A good start to my day

[Sarge McSarge]

Well I had an hour of free time before I went to work this morning so what did I do but cranked up my PC and set sail from Brest. Late September 1940, Patrol 10, U52, Type VIIC.

So We head out to our patrol area which is just south of Ireland. On the way to the patrol area we bag two small merchants, a small tanker and a C2 for the cost of two eels and about thirty rounds of main gun ammo. Two of these we hunted down after receiving position reports and the other two we just stumbled accross on the way to the patrol area. The crew are in good spirits and if it continues on like this it will be a good patrol. After 24 hours in the patrol grid and no further contacts I decide to sail up the west coast of Ireland to the kill zones in AM51 & 52. Crusing north on the surface in the middle of the night about half way up the coast of Ireland when suddenly we are under attack! Shells from a destroyer that has come up behind us are raising large water spouts arround our boat. Alarm! Take her down. Once we are submerged I order 50m silent running and new course 270 degrees. Before we even get to 30m the hydrophone operator calls out "Herr Kaleun, multiple warships approaching" I quickly join him at his station and listen amazed to the thunder of what can only be an approaching task force. There are two heavy units and at least six escorts and the heavy units are going to cross right in front of us. The crew are energised by this information and almost forget that ther is a destroyer already hunting us. I decide to come up to periscope depth as we continue to creep silently to the west. The destroyer that attacked us searches behind us and although we here the pings of his ASDIC for a while he misses us. As we get to periscope depth I am stunned to see a King George V Battleship and a Revenge Battleship passing accross our bows at about 1000m range. I have never seen anthing like the size and power of these great ships. Some very quick obsevations and its a salvo of two eels at the King George depth 9m, spread 1 degree, speed slow. Then swing the scope to the Revenge and another two shot salvo. Down scope, 50m. It takes forever for the hands on the stop watch to creep arround the dial. We jump for joy as we hear three hits. Soon after the hydrophone operator reports "breaking up sounds" I have never heard anything so sad and so glorious as the groans and explosions of that sinking battleship. We were expecting the retaliation from the escorts to be quick and terrible but they never even came close and the survivors rapidly moved away to the north. I ordered the crew to reload the tubes and brought the boat up to periscope depth. Imagine my surprise when a quick check through the scope reveals no escorts in sight but a stationary Revenge sitting like a target in the easiest of training patrols. As we were moving away from her it was an easy matter to send our rear eel swimming. A hit but still not sinking. The crew in the forward torpedo room are working like dogs to reload the tubes as we circle arround to bring them to bear on our target. By the time we are lined up tube one is ready and tube four only a couple of minutes away. We do not need tube 4. When the eel from tube one hits the Revenge it starts a series of exposions and fires that tear the heart out of the damages ship and it settles beneath the waves. As we clear the area the crew celebrate with a couple of tots of ilicit schnaps. Although it won't be in my patrol report I have a couple of belts from the bottle as it is passed arround. After all two battleships for 6 eels is as good nights work for any U boat. Looking at the charts I decide that AM 51 can wait for another patrol and we head south.

Oops I might be a bit late to work but as I have never seen a battleship in SHIII before I don't care. Just to add to the buzz as I walked the one block from my car to work it was realy neat to see a P51 Mustang from the local warbirds organisation practiceing some aerobatics out over the lake. It is going to be a good day.

Sarge