Diary of U-43

[Vandecker]

23rd October 1940:

Woke up this morning with a splitting headache... no memory of last night. Some nice gentlemen knocked on my door about 12:pm told me I had to come with them, called me Kaulan for some reason....never heard of him but decided it was easier to go with them than try to think through the hangover.
Dumped me on a bed somewhere in... U-46 they called it, god my hangovers gotten worse! The whole world feels like its rocking from side to side. They asked me where we are going and I told them “the southern horn of England and to victory!”... I’m going to go to sleep now, maybe it’ll all make sense when I wake up.

24th October 1940

Oh god! I now remember what happened the other night; we were having a party to celebrate my friend Hugo Beneder’s promotion to captain of a brand new U-Boat. For laughs we all tried on his uniform whilst shotting schnapps, eventually passing out...I’m still wearing his uniform, they must have mistaken me for him. What do I do now!?

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After considerable deliberation, whilst trying very hard not to panic I have decided that given we are already at sea, and that the crew already looks like they want to lynch me there is nothing to do but try and carry on this charade, how hard can it be? Hugo is always telling me that the British are blind as bats and couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with a depth charge if they tried, should be no worse than the dinghy sailing we enjoyed with the Hitler youth.

25th October 1940

Spent the day getting to know the crew, first mate is some lieutenant called “Bernard” wouldn’t tell me his last name and the rest of the crew gives him funny looks every so often, still seems like a nice enough fellow.
I asked the navigator where we were, glaring at me he pointed out our position on the Charts, about 30 km off the southern coast of England. Don’t know why he was glaring at me should be plenty of ships around here. I ordered him to carry on in a search pattern, who knows maybe something will actually happen around here.

26th October 1940

Woke up this morning to screams telling me we were under attack. Panicking I shouted one of the phrases Hugo had told me were used in case of attack “Crash dive!!!” Sprinting to the Periscope I looked around to find out what was attacking me; destroyer, frigate, corvette, battleship...... Elco patrol craft!? Rather angry at having my sleep interrupted I ordered the ship to surface again and blow the damn little thing out of the water. The crew looked at me rather funny once again but did as I said. Half a dozen shells later the thing lay at the bottom of the sea and the crew was looking at me with a new found respect. After ordering the navigator to continue the search pattern I decided to have a little lie in as celebration.

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Who would have known that only two hours later we would sight a Destroyer? I quickly ordered us to dive under the surface to avoid its gaze and turn to put it directly behind us. I’ll order a surface in a couple of hours when we’re well away from it.

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We finally lost the destroyer and I now have time once again to write. As I originally planned a couple of hours after sighting the destroyer I put up the periscope and had a look to see if anything was following, with a sigh of relief I saw nothing behind us and ordered the boat to surface... I now know that when I am aware that there is a destroyer in the area it is a good idea to do a full 360 degree sweep rather than just where you think it should be.
Moments after we breached the surface I heard screams from the bridge crew yelling that we were under attack. Quickly making my way to the bridge I saw for myself the destroyer, sitting not a kilometre and a half off our port bow blazing away at us with her guns. Literally screaming all the way down the ladder I ordered a crash dive once more and hard to starboard away from the destroyer.
For once having a reason to glare at the crew myself, I moved forwards to ask the Hydrophones operator why he didn’t hear a destroyer which must have passed us by less than a couple of Kilometres. He apologetically explained that he had needed to go to the bathroom and whilst he was there he’d given the headphones to the Lieutenant Bernard. Glaring now at Bernard I asked him how much experience he had with Hydrophone equipment only to be told that he’d never touched them before in his life. At this point I decided against pointing out we had two other perfectly qualified hydrophone operators whom I had spotted earlier and stomped back to the control room ordering the Hydrophone operator to give me constant updates on the Destroyers position.
Waiting in the Control room for updates I stated to hear strange pinging noises, it took me a moment to realise that this must be the ASDIC system that Hugo told me about, now I understand what Hugo meant by “blind as a bat” and we are in fact rather larger than a barn door. Nervously the navigator enquired if we were going to turn to present a smaller cross section to the destroyer I nodded as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Noticing that I hadn’t heard an update in a while I asked the Hydrophone operator where the destroyer was, only to find out that it was 90 degrees off our port side, angrily I told him that I’d asked for constant updates, the gall of the man as he simply shrugged and told me that he’d whispered the updates to Bernard expecting him to pass them on but it was too late, they already had us in a solid lock.
This experience has made clear to me that I simply cannot trust my Hydrophone Operators with anything.
I ordered the boat deeper and to run silent turning towards the destroyer in the hope she would quickly pass over us and then we could lose her. Shortly afterwards I my Hydrophone operator gave the shout “Depth charges in the water”. Ordering Flank and hard to port I hoped to avoid the deadly explosions to follow. In my haste however I had forgotten that the destroyer lay on our port side, instead of away from the bombs I directed us straight into them at full speed!
The rocking of the U-boat as it is depth charged is something I never wish to experience again, damage reports flooded in as equipment shattered all over the boat, nothing seemed to be flooding however so I told the men to remain silent and leave the repairs till later.
If only that had been the end of our trials! Shortly after breaking out from under the cloud of depth charges we were to hear a scrapping sound beneath our feet. In horror I remembered the order I had given to dive and had never countermanded. I ordered the engines to stop and hoped that we would simply come to rest on the bottom. For once today luck was with me.
Creeping away from the destroyer at a steady rate we moved to periscope depth and I observed the destroyer happily destroying some part of the sea hundreds of metres behind us. I subsequently retired to my bed for a much needed lie down, not realising that there was at least one more surprise to follow.
I had not laid my head down on the pillow for more than a minute when I heard the rumble of the engines suddenly increase in volume and frequency and heard shout that the boat was to dive. Rushing into the cabin I angrily demanded to know what was going on. I was told Bernard, the imbecile, had ordered the boat to dive and go to flank speed thinking that he had heard me give the order. I quickly countermanded said orders and prayed that the destroyer had not heard us.

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Oh I am a fool! The navigator rather pointedly asked me where we were headed this evening, looking at our orders and not understanding where AM23 was I simply ordered him to take us to the Irish Sea, the first place I thought of. It was only later looking at the charts I realised AM23 was a nice quiet spot off the West coast of Ireland in the North Atlantic, a much more appealing place than the middle of England and her fleet. Still, it is too late now to take back my orders.
I have also since decided that it may be safer to travel on the surface only by night and stay underneath by day, I have no wish to be depth charged once more.

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Upon surfacing I ordered repair crews to get underway. Shortly afterwards I was told that the radio had been destroyed by the depth charges, quite fortuitous I believe since my rather rough and untrusting crew can no longer find out that I am not the captain, maybe I’ll make it out of this alive after all! If the British don’t get me anyway.

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Sadly this is where my Laptop decided to start showing its age and the Graphics card would crash every 20 minutes so I have yet to finish the patrol.



This was my first attempt at keeping a log of events in a SH3 patrol. I was using a voice command program at the time so any mistakes made by me are written as such and any mistakes make by the voice software are credited to Bernard

[Obersteuermann]

That was a good read, made me chuckle too. Looking forward to the next episode.