going to miss, line up 2 straight away! 2...fertig...2...los! Los! Udo what are you doing down there!'


The torpedoes had been set to run fast and were both past their estimated impact time and we were not seeing any great explosions. It did not surprise me as they had been fired on the setting we'd been on 5 seconds previously and we were still coming around to port. 'Udo line up 3 and make sure it runs true or I will personally come down there and manually can every last sardine in there! Nonsense of course as I am quite small but I am still the captain of this tub. Rudder amidships, line it up, fertig? I heard the yells coming up through the the hatch: 'Why the hell is it closed? Well open it up again! Now!'


Udo, fertig? Jawohl Herr Kaleun, 3 fertig. 3 Los! 3 los, Herr Kaleun. That was a new one, he never called me Herr Kaleun while we went through the quick salvo of orders which is typical for hectic situations, there just isn't enough time. As we later found out, the tube doors had all been closed before we launched the torpedoes and only the nco who had to hit the firing switch noticed this as he was ordered to hit that switch. He quickly cranked open the relevant door but it was already too late for an accurate shot. This was bad enough but it happened again, 10 seconds later on the second torpedo.


This time I was the shopkeeper and the crew were the naughty schoolboys, but they weren't grinning.
'Well, all of you miserable sardines. At least we got her in the end and we are still alive, that's what counts. There will be no keelhailing just yet. Now let's figure out how this happened and make sure it won't happen again. 'Maybe it was the schnapps, Herr Kaleun'
I roared 'Schnapps my sterntube! What are you laughing at!'


Bad call, I was losing authority here. (mental note: don't use any running gags while you give the crew a tough talking to, everybody knew about me and my sterntubes. The ones found on fleet submarines, that is. I desperately wanted my commission of a Type VII and on our last patrol I heard more than one crewmember announce they were gonna fire one from the sterntube as they went to the head)
It was as much my own fault as it was theirs, both the s****** during the reprimand and the bad shooting. And it was new year's day. 'Well men, I trust our last torpedo will suffer no such embarrassing fate?' 'Nein Herr Kaleun!' 'Very well, get out my sight. Udo, get me some coffee and bring it to my bunk, will you?' And he did.


As it turned out, we were so cocky that when we found ourselves thwarted by this little merchant and her zigzags, we were all so surprised that nobody thought about opening the tube doors in the pandemonium. Here endeth the lesson, I suppose. Better shape up from now on, after all it's only a thin bit of tin around us sardines.




January 3rd, 1940. U-2, grid AN98 (just off Wilhelmshaven)


-8:00 am
We are almost home and the grin is back on my face. We sunk another small freighter with our last torpedo and went home in good spirits and good weather. This patrol has been a lot different from our second and third patrol. The weather was horrible throughout both patrols, which is why I have not written in this journal on either of them. We have sunk a handful of merchants and one small patrol craft in total, while trying to keep the boat in decent shape in the storm which seemed to just always rage around the English coast. You can never see beyond 600 meters and you are wet, cold and miserable all the time. I tried to write an entry in this journal on our second patrol but everything was just so wet I decided against it and keep the journal safe and dry in my locker. Oh I got the Iron Cross after the third patrol, the crew made a fuss about it but I'm not impressed to be honest.


Leutnant zur See Vom Bosch,
KaptanLeutnant Type IId U-2

[Jimbuna]

You are developing quite a talent for writing Kaleun

[Bosje]

thanks feindfahrt 5 journal entry coming soon

[Bosje]

February 5th, 1940. U-2, grid AN48 (North Sea, north of Doggersbank)


-6:00 am
We have finished our 24-hour patrol of grid AN48 on this, our 5th Feindfahrt. No contacts with any English vessels so far. We are relocating closer to the English coast now, it has proven a great hunting ground for us on our previous 4 patrols. The RAF is still not much of a threat, we hardly ever see any of these airplanes which are continually putting so much pressure onto the other boats, or so we are told. We've been transferred: our flotilla is the 7th out of Kiel now. As the tonnage war is growing in intensity, several boats have already been lost at sea but the yards are building new fleet boats at a good rate. I am scheduled to commission one, probably before the spring is over, or so the rumor goes. Finally!


We have had some mutations in the crew as well; as we docked in Wilhemshaven a month ago, Adolf my 1. WO got his promotion and he is now back to school for his final training as kaleun. Standard practice is that a new captain takes one of these coastal subs out on a couple of short patrols to get comfortable with commanding the boat and then we are sent to the Atlantic in a fleet sub as 'veterans'. I am so far the most successful Type II rookie in the flottila and together with my officers and men we make a good team. We always have been by the way, we've known each other since we were roommates in the Academy.


Otto, Fritz and me. I am terrible at math and all the technical stuff but I seem to have an instinct for taking the right course of action when the game is on. Fritz could drive a ton of bricks as long as it has propulsion and steering, Otto will find anything anytime, whether it is something exotic from the supply depot or a precise location on the charts. The three of us graduated in the same year and between us we got the trophy for most successful completion of the wargame exercises. I call the shots, Fritz gets it done and Otto will tell you where you are and where everything else is, without having to look at the map. I got my commission as Kaleun of U-2 in 1938 after serving as 1.WO for a couple of years on an old boat left over from '14-'18, the brass were obviously aware of our academy achievements and I found Fritz and Otto welcoming me when I first inspected the boat.

Udo joined us a week later as the expert in destroying things with the weapons we have at our disposal, he has his torpedo officer qualification now and the house of lords has become a lot more efficient since our first patrol. And now the most recent addition to our staff is a new watch officer after Adolf left. The file on this guy was not very promising but we didn't have much choice in the matter and after 5 days at sea, it turns out he is actually not so bad.


Freiherr Beckman is an aristocrat from a nest of military tradition, some decades ago he would have been career officer in command of the noble cavalry charge, now he is just a 3rd grade lieutenant with no chance of a career unless he get his chest covered with medals. He applied for a position on an aggressive and successful combat unit, dreaming about a destroyer or schnellboot racing across the sea and raiding enemy shipping. Instead he is 'demoted' (as he sees it) to sardine and has to report to the U-pens. He walked up to the boat with an arrogant but very authoritative look in his eyes, giving the tub a demeaning glance. This was a man who has authority and power before he is even born, and he knows it. Until the party took over, of course. He hates the national socialists and he never took the trouble to hide it, he sees his placing on my boat as a personal dispute between himself and the brass which he insulted. 'This ship smells' were his first words and he was greeted with a choir of indignant voices: 'it's a boat!' I told him to never insult our sardine can again and he got his living quarters sorted out after a correct salute. A bit too correct in fact. We did not get off on the right foot, I must say. But I have a feeling we will get along very well when push comes to shove, he looks like a good man to have when under fire.


He is arrogant and, like me, quite cocky, so in that respect he fits right in. He knows little about the submarine war yet but he is very smart and he has the best pair of eyes I ever encountered. Hunting and commanding men comes natural to him, now he just has to get used to living in a can of sardines, which is a far cry from his family estate. I'm sure he will make a brilliant kaleun some day but with a little luck, his political views will prevent his promotion for a long time to come which means that until then, I have a brilliant 1.WO. We call him the Duke, which he doesn't like. But then he doesn't seem to like much at all.




February 6th, 1940. U-2, grid AN47 (inside the shipping lanes off the English coast)


-7:15 am
Well, we are waiting once again so I am killing the time with my pen as the crew keeps the rooster in check. I say the rooster because that is now our unofficial name. We are of course still the can of sardines and the boat and the tub and the rest of it, but we have an identity and a personality now. As most boats do. It's all because of that stupid grin of mine, acting the cocky boy part whenever the enemy is in range. Udo and his lordships have painted a white cockerel on our conning tower. They did it last night while we were charging our batteries in perfect clear weather. Very risky, very cocky, very much in style. It was the first time I saw the the Duke display a hint of a smile and I just grinned and gave the boys ration of gin. The gin is our current drink of the house which we recovered from a sealed box among the wreckage of our last kill, on new year's day. Obviously the sea dogs took is as a great reward from higher forces and I can hardly tell them it's just a lucky find. Most of us don't even like the taste but we all say we love it because we took it from the English as spoils of war. Otto is our official keeper of the gin-key and it is to be saved for special occasions.


Anyway we are The Rooster boat and we are going to sink our spurs into their shipping very shortly, because Karl reported a sound contact which we are now intercepting.


-7:40 am
The Duke was the first to spot her. It looks like a coastal merchant and he claims he can see a polish flag but nobody else can confirm and personally I doubt it's humanly possible to have that kind of eyesight. We'll get a positive identification soon enough as we are in AK pursuit. We were expecting her to the starboard but the Duke calmly reported a silhouette through the morning fog at 260 degrees. I wonder how she managed to slip past us but never mind, we can outrun her. It won't be long before the sun comes up and it looks like it's going to be a perfect day for flying so we are going to action stations and I have a ordered a full watchcrew to keep an eye on the skies, the game is on!


-2:15 pm
I have found out how to get the Duke smiling. Get him into a fight! At 8:00, at the first hint of daylight, he reported a plane on the horizon. Coastal Command is pretty green though, they took a dive at us a couple of times but our flak was giving them the good news. Bombs were dropped but they never even got close while we raced straight for the merchant which was still at 5 kilometers distance. Standard operating procedure is to crash dive on an airplane sighting but they have not impressed me yet and I wanted to sink this Polish freighter (the Duke was right about the flag, I'm impressed). As I was fixing a solution through the uzo for a spread shot with fast running torpedoes, he was guiding the flak gun to keep the hurricanes from landing a pill on our boat. He was clearly in his element and so was I.


Nobody expects a submarine to attack on the surface while aircraft are attacking it so instead of zigzagging, the polish ship just ran a straight course out of the area. Either that or she never even knew we were there. A little hard to believe with all the shooting and bombing going on but perhaps the lookouts were just getting a cup of coffee from the cook. Either way my 3 degree spread missed because she did not zigzag. Can't have been more than a couple of meters but the torpedoes ran past her, just off both the bow and stern. She sailed on entirely unimpressed. I launched the third eel right at her smokestack and that did the trick. She went down and so did we. Enough excitement for the day, I think. The Duke had never really believed a word of the crew's tales of the cocky kaleun but as we climbed down the ladder into the control room he turned to me and said 'I like your style, Herr Kaleun'. 'I'm glad it meets with your approval, Einz WO', I grinned and I added: 'You seem to enjoy the hunt, well you are in luck because hunting is our game. Welcome aboard U-2, Freiherr Beckman.'


February 7th, 1940. U-2, grid AN51


-2:30 am
I am somewhere between miserable and happy. It is a beautiful clear winter night, all the stars are out and it's freezing cold but there is also a tremendous gale blowing which means we are all covered in ice from the spray. We just got down from the bridge in a bad state, frozen to the bone and now the warm blood starts flowing again which hurts like hell. All the same I was thoroughly enjoying the ride, plowing through the monstrous waves, ducking down each time the bow launched a fountain of ice shards onto us as it crashed down. However entertaining though, we can't expect to see a thing if we keep our heads down so we just took the boat under to give Karl a chance instead. And he got something immediately, a merchant coming our way directly south of us and a patrolling warship on our stern. The warship is moving away so we'll just have a go at this merchant instead. We still have 2 torpedoes left and I am going to listen to the screws again.


-3:30 am
After an hour, Karl and Otto are pretty sure she is going due north, about to pass us some 8 kilometers to our west. So we are going in for the kill, all hands at action stations once more, the Duke is getting ready for some more fun on the bridge and the waves are still enormous. The Duke has just spotted her at 7,5 kilometers, we are still ahead of her so we will charge in on the surface, running at flank speed as Otto is putting us straight abeam.


-4:20 am
A great example of teamwork. Otto and Karl had been spot on the mark, the Duke called it and Udo got the torpedoes in right under the bridge. She was a big one, classified as C-3 Cargo. The only thing that went wrong is that she did not go down. She just sat there, dead in the water but still afloat. The crew were abandoning ship but I spent my last torpedoes and did not have the means to put as much as a dent in here except if I rammed her. As she outweighs us by god knows how many times, that is not an option either. Getting a man on the flak gun is impossible with the heavy seas and after I smoked my cigarette, pondering our bad luck, I came to no conclusions other than to simply send off a radio message on her position and on our plan to return to Kiel after having spent all torpedoes. We set off on a course straight home when Karl shouted he heard bulkheads collapsing. She was out of sight behind us but is sounded like she was going down after all. We'll get confirmation later, I am sure, from BdU who monitor all the English communiques to confirm our reported kills. The Rooster crows and proudly strides home, or something like that.


Leutnant zur See Vom Bosch,
KaptanLeutnant Type IId U-2

[Penelope_Grey]

I do believe it was Bill and Ted who said something like

"EXCELLENT!!!" *Que quick plucking of the guitar*

[Bosje]

May 28th, 1940. U-51, grid (Pas de Calais)


-10:00 pm
The Rooster is out on patrol again, itching to live up to its reputation. Our last patrol was as much a testrun as it was a war patrol and the boat needed a lot of work when we made it back home. After a month of welding and tinkering, she is good as new. Hasse, the boatswain, is satisfied with the work done by the boys from the yard and together we inspected her before we set out, 4 days ago. She no longer smells like a new piece of oily machinery. The first patrol left its mark. A remnant mixture of diesel, rotten food, sweat and tobacco fumes linger all throughout the boat. It smells like home, which is good. We are all confident about this boat now and it is time to get cocky with her.


A lot of crews on other boats have good luck talismans and superstitions, their boat is always 'the lucky boat' because they need to believe the boat will pull them through if they get in trouble. I sense a different approach from our boys: as long as we behave like the naughty schoolboys which we are said to be, we will come out just fine. Well we will soon find out because we are about to run straight through the Pas de Calais, at full speed on the surface. Straight through the patrol areas of the English guard dogs. Our orders are to patrol St George's Canal which is sure to be target rich and extremely dangerous. The boys are joking about the rooster taking a peck in Churchill's backyard and the staff join in the joking, if only to keep morale up. I am grinning while stand in the control room or on the bridge, but deep inside I am scared.


We could of course go all the way around Scotland and Ireland but that will cost us most of our fuel, besides it does not seem to be the thing to do for a proudly impertinent rooster. Well, it is time to make the run. It's as dark as can be expected this time of the year and thankfully, visibility is poor. We will just need a sharp lookout so we don't get a nasty surprise from a destroyer running straight at us from close range, but I have the Duke to take care of that.




May 29th, 1940. U-51, grid (just off Cherbourg)


-12:00 am
We can see the Cherbourg docks to our port, the channel dash has gone well so far but there are plenty of aircraft and destroyers about. As long as the weather is terrible we will stay on the surface, getting as much ground covered as we can. The crew are feeling miserable and the boat is an absolute mess, we are thrown around something awful by the heavy swell but we will simply have to deal with that later. If we get to our patrol zone we will likely spend most of time submerged, listening out for enemy shipping. They can all sleep then and so can I.




May 31st, 1940. U-51, grid AM97 (St George's Canal)


-5:30 am
We are here, the boat is sitting quietly at 25 meters, we are doing 90 rpm on both electrics just to maintain our heading and depth and now it's all down to Karl and Martin, the sound room boys. The rest of the crew are resting and cleaning up the mess after the storm but they have to be quiet. The sea is still very rough but the sky is quite clear. Good conditions for a submerged attack, our periscope will be pretty much invisible in the waves while we have the advantage of decent visibility. Now it is just a matter of waiting for a ship to sail along our path. My bed is in the soundroom so I'm sitting next to Karl as I am writing this. I have to be somewhat careful, they must never get to read this stuff; if they know how many times I've had doubts or been scared, the magic of the cheeky Kaleun who gets away with murder will be instantly forlorn.


-9:40 pm
Being cocky paid off and the crew are happy and proud. We sank a destroyer. This afternoon Karl reported fast screws closing, most probably a simple patrolling warship. We listened for a while and then did a quick surface run to a projected interception. Again we got it right, I'm gonna put Otto up for a medal for this. Smoke on the horizon, a destroyer at first glance and heading towards us. I could save our torpedoes for the big fat merchants but I reckon BdU will be just as pleased if we rid the Royal Navy of their anti submarine capabilities. Our positioning was excellent, I fired 2 shots for magnetic detonation with electric eels and we still had some headway to shoot our remaining torpedoes as things developed. Good call because the destroyer increased speed and started to turn as one torpedo exploded before even getting close, what happened to the other torpedo I will never know but it certainly did not hit the enemy warship. I had taken precautions for exactly this eventuality and immediately fired a fastrunning steam torpedo set for impact detonation, it could not miss from 600 meters and it didn't. The destroyer was classified as V or W class and the Duke took some photographs of her trough the observation periscope as she went down. If we make it back to Kiel I might be able to add them to this journal.


This was about 5 hours ago and we had a nasty surprise afterwards. We surfaced to get some fresh air and to charge the batteries but most of the staff was off-duty, getting some rest before our next action. All of a sudden it was pandemonium, ALAAAAAARM and the watch crew came scrambling down the hatch as the boat took a nosedive and I ordered hard starboard rudder at a wild guess. Konrad stood panting before me in the control room as he reported an MTB coming at us fast, bearing 30 dergrees port. The MTB won't give us any trouble while we are submerged but I can picture the commander giving an excited contact report of a U-boot diving 1000 meters in front of him. We are going to run away from here fast before the hunters get to us. Karl is keeping his ears out for fast screws and I am sitting beside him, scribbling away once more.


Today's lesson: constant vigilance while on the surface! We don't all have the Duke's eyesight. Being cocky is one thing, letting them creep up on a sleepy watchcrew is quite another. I gotta come up with a tighter watch circulation to keep the 1st, 2nd and third watches organized and sharp.




June 2nd, 1940. U-51, grid BF11 (western approaches, south)


-11:00 pm
Tankers are flying into our mouth today. This morning we sank a small tanker and just now we put 2 torpedoes in an American T3. They are officially neutral but this oil would have gone straight to the RAF I am sure so tough luck for the Amis. Besides, we got orders from BdU at the start of our patrol that all shipping from the western approaches down to the Bay of Biscay is fair game.


Gert is constantly expressing his worries about our fuel situation. We have been running at full speed through the channel and over the past couple of days we have constantly relocated in search for a nice fat convoy. It is at least 4000 kilometers back to Kiel and if we have to make another dash through the channel we need to save enough to make the run at high speed. But then, we have 8 torpedoes left and I am determined to put them to good use.




June 11th, 1940. U-51, grid AM73 (Irish west coast)


---
U-51 to BdU
110640 AM73
convoy NNW approx341 6kts 3 escorts
sunk 2x 6000tons 1x 5000tons
damaged 1x 5000tons
be advised escorts detect U-boot above 100rpm regardless schleichfaht
1 torpedo remaining, course set for return Kiel through Channel
---


-2:00 am
Above is an excerpt of the message I just sent off to BdU. The staff, Hasse and me just sat at the table in the officer's mess for an hour, discussing the possibilities and we can come to no other conclusion than that the frigate must have heard our screws as we were getting to 2 knots. We were silent as a mouse and Udo insists he and his boys in the stern torpedo room were absolutely quiet once the boat went silent.


We survived the attack, thankfully, because the frigate started pinging us. It served as a warning signal. But before the first ping caused everyone's heart to miss a beat, she was sailing in a straight line on the tail of the convoy which continued it's journey after having left behind 4 large merchants. This is what happened:


Finally after days and days looking for targets, we got the contact report on the convoy. We set on an intercept course but they must have changed their heading during our pursuit. Either way, we could not find a trace of smoke on the horizon, nor a whisper of screws on the hydrophones and we had a discussion with the staff. Gert insisted we head back home but we have a little fuel to spare yet and in the end, I call the shots. Fritz and the Duke agree with me anyway, we need to get out there and do all we can to hurt their shipping. We can really use something to grin about once more, morale is low after days and days of playing the floating cork in the empty ocean.


We took up a position along the most likely course the convoy was taking, sailing up along Ireland's western shore. 3 hours ago, we struck gold. Karl gave an excited shout and we went to action stations. We have all tubes loaded and 2 spare eels in the forward room, I deliberated with Udo for a while and he claims he can get both torpedoes loaded in under 15 minutes. I think the rooster on our conning tower agrees that the plan is quite stylish: We stay surfaced and launch 2 torpedoes from 2500 meters at the nearest fat boys. We then speed up and get to periscope depth by the time the torpedoes are due for impact. This should bring the escorts in looking for us but we will be almost inside the convoy while they search the empty seas from where we first launched. Meanwhile the house of lords is doing a lot of very un-lordly sweating and swearing as they get the tubes reloaded. Now inside the convoy, we use all four bow tubes to pick off the biggest targets which come through my periscope view while we use the sterntube to either finish off a crippled ship from the first strike or we pick out any opportunity targets. After having fired 7 torpedoes in 15 minutes, we dive underneath the convoy, go silent and we'll just go from there.


The plan worked like clockwork, unlike the torpedoes and we only sank 3 ships for 7 eels. Still, it is better than nothing and we can be proud of our daring and successful attackrun. An estimated 17.000 tons off the list and one large merchant heavily listing but still keeping up with the convoy, last time I saw her. We went deep and quiet, 2 escorts were searching the sea way off in the distance, where we had launched our first shots and a third escort stuck with the convoy. It was this last escort which came quite close to our position as it followed the stricken convoy but out of the blue, a terrifying PING went through the boat. We were not making any sounds at the time, Udo was now working in the stern torp room to get our last eel ready and we had been getting deeper and deeper very slowly, engines creeping along at 90 rpm which should effectively be silent.


Karl reported the fast screws of the trailing frigate and I ordered schleichfahrt but standard operating procedure for this is to sneak at a speed of 3 knots. I failed to take this into account and Gert had his boys very gently increase the rpm to meet the schleichfahrt. This is when the pinging started.
It's not Gert's fault, he just followed my order to the letter. Next time we are being hunted, I am sure everyone will keep a sharp eye on the revolutions. Other than accidentally detecting us, the frigate crew was rather clumsy. Their first pattern tossed the boat around a bit, but Hasse reported all compartments uncompromised and the ping had given him away so it was AK voraus, hard steuerbort und tiefenruder auf tauchen before the first charges went off. After an hour of dropping the cans at the same spot, he took off after the convoy. And now we are going home, back through the channel. Otto reports enough fuel for 4500 kilometers at slow speed and we have 4000 to traverse. This is going to be a tight run and it is going to take us a while but the grin is firmly stuck on my face.

Leutnant zur See Vom Bosch
Kaleun Type VIIb U-51




June 20th, 1940. U-51, Kiel.


-8:30 am
I usually do not write in the journal unless we are at sea but this is a special occasion. France has surrendered 2 days ago and we have promotions and medals to celebrate. Tonight there will be a party but after almost a month at sea, we are all completely exhausted. The Duke had the pictures developped first thing when we docked and they look good.

(September 23rd, 1940, Brest
The photos have suffered a bit from the heavy flooding after we hit that mine, especially the second one, but Naval Intelligence reports they intercepted a communique from the British Admiralty that HMS Wild Swan of the V&W class has been lost in those waters on may 31st so we can safely say that these are her last moments)










Photographs taken by Freiherr Beckman, Oberfahnrich zur See U-51, may 31st 1940 16:01

[Bosje]

September 24th, 1940. U-93, grid BF13


-1:00 pm
We are running full speed on the surface in broad daylight with clear skies and a smooth sea. The rooster hasn't lost his brass balls just yet. We hope to intercept a convoy before the waters get too shallow and we'll be in attack position at nightfall. A big convoy according to the report, and only minor protection. I will test our theory from the 7th patrol convoy attack. Fire 2 bow shots and then close in while reloading, sinking as many as possible with remaining 5 shots. While we are running after them, I have a story to tell. The short version is that we sank a destroyer and then hit a mine. The long version is, well, long.


U-93, that's right. A new boat again. We had only completed 2 patrols with U-51, the Type VIIb which I liked so much. Then we had Feindfahrt 8. It started out well, we departed Kiel on July 6th and were assigned to patrol the entrance of the channel to catch anything that emerged into the North Sea. Before we got there, a report came in on an enemy taskforce cruising between Scapa Flow and the Norwegian coast so we took a small detour to see if we could get in range to take a potshot at it. After a couple of days hanging around their projected path, Karl found them. Multiple fast screws coming right at us! Heavy seas but broad daylight so we got at close as possible under the waves. 5 destroyers, no capital ships as far as we could see. I sent a torpedo at 4 different targets and then we turned tail. 2 minutes later we heard an explosion and the eerily collapsing bulkheads of a ship being eaten for lunch by good old Neptune. BdU still has to confirm it but The Duke simply put a destroyer kill in the log.


We then moved on to our patrol grid and after a day of not getting any contacts we decided to get closer to the English coast and perhaps have a look at the port of Lowestofte. As we were underway, a merchant appeared on the horizon. While we were setting up for attack, Adolf, my most experienced lookout who has been with us the entire year, called out a fire spreading on the merchant. She quietly went down as we got closer. This was of course a clear warning sign but instead of giving the whole thing some thought, we just joked that our mere appearance was enough to have the enemy scuttle their ships. As I was planning our approach of the harbor together with Otto, someone or something smashed me on the head and I made an involuntary flying trip through the control room. Next thing I remember I am lying in a bed in the aft crew compartment, along with a score of other men, all either bleeding or laying very still. I got to my feet and stumbled back into the control room to find Fritz (who is now Leutnant zur See and wearer of the Iron Cross) and boatswain Hasse shouting and working like men possessed, alongside 10 crewmen who looked like they were not injured. They were all up to their knees in water. I asked Hasse for a quick summary and this is what he told me:


'Hull integrity intact but heavy leaking and heavy flooding. All deck and conning tower vitals destroyed, batteries gone, radio room gone, compressor and engines damaged but probably not beyond repair. We are running on the surface and if we dive we will probably never come up again. Watchcrew gone except for Beckman. Gert is running the boat backwards because we have all forward compartments heavy with flooding. Must have been a mine, Herr Kaleun'


I let them all get on with their work while I tried to get my head organized. We were in a minefield which had caused the merchant to sink in my binoculars. We were running backwards the way we came and we had to just keep our fingers crossed that we wouldn't hit another one. We were still afloat and we still had propulsion but that was about the only good news. I had Otto set a course for both his best guess out of this mess and then for the shortest way home to Kiel while I went in search of Freiherr Beckman. I found him on the bridge, putting out a fire which blazed on the backend of the Tiergarten. He was taking care of things in his usual calm fashion. After a lot of hard work we managed to get the boat somewhat secured. All fires extinguished, all flooding stopped except for a valve in the control room which refused to stop spraying water onto the charts table. All pumps working again and the boat was holding together, doing 12 knots now back to Kiel.


The Duke (presently Leutnant zur See Freiherr Beckman) told me that he and the first watchcrew had been standing on the bridge, keeping an eye out for the RAF, when he was thrown several meters up into the air. The boat, he said, was actually lifted out of the water by the exploding mine, he saw this because he was flying alongside her. He landed in the sea and immediately swam back, dragging Gustav with him who had landed in the water close to him. Gustav was one of our new crewmembers, he was injured but still alive. Adolf my senior nco on the bridge, Robert our cook and Hans, my old hand from U-2 were never found. They will be sorely missed and wrathfully avenged, so I hereby pledge.


We limped back into Kiel, the boat and Gustav were taken care of by the relevant professionals and I was ordered down to Flotilla HQ to receive the due bollocking by the boss. Would I care to explain why I completely wrecked my brand new boat? I told him it was him who suggested I be more aggressive and that did not go down well at all. After the shouting he gave me a pat on the back for at least bringing the boat back. We had not lost a single U-boot that month and he was glad I kept it that way. I told him he needed to thank Fritz and Hasse, and the other officers and men who pulled us out while I was lying unconscious in some sailor's bed and that was that.


Repairing the boat would take a lot of work and we were getting started with the organization when I was called to HQ again. I was one of the veteran Kaleuns and my crew were considered to be among the best in the U-boot waffe. We have, after all, been out on war patrols for a year now. Instead of waiting for the boat to get fixed we were all transferred to France. Back to first flotilla which was now stationed in the beautiful Atlantic port of Brest. A brand new Type VIIc was docked in the pens there and we were to take her under our charge. They wanted every able crew to get stuck in to the Atlantic convoys as soon as possible and so, here we are. Aboard U-93, the rooster on the tower still smelling of paint and a decorated crew of veterans, still busy to get settled in the new boat.


Sailing from Brest is a wonderful thing. I love France, what a beautiful country. It would be the perfect country if only the French did not live there. But I guess I would be a bit arrogant and hostile too if someone just waltzed over our army and told us we were their private wine cellar from now on. The best thing about France of course is the direct access to the Atlantic. All we have to do is avoid the RAF in the Bay of Biscay and we are in the convoy lanes after just 3 days of comfortable sailing! Quite a diffent cup of tea altogether, compared to our 7th patrol which consisted of 3 weeks of dangerous traveling for 1 attack run on a convoy.


That was the story of Feindfahrt 8, our last adventure on board U-51 and the death of 3 of my men. I have not had much to smile about and we are all determined to make U-93's maiden patrol, our 9th Feindfahrt, something to remember for a long time. Both by us and by the Royal and Merchant Navy.


To that end we are now doing 18 knots and Otto tells me we are now just 2 hours steaming away from the convoy. I can not remember him ever being wrong so I am just going to go up the bridge, smoke a cigarette and tell the Duke to keep those excellent eyes of his peeled.




September 27th, 1940. U-93, grid BE31 (North Atlantic)


-5:00 pm
Horrible weather, visibility practically zero. Convoy very close, Karl hears them spread out to our starboard but we can't see a thing so we'll keep shadowing it until this weather clears up.


Before I told the story of U-51, I said I was writing that as we were running in broad daylight. I want to keep things slightly organised so I first have to finish my account of that run, the first attack in U-93.

We engaged the convoy in the Irish sea 3 days ago with some success. They slowly emerged out of the setting sun and we got off a contact report before going in for the attack. It was a bit too clear for a surface run so we crept in from long range and executed our 7-shot-plan which is now becoming our standard attack procedure. As we got closer at 4 knots submerged after the initial launch, I noticed a peculiar silhouette among the merchants on the far side of the convoy. An auxiliary cruiser! Not exactly the Prince of Wales but still a capital ship. The Duke confirmed my identification and gave Udo the good news, the house of lords worked like I never saw them work before. This one was going down, all 13000 tons of her. For Adolf, Hans and Robert. As soon as they had an eel ready I sent it after her from 2000 meters, it exploded on magnetic trigger under her bow. That must be where they keep the ammunition for the forward guns because she went up with an enormous bang! Excellent results. 2 large merchants went up as well but the big tanker and the third merchant we hit managed to stay with the convoy. 3 ships for 7 torpedoes, it could have been better but we are all pleased about the cruiser. Fritz gave a faint impression of a grinning cockerel and Gert came out of the engine room, looking like a transparent corpse, to join us in a shot of gin. Here is to the Royal Navy and to Adolf, Hans and Robert, may they all rest in peace.



September 30th, 1940. U-93, grid


-8:00 am
Out of fuel, that's a first. We are covering the last miles into Brest on the last fumes that linger in the bunkers and I am not overly worried because we have some batteries left as well to take us in on the electrics if it comes to that. Gert is giving me grumpy looks all day and he swears he will apply for a transfer if I keep mistreating his beloved diesels like this. I know that's just a bluff, he loves to show off and inside he is swelling with pride. Rightfully so because he and the engine room boys kept it going for days, plowing through the storm as we kept in contact with that convoy, hoping for the weather to clear up. We kept a close eye on the fuel situation and when we had absolutely nothing to spare for the return journey to Brest, I assembled all the staff for deliberation. We were just going to charge right through the convoy at first light. Visibility was no more than 500 meters so it wasn't going to be a good one. The Duke loved it but he was the only one. Time to put on my cocky grin.


I stood next to him on the bridge, at the uzo while he scanned through the horizontal rain for silhouettes coming out of the miserable grayness that engulfed the boat. There! A bow crashing into a huge wave just off our starboard. A huge mass of ship followed the bow and it took some quick manouvering to set us up. Emergency reverse and hard port rudder did it, we got off 2 shots at 300 meters and the torpedoes managed to arm in time. 1 down. Flank ahead again, into what should be the second column of the convoy. Another shape emerged off our port, running away from us. I took a quick guess and had Udo change adjust for a magnetic trigger at 12 meters. It was a good guess and she exploded in a ball of flames which looked entirely out of place in this wet, gray, terrible storm. It must be hell for those poor sailors but we were not exactly having an easy ride ourselves. We got off our remaining 2 eels as well but nothing hit its mark as far as we know. Then we bailed out of the convoy, having running straight through it and we disappeared into the storm again. I did not go down to listen to the escorts, I just walked away. If we can't see them, they sure can't see me, right?


That was 3 days ago and ever since we have been biding our time, waiting for the boat to cover the 1000 kilometers that separated us from Brest at a rate of 13 kilometers an hour. 2 torpedoes left but no fuel to find a target for them. Either way this has been a good patrol. U-93 is worthy of the rooster.


Leutnant zur See Vom Bosch,
Kaleun Type VIIc U-93

[Sailor Steve]

Good stuff!

Playing the stock game? I ask because of your early reference to a "British C2 cargo vessel". Back when the game was released several of us pointed out that the ships used were somewhat irritating, because the C and T types were specifically American and didn't enter the war until 1942. Somebody who knew where to look very quickly changed them to "Medium Cargo", and so many new ship models have been created that I forgot about it until I read your note.

Still, great writing. I can't wait for the next installment.

[Bosje]

thanks for the positive comments, people
i've been playing stock for a couple months, getting hooked and losing interest on and off...
then i found these forums, started playing hardcore at high realism and got firmly backed on 'hooked'

decided to keep a little journal to give some character to my crew, makes it even more interesting because I was devastated when I hit that mine

This career is 84% realism and DiD (map update allowed with RuB mod, free camera for eye candy and Udo does my calculations coz i am complete crap at math)

the journal got a bit out of hand as you can see, but I really like writing it

i installed SH3 commander and the Real U boat war mods in between patrols 6 and 7
my pc won't pull GWX though, unfortunately.

[Bosje]

13-02-1941
BdU to all boats concerned
regret to inform U-93 has failed to report in after last report 3 days ago
U-93 now officially missing presumed sunk by convoy escorts vicinity Gibraltar

[Jimbuna]

Sorry to hear that Kaleun.....Good luck with your next command

[Bosje]

took the opportunity to delete SH3 and get GWX, works like a dream

maybe LzS Vom Bosch has a brother, we shall see

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Bosje

took the opportunity to delete SH3 and get GWX, works like a dream

maybe LzS Vom Bosch has a brother, we shall see

Ah GWX....now your cooking

[Brag]

Well written account. Congratulations Bosje