Why, oh why!?

[schlechter pfennig]

Why, oh why, didn't I pay more attention to my fellow Kaleuns when relaxing at the officers club between patrols!?

Although I was quite fond of my Type VIIB, I'd been quite impressed with the Type IX boats I'd encountered. They looked lean and lethal. So, after one peace-time patrol and six war-time ones, and after 276,566 GRT, I decided to request transfer to a Type IXB. And she seemed every bit as lean, lethal and deadly as I'd imagined.

A heavier deck gun (albeit just about half the ammunition), and two flak guns, one light and one heavy. And the double stern tubes, plus all the extra torpedoes! ::whistles::

So after I finish my assigned patrol I head off to the Hebrides channel to hunt, an area I've successfully racked up quite decent kills before. I'm in AN4119, on the surface at 9:15AM, moving at a leasurely ahead standard, when my lookouts call out they've spotted aircraft.

We all scramble off the bridge even as the alarm is screamed out to crash dive. The hatch is dogged down, the engines at ahead flank, and we dive . . . erm . . . we dive . . . ah . . . mein Gott! We are going to dive, right?

I find myself wanting to head to the forward compartment and start jumping up and down. We finally start diving, and I've set the rudder to 25 degrees port, and we'd just reached 25 meters when a stick of bombs go off right overhead.

Thankfully all that happened was the flak guns took some very minor damage. But I'm starting to get a very bad feeling about this.

Well, the U-64 has, so far, survived, and is continuing our seventh war-time patrol. She hasn't racked up much tonnage so far, but she does now have her official nickname:

das wälzende warthog . . . the wallowing warthog.