U-46, this old (th)rusty tin drum, made it to 1944 - Six skippers earned their merits on this lucky VIIC. The latest, Oberleutnant Willy Bukowski, finally added a "capital" to the long long list of prey wich was sunk by U-46 and her crew.
In May 1944 I was cruising around the azores and stumbled across a unescorted three ship-convoy under brazilian flags, very calm sea, easy prey, 17893 tons within half an hour, almost business as usual.
I kept alerted because this was too easy, and my intuition was right once again - only a couple of hours later the hydroguy picked up the sounds of a warship.
... no, two warships, oh wait, three, ah, four ... I pushed Alois away from the equipment and listened for myself - seven warships, heading sloooow and straight into our direction, and one of this ships sounded very different from the other ones. I ordered silent running, moved the Uboat into a 90°-angle of the anticipated course of this taskforce and aprox. 3km away from the outer contact.
I kept listening, no signs of zigzagging, they were still running straight and slow. As the first ships passed the bow of my boat I peeked out with the periscope and discovered the silhuette of a bogue 3,5km ahead, the escorts still wasn't aware of my presence, so I got all the time to calculate a proper firing solution. Shortly after 4 eels were on their way, and I decided to dive away from the scene and gain distance & depth before the first impact. While creeping away I sat on the hydros and listened to - three hits! I cheered, almost forgot about the six escorts.
And guess what ? I heard some of the escorts accelerate and - steaming into the complete opposite direction! The bogue was hit on the stern, but three escorts hurried to the port while the others still heading straight! Because of that I ordered a paralell course, and about thirty or fourty minutes later the escorts broke up the desperate "hunt" for me and steamed away,leaving a heavily crippled and burning Bogue behind. I waited another hour, ordered to go for periscope depth, reloaded the tubes, but that wasn't necessary. The bogue sank just before I managed to take another look at it.
Two days later at that patrol I got a close hit by an aircraft bomb, so I headed home earlier than usual because of the damage.
Compared to other encounters with carrier task forces where the escorts usually were much smarter and always managed to chase me away before I got into the position to engage this was nearly unbelievable.
