U-51 Kapitänleutnant Hans Felix Hartmann

[CPTLTJASON]

9/6/1939 57°16’N, 1°41’E North Sea 36th day at sea

In search for a suitable freighter for “Operation Wolf” Ship 35’s lookouts sighted smoke bearing 035°T range 16,850m, Hartmann again brought the ship to battle stations. Ship 35 closed at 19 knots to 8,000m and de camouflaged, 2 warning shots from the 3.7cm brought the freighter to a stop, This time the ship didn’t transmit, a boarding party was sent under the command of Oblt.z.S Schmidt (6 officers, 8 petty officers, and 25 ratings).

Oblt.z.S Schmidt was met on deck by the master of the freighter Master K.S. Boer inspecting the ships logbook and papers Schmidt determined that the freighter CENTURION 5,283 grt had departed The Port of Danzig and was bound for London. The ship was under orders of the British Admiralty. This ship belonged to Olsen & Ugelstad, Oslo built in 1928 by C.S. Swan & Hunter Ltd, Wallsend.

Schmidt gave the crew 10 minutes to abandon ship afterwards the Chief Engineer KKpt(Dipl-Ing) Miller, prize officer Oblt.z.S Wagner, and Mine Officer Oblt.z.S(M) Boehme informed Hartmann that the freighter was in bad condition and would not be suitable for use as minelayer, Hartmann ordered the ship to be scuttled. Soon Oblt.z.S Wolff and his team went to work and the ship was sent to the bottom.

A crew of 48 were taken prisoner. Hartmann departed the area at once. He concluded that the sinking of both Norwegians and RAF aircraft that have been sighted hurt Ship 35’s chances of carrying out the operation herself and now 2 ships would need to be captured and converted into minelayers. Also an update on Ship 39 (Kybfels) she departed Bremerhaven and is now coming in our direction both vessels will meet on September 10th at Point Green 10.

[CPTLTJASON]

10/17/1939 North Atlantic 78th day at sea

After an unsuccessful voyage through the Barents Sea Hartmann began the trek westwards. During the voyage the ships camouflage was changed to that of an anonymous British freighter.

We will now proceed to the Bermuda area and sink enemy merchant shipping.

For this cruise a 22 page logbook was kept and I’ll analyze it for future improvement. For the foreseeable future I’ll make notes on what will happen on the final war cruise. This test patrol will last for about 300 days.

[CPTLTJASON]

Because im switching over to Hilfskreuzers for now I will be starting a new thread dedicated to my vessel The commerce raider "Afrika" (Schiff 44). Soon i will restart the patrol I've been developing it from scratch inspired by the raiders of WWI and WWII. I'll be using SH5 as the base unfortunately there is no playable raider however the voyage of Ship 44 will be recreated using the Mission Editor with the uboat actually in action. Soon I'll post the link to the new thread which will be of course here on subsim and I'll do some posts on the facebook group as well.

[CPTLTJASON]

Link to new thread for the Hilfskreuzer “Afrika”


https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/sho...02#post2768502