[in_vino_vomitus]

I don't know about a mine, but I suspect it was air dropped. Generally I travel through the Channel submerged during daylight and at high speed at night. The aim being to vacate the area as quickly as possible. surface patrol craft seem mostly to be armed trawlers, and they don't appear to have ASDIC - I've never been pinged by one, or depth charged for that matter - even when I've been detected. The destroyers I've seen have all appeared to be en route to somewhere, rather than on patrol. During the day the air threat is quite high, but it tends to disappear after dusk.

Anyway, I was in TC, it was well after nightfall, when suddenly I snapped back into normal time with damage reports coming in and flooding in the bow torpedo room. I hit crash dive out of reflex, but we were halfway under by that point. It seems that mark IX boats don't have much tolerance for flooding. Fortunately the bottom wasn't too deep and the damage was slight, so we made repairs fairly quickly, but at no point did we hear anything on the hydrophones. Even if it was a lucky shot from a warship at extreme range you'd expect it to come over for a look.

Unless it was a programme bug, then I suspect it was an aircraft - it's not unknown for them to fly at night, but if it was, then my lookouts completely missed it. Travelling at full ahead, I guess my wake would have been quite visible.

I guess I'll never know....