U123
War Patrol 16
February 26 1942,
After a refit involving the replacement of my much bedraggled conning tower with a shiny new 2 mounter we sailed from Lorient with orders to join our brothers off the American East coast to partake in the slaughter
April 1 1942, 02:00
Position SW of Ireland radio reports a large convoy to our SW heading in our direction, we plot a course to intercept, a chance to test out this new fangled radar this better not be a prank by assistant radio man bernard
11:30
Weather, millpond calm and sunny, Radar reports contacts to our SW, it soon becomes apparent that there are alot of contacts, I close hull down hoping to be able to send off a contact report before I dive, however the forward escort spots me and turns in my direction,
12:00 HMS Buldog a type AB becomes our first victim of the day,
Rapidly followed by the other forward escort a Flower Class HMCS Rimouski, my first Canadians,
I'm mobed by 3 more escorts, all small corvets, but manage to put an eel into the bows of a liberty class merchant tho she proceeds undetered, pick up one of the escorts, a black swan, before dettonating my last available eel under a Chattam Troop Ship,
with 3 escorts closing on my position I dive deep and run silent towards the rear of the convoy,
13:30 with the convoy passed I surface and commence reloading, I set off in persuit aiming to refil from externals before re-engaging,
14:00 I spy a small escort at extream range, and decide to let my deck gunners have a pop before submerging, they fire off 2 rounds and score a hit with the 2nd, leading to massive secondaries, I dive to PD and approach she's sinking but I don't get a credit
However 2 more small escorts approach, the first a black swan is dispatched relativly easily, the 2nd a flower the eel explodes behind her, however she slows to a stop, a 2nd eel finishes her off.
Now down to minimum torps I again chase NE after the convoy picking them up on radar and closing, finaly I get off my contact report to base, only to be told that there is no help available,
Radar is now painting in excess of 20 merchants in 5 rows, with no escorts in site, I close to within 4000 yrds of tail end charlie a coastal freighter and my gun crew brings her down, I close again to the next target another freigher and engage her with the gun, but she shoots back, thern a couple of liberty ships and an ore carrier join in too It's getting a bit hot so I dive, but so does the 2nd freighter,
I now steer for the flank of the convoy and once out of range aim to race ahead, whilst completing the loading of the externals, maintaining flank speed I bump along just outside of range of the ocnvoy occasionaly exchanging shots with a merchant wen I get too close,
16:00 I note that I have not had an engagement for over 1/2 an hour
I dive for a hydrophone sweep to find the convoy has changed course to the east,
I adjust and set off to get around them
19:00 Satisfied I am in position ahead of the convoy I submerge and pick up the hydrophone contact heading stright for me, with an abundance of targets I am for the nearest big ships, bringing down 3 Liberty Cargo's in a short space of time, with magnetic under the keel shots, 2 of them exploding with massive secondaries after 1 shot each, te 3rd requiring 2
Some quick reloading and an Ore Carrier, a Large Cargo and a Granvile quickly follow, the granvile being an admited fluke after an eel missed my primary target (the large cargo) and hit the ship in the next column
I also took a chunk out of an empire frighter, which slowed to a stop but showed no sign of sinking, with all eels expended I closed on her aiming to let the rest of the convoy move away before surfacing to finish her off,
However the last escort black swan now appeared on the sceen so I WENt deep beneith the crippled empire and waited 2 hours for her to go away,
I surfaced 50m off the empire, took out her deck gun which could not depress enough to hit me, before backing off and putting 2 shells into her guts, which did for her,
She sank in moments, and suddenly we were surrounded by life rafts, we were preparing to head off after passing out soem emergency rations when Splash, the black swan was back, and despite us being surrounded by half drowned allied merchies she was firing on us, my deck gun crew returned, and well trained boys that they are scored hits with the 2nd 3rd and 4th shots which caused large secondaries and stopped her main guns firing on us, with machine gun tracer dancing around us and the poor civies we kept firing and another 3 shots had her heading to davey jones.
With all eels and most of the deck gun ammo expended and the reuply subs not yet on station I decided that proceeding to America was pointles, so tured around and headed for Brest,
We faced no incidents on the return leg and made port on the 3rd entering the u-boat pens with our pennants streaming
Just shy of 60,000 tonnes, not a bad days work