U-900 by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 5 – COMRADES OF THE LUFTWAFFE

 

19 :48 (London Time)

Monday, May 17, 1943

German Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88D reconnaissance bomber

Flying over the Irish Sea

 

Hauptmann Rudolph Falke was swearing at his bad luck as he was doing his best to control his badly damaged Ju 88D twin-engine reconnaissance bomber. Sent to take pictures of the port of Belfast, his plane had then been intercepted by a very lucky pair of British HURRICANE fighters that happened to pass over Belfast at the same time he was. In the ensuing air fight, his dorsal gunner, Johan Bolling, had succeeded in damaging one of the HURRICANE fighters and force it to break away, but he had then been hit and seriously wounded by machine gun fire from the second British fighter, which had also shot up as well their port-side engine. While his navigator was doing his best to treat Bolling’s wound and stop the bleeding, Falke had gone down from his initial high altitude, to an altitude of less than 3,000 meters. With his remaining engine starting to overheat and with Bolling being unable to parachute out with his three comrades, Falke had decided to attempt an emergency crash landing at sea, to give a surviving chance to his radio operator. To increase those chances further, he had pointed his plane towards the nearest piece of land, the Isle of Anglesey, which formed the northwest tip of Wales. With luck, he would be able to land on the waves without breaking up, thus giving time to his crew to evacuate in their small inflatable rescue raft. However, he was now being trailed by a British Lockheed HUDSON light reconnaissance bomber, which had spotted from afar the long trail of black smoke his Ju 88D was leaving behind. Thankfully, the British pilot of the HUDSON had understood Falke’s intentions and had refrained from firing on him, instead simply following him. In a way, that was good news for Falke, as this meant that the British will probably have some boat or amphibian aircraft available nearby to fish his crew out after their crash landing. Right now, becoming a prisoner of war was much less a preoccupation to Falke than the possibility that he would screw his crash landing attempt and kill himself and his crew.

 

His Ju 88D was now down to an altitude of 900 meters, with the coast of Anglesey visible some sixteen kilometers away, when the port-side aileron, damaged in the previous air engagement, started to vibrate widely. Swearing to himself, Falke understood at once that he would have to ditch into the sea now, before the aileron could shear off completely and make his plane impossible to control. Reducing further his speed while making his descent more steep, he shouted at his three crewmen.

‘’OUR PORT AILERON IS ABOUT TO SHEER OFF! I AM GOING TO ATTEMPT A CRASHLANDING NOW. BRACE FOR IMPACT AND BE READY TO EVACUATE AS SOON AS WE STOP.’’

 

In the pursuing Lockheed HUDSON, Flight Lieutenant Peter Welling anxiously followed the German bomber with his eyes. Normally, the German bomber crew would already have parachuted out, but its pilot had apparently decided to attempt instead a crash landing at sea. Maybe he had one or more wounded men aboard that could not jump out and he was trying to give them a chance to survive. If that was the case, then Peter could both understand and respect the German pilot’s decision, as he would probably have done the same thing in his place. He had already alerted by radio his base to signal the German’s intentions, giving as well their present position and asking for a rescue boat or plane to be sent. If the German pilot could succeed in landing on the sea in one piece, then his chance of surviving with his crew would be reasonably good.

 

‘’HOLD ON! WE ARE ABOUT TO TOUCH THE WAVES!’’ shouted Rudolph Falke, cold sweat on his forehead and using all his strength to hold his shaking control yoke as the sea waves were now flying by him a mere few meters below. With Falke holding his aircraft nose up, the tail of the Ju 88D was the first to touch the water. Falke resisted his aircraft nose from coming down at once and used his tail to slow down markedly his plane, until he could no longer hold the nose up. He and his three crewmen were brutally projected forward and were saved only by their seats’ harnesses from banging their heads around the cockpit. Rudolph took a few seconds to recover from the shock, then shouted out loud.

‘’EVACUATE NOW! THROW THE RAFT OUTSIDE!’’

Undoing his own harness, Falke went aft to help his navigator, Leutnant Karl Surren, to help take the wounded Johan Bolling out of the plane, while Unteroffizier Hans Zuckerberg was throwing out their inflatable raft, activating its compressed air bottle at the same time. They managed to all come out and get in their raft just before their Ju 88D reconnaissance bomber sank below the surface.

 

‘’That German pilot is a pro: he did a really nice landing, considering the circumstances.’’ Said Welling’s copilot, Flight Sergeant Michael Worthington, attracting a nod from Welling.

‘’Indeed! I see that all four crewmen are now in their raft. DAVE, CALL THE BASE AND TELL THEM THAT WE HAVE FOUR GERMANS NOW FLOATING IN A RAFT. GIVE OUR POSITION AT THE SAME TIME.’’

‘’CONSIDER IT DONE, SIR!’’ replied his radio operator, Leading Airman David Pringle.

 

20:10 (London Time)

Control room of the U-900

 

‘’EMERGENCY BALLAST BLOW! SURFACE, SURFACE, SURFACE! ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNNERS TO THEIR POSTS! RESCUE TEAM ON THE DECK ONCE WE WILL HAVE SURFACED! DOCTOR HEINNEMANN, BE READY FOR POSSIBLE CASUALTIES!’’

Obeying Ulrich’s orders, the men in the control room blew air in all the ballast tanks while the helmsman pulled hard on his control yoke, sending the big submarine in a steep climb. The 5,300 ton submarine emerged from the ocean at an angle of thirty degrees, jumping out of the water and then splashing back down like a playful whale would have done.

 

In their small rubber raft, Falke and Surren were doing their best to put back in place the field dressing on Bolling’s leg, which had slipped during the evacuation of the plane, when Surren’s eyes widened and he swore quietly while staring into the distance.

‘’Mein Gott!’’

‘’What? What is it?’’ asked Falke before twisting his head around. What he then saw left him speechless for long seconds: a big submarine had just emerged from the depths like some kind of sea monster, 600 meters away from their raft, and was now speeding on the surface towards them.

 

‘’HOLY SHIT! WHERE IS THIS GUY COMING FROM?’’ exclaimed Flight Sergeant Michael Worthington, getting a sarcastic answer from Peter Welling.

‘’From Die Fatherland! This is no British submarine. DAVE, SEND URGENTLY IN CLEAR: GERMAN SUBMARINE JUST EMERGED NEAR THE RAFT OF THE BOMBER CREW. GIVE AGAIN OUR POSITION AND REQUEST BACKUP!’’

Peter then examined the German submarine, some 2,500 meters away, as it sped on the surface towards the raft with the four German airmen. It was a really big boat, actually the biggest submarine he had seen to date. Furthermore, its shape and lines were like those of a fine purebred horse, with nothing to break the smoothness of its shape save for the two periscope masts sticking out of its sail, whose shape blended with the hull. Overall, a decidedly very impressive design. He knew of only one type of submarine which looked like this: the infamous U-800.

‘’My God! The Germans have produced more boats of the U-800 type. DAVE, ADD THE FOLLOWING TO YOUR MESSAGE: SUBMARINE IS A TYPE U-800 BOAT.’’

Peter then saw something that made his hair rise on his head: what looked like two anti-aircraft gun mounts were now rising up from under-deck wells.

‘’ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS NOW VISIBLE ON THE DECK OF THE SUBMARINE. CHARLIE, BE READY WITH YOUR MACHINE GUNS!’’

‘’WE ARE STILL WAY TOO FAR FROM IT FOR MY MACHINE GUNS, SIR.’’ replied their dorsal gunner, Leading Airman Patrick Dundalk. ‘’THANKFULLY, THEIR 20mm ANTI-AIRCRAFT GUNS SHOULD ALSO BE OUT OF RANGE OF US.’’

Thirty seconds or so later, a stream of incoming tracer shells proved the dorsal gunner wrong.

‘’HELL, THAT MUST BE AT LEAST 37mm CALIBER FIRE!’’ exclaimed Worthington. Peter didn’t reply at first, as he was pulling his plane in a tight turn to port. That made him barely avoid a burst of tracer shells.

‘’THAT FIRE IS TOO BLOODY ACCURATE TO MY TASTE. I…’’

The HUDSON then shook briefly, while a loud detonation followed by a cry of pain was heard at the same time.

‘’WE’RE HIT! MIKE, CHECK THE CREW!’’

The copilot undid at once his seat harness and got out of it before going aft. He was back after maybe a minute, his face pale.

‘’We now have a big hole on one side of the fuselage, with lots of shrapnel holes around it. Pat is dead: both of his legs got amputated by the exploding shell and he bled to death.’’

Just as the copilot was finishing to speak, their plane shook again when a shell went through their starboard wing. Thankfully, it didn’t explode, but it still left a big hole with jagged edges in the wing.

‘’Bloody hell! Those Germans are way too accurate to my liking and they clearly have the superiority in terms of firepower. Anyway, with our present damage, we are no longer fit for combat. We are returning to base. DAVE, ADVISE THE BASE THAT WE ARE DAMAGED AND ARE RETURNING HOME.’’

He didn’t like the answer he got from his radio operator a few seconds later.

‘’Uh, sorry, sir, but a piece of shrapnel pierced our radio set: it is dead.’’

Peter tightened his jaws on hearing that: he was going to have to pass in person the information he now had about that German submarine, meaning a good hour of extra delay before it could be used.

 

‘’GET THEM INSIDE, QUICKLY!’’

While four sailors nearly ran inside the submarine while carrying the wounded Johan Bolling, other sailors helped the three other shivering aviators, making them enter via the forward access hatch at the front of the squat sail structure. With the two twin 3.7cm anti-aircraft mounts disappearing back under the weather deck and their cover plates sliding back in place, the U-900 then crash-dived, disappearing under the surface a mere twenty seconds after all the hatches were closed and secured. Inside the submarine, the wounded Johan Bolling was put inside the forward elevator cabin with one sailor, to save him from negotiating ladders down two levels, while the three other aviators were guided down the steep ladders leading to the level of the infirmary. Falke couldn’t help ask a question to one of the sailors who was guiding his aviators.

‘’Which submarine is this, Gefreiter?’’

‘’The U-900, Herr Hauptmann. It was just recently built and we are on our first war patrol. Do you have any wounds?’’

‘’No! I am a bit shaken and cold but, apart from that, I am okay. Where are we going?’’

‘’To the boat’s infirmary, Herr Hauptmann. Your wounded man will be treated by Doctor Heinnemann, who will also probably want to examine you and your crewmen.’’

‘’You have an infirmary on this submarine, on top of an elevator cage?’’

‘’Oh, we have lots more surprises for you aboard, Herr Hauptmann.’’ Replied the sailor, a malicious smile on his lips.

 

In the control room, Ulrich was busy giving orders, wanting to get away from this location as quickly as possible before more British planes and ships could show up.

‘’HELM, ACCELERATE TO THIRTY KNOTS! STEER ON HEADING 092 AND KEEP DEPTH OF 36 METERS!’’

His last order made Bruno Barber look up at him, surprise on his face.

‘’We are going east instead of west, Herr Kapitän? We are going to be deeper still in enemy waters.’’

‘’Exactly, Bruno. Right now, the British will expect us to flee at top speed towards deeper water further down the Irish Sea, not to get closer to them. That was one lesson I learned from Kapitän Kretschmer: do what the enemy least expects from you. It will be completely dark in about one hour, something that will impede the British from being able to see us from the air. Once we will be more than fifteen nautical miles east from our last reported position, we will stop and lay down on the bottom, silent, and will wait for the British to spend themselves before going up to schnorchel and reload our batteries while we continue towards Liverpool at low speed at night.’’

 

21:57 (London Time)

Headquarters of Royal Navy’s Western Approaches Command

Liverpool, England

 

‘’Nobody has seen even a trace of that German submarine yet?’’ asked Navy Captain Alan Ferguson in an incredulous tone his duty operations officer, Lieutenant commander George Stanmore. Stanmore could only brace himself and answer with what he knew.

‘’Nobody, sir. We did have over fourteen planes and three coastal patrol boats looking for that sub within half a hour, but they found nothing. Now that night has fallen, five planes equipped with radar have taken over the search, but with no results yet.’’

Ferguson, most frustrated by this and worried about the shipping presently sailing around the Irish Sea, was about to say something when a junior officer manning a battery of telephones nearby called for him.

‘’Sir, I have the intelligence officer at R.A.F. Speke. He wants to talk urgently with the senior officer present.’’

Ferguson frowned at that choice of words: it was sometimes used by officers who wanted to pass urgent or delicate information to another base and who wanted to be sure to be listened to. Walking quickly to the table manned by the young ensign, he grabbed the telephone presented to him and spoke firmly but calmly in the handset.

‘’Captain Ferguson, Western Approaches Headquarters!’’

The young ensign watching him saw Ferguson listen for a few seconds before his face reflected sudden shock and became pale, while his knees nearly gave up.

‘’Are…are they sure?... Very well! Thank you for the information.’’

Ferguson then put slowly down the telephone receiver, his expression haggard. Worried by this, Lieutenant commander Stanmore started approaching hesitantly Ferguson but, before he could ask a question, the latter looked up and spoke loud enough to be heard by all the personnel on duty in the operations center.

‘’The intelligence officer at R.A.F. Speke just debriefed the crew of the HUDSON that first spotted that German submarine near Anglesey. That crew had been shot at by the submarine, which apparently mounted 37mm automatic cannons. Their HUDSON was seriously damaged, with one man killed and with their radio destroyed. They thus were not able to pass on earlier than now what they had seen. That HUDSON crew is adamant that the submarine they saw was of the same type as the U-800.’’

‘’Dear mother of Christ!’’ said softly Stanmore, while many in the room seemed horrified by Ferguson’s last words. The souvenirs of the carnage the late U-800 had caused in the ranks of both Royal Navy warships and merchant ships running in convoys between the Canadian East Coast and England were still fresh in their memories. A truly awful thought then came to Stanmore.

‘’Then, if the Germans have produced another Type U-800 submarine, they could well be producing many more now, no?’’

‘’That’s correct, Commander Stanmore.’’ replied Ferguson, feeling deeply depressed now. ‘’I better go call Commodore McMullen to pass that news to him.’’

As Ferguson walked heavily to his office, two female auxiliaries exchanged a worried glance.

‘’More U-800 type submarines? Our goose just got cooked!’’ said in a low voice one of the young women.

 

15:19 (London Time)

Tuesday, May 18, 1943

Official Residence of the British Prime Minister

10 Downing Street, London

 

Prime Minister Winston Churchill passed a hand on his face as he tried to digest the news just brought to him by his military secretary, Major General Hastings Ismay.

‘’Another U-800? And roaming the Irish Sea?’’

‘’Yes, Mister Prime Minister!’’ replied the tall, graying general. ‘’It apparently entered the Irish Sea via the Northern Channel late on Sunday night, mined the entrance to the port of Belfast, then sank an American tanker ship near the Isle of Man. It was spotted surfacing near the Isle of Anglesey yesterday evening, in order to pluck out of the water the crew of a German reconnaissance bomber that had just ditched. It shot at and damaged at the same time a Lockheed HUDSON of Coastal Command. The crew of that HUDSON was the one that alerted us to the fact that the submarine was a U-800 type boat. Then, we lost contact with that German submarine. In mid-morning today, two merchant ships blew up on sea mines near Liverpool and sank, forcing Western Approaches Command to temporarily close the port until minesweepers could find and clear other possible mines. Unfortunately, the extent and depth of the minefield laid outside Liverpool came as a surprise and one minesweeper hit one mine and sank at around noon. Other minesweepers are continuing the sweeping as we speak, Mister Prime Minister.’’

‘’And when can we expect the port of Liverpool to reopen to maritime traffic, General Ismay?’’

‘’Not before at least tomorrow morning, Mister Prime Minister.’’

‘’TOMORROW MORNING?’’ exploded Churchill, angered by that news. ‘’Liverpool is our main port handling arriving merchant ships loaded with supplies and fuel from the United States and Canada. Every hour and day it is closed means that our reserves, which are already dangerously low, dwindle even more.’’

‘’I realize that, Mister Prime Minister, but it is still better to delay the arrival of those ships in Liverpool than to lose them to mine strikes.’’

Churchill’s shoulders slumped a bit at those words: the last months of this war had been truly terrible on him.

‘’And that German submarine? Has it been spotted or reported lately?’’

‘’No, Mister Prime Minister! Our planes and ships are scouring the Irish Sea as I speak, but haven’t found it yet. It must have gone deep and silent for the time being, until its commander deems it time to resume his depredations.’’

A nasty thought then came to Churchill’s mind, making him look up sharply at Ismay.

‘’The merchant ships that were heading to Liverpool with their supplies and fuel, were are they now?’’

‘’Uh, I believe that they were told to wait in an assembly area southeast of the Isle of Man, where the depth is too big to allow German mines to be effective. Three corvettes and two frigates have been assigned to protected the boundaries of that assembly area until Liverpool is reopened to traffic.’’

Churchill then became truly agitated.

‘’An assembly area off the Isle of Man? Who is the idiot who thought of that? It’s like assembling a herd of sheep in plain sight of a stalking wolf! That German submarine was probably hoping to create just that by mining the approaches to Liverpool. Get the Admiralty on the line right away and tell them to disperse those waiting merchant ships at once!’’

‘’Uh, yes, Mister Prime Minister!’’

As Ismay walked out of his large work office, Churchill sat back in his chair and did his best to chase away his anger and frustration.

‘’More U-800s! Bloody hell!’’

 

15 :24 (London Time)

Control room of the U-900

Navigating some 32 kilometers southeast of the Isle of Man

Irish Sea

 

‘’Sonar, ping once to give me a tactical picture here: there are too many contacts around here for me to rely only on sound headings. Bruno, be ready to plot the contacts we will get and stand by with the NIBELUNG sonar fire control unit.’’

‘’I am ready, Herr Kapitän.’’ replied his second in command.

‘’Good! FORWARD AND AFT TORPEDO ROOMS, FLOOD ALL INTERNAL TUBES, PLUS TWO OF OUR FORWARD EXTERNAL TUBES! THIS IS GOING TO BE A REAL TORPEDO FEST!’’

‘’Aye, Herr Kapitän!’’

BONG

The powerful low frequency sound pulse of the U-900’s active sonar resonated through the submarine, making the crewmembers freeze with expectation. It took only a few seconds before the sonar operators on duty started reporting multiple contacts to Oberleutnant zur See Bruno Barber, who entered their data in his NIBELUNG active-passive sonar targeting system. Barber then resumed out loud the results.

‘’Herr Kapitän, we have a total of fourteen separate surface contacts within range. Five of them are moving, while the others are immobile and may be at anchor. The moving contacts are all situated around the periphery of a large zone containing the immobile ships and may be escort ships.’’

‘’Excellent! Just as I was hoping for. Target in priority the moving ships, using T5 ZAUNKÖNING torpedoes. Fire them in time-on-target mode.’’

‘’Calculating our firing sequence... Ready to fire, Herr Kapitän.’’

‘’Then, start launching the T5s! Helm, put our motors on idle: we don’t want one of our acoustic fish to come back at us.’’

‘’Firing first T5 now!... Firing second T5 now!...’’

As soon as the five acoustic torpedoes were announced as fired, Ulrich gave an order via intercom.

‘’TORPEDO ROOMS: RELOAD AT ONCE WITH TWO FRESH T5 AND THREE T3a TORPEDOES!’’

Ulrich then did the only thing he could do now: wait for the results of his first attack move. A bit over six minutes later, the noise of a first distant explosion was heard. However, knowing that they were only starting this battle and that there were enemy warships in the vicinity, the crew of the U-900 didn’t cheer loudly, only smiling to each other and exchanging triumphant signs. A total of four explosions were heard within two minutes of each other, prompting a report from Barber.

‘’Four hits on four separate targets, Herr Kapitän. It seems that one of our T5s either missed or was a dud.’’

‘’Oh well, you can’t win all the time, I suppose. Target the remaining moving target with a fresh T5 and launch when ready.’’

Ten seconds later, another acoustic torpedo was on its way. Unfortunately for its intended target, a RIVER-Class frigate, the captain of that warship reacted to the torpedoing of his comrades by pushing his engines to near full power, in order to take speed. That only made him an even more distinctive noise for the T5 to guide itself on. Two minutes and twenty seconds later, the T5 passed under the keel of the frigate, running on an opposite heading to that of the British warship. Its combined magnetic/contact firing pistol then triggered its 274 kilo warhead as it was running under the frigate at the level of its forward main gun turret. The explosion made the frigate jump halfway out of the water before it splashed down, broken in two parts which then sank rapidly.

 

The nine merchant ships anchored in the assembly area could only watch with horror as their five escort ships sank or capsized one after another within minutes. The reactions of their captains were all the same: they ordered their anchors to be raised and their engines to be restarted. They also cried out for help on the radio, cutting each other off under the effect of panic. All that took time, time that the U-900 exploited to its advantage. One particularly big cargo ship loaded down with tanks, artillery pieces and trucks earned the dubious honor of being targeted by one of the six 610mm Type 93 LONG LANCE heavy torpedoes carried by the U-900 in external tubes hidden under the weather deck. The powerful, Japanese-designed torpedo, traveling at a speed of 48 knots and carrying a 490 kilo warhead, struck the side of the cargo ship near its stern, where the engine room and the superstructures were. The explosion of its warhead split wide open the hull of the ship, flooding nearly instantly the engine room and cutting all power. With hundreds of tons of water rushing in and being loaded down with over 7,000 tons of cargo, the unfortunate American merchant ship took only three minutes to capsize, then sink bottom up. Another merchant ship that earned itself a Type 93 torpedo was actually a passenger ship converted to the troopship role and carrying over 900 replacement aircrews, ground support and administrative personnel meant to reinforce the ranks of the American 8^th Air Force, stationed in various airfields in England. In that case, the explosion of the torpedo broke the transport ship in two, making it sink so quickly that there was no time to lower any lifeboats. Nearly all of its occupants went down with the ship, with the rare survivors finding themselves swimming in the cold waters of the Irish Sea.

 

Above, flying around the area at an altitude of 1,400 meters, the crew of a Lockheed HUDSON was watching with both incomprehension and horror the ships sink one by one while they could do next to nothing about it. No visual sighting or radar echo from a submarine periscope had alerted them in advance of the start of the attack. Now that there definitely was a submarine inside their patrol zone, they couldn’t detect it at all! In that, however, they were not at fault. With the destruction of the British escort ships with the help of its acoustic homing torpedoes, the U-900 could now use freely its advanced sonar systems to target the merchant ships around it, and this without having to pop a periscope through the surface of the sea. Furthermore, by using to the full its underwater observation domes in conjunction with its active-passive sonars and by firing its torpedoes from short ranges, the U-900 could launch its torpedoes from deeper than normal periscope depth, letting the gyroscopes and hydrostatic gauges of its torpedoes bring them up to the correct running depth and heading after ejection from their tubes. The murky waters were also helping the U-900, hiding it from aerial observation once deeper than thirty meters. Aboard the HUDSON, the pilot was about ready to pull his hair out.

‘’FOR CHRIST SAKE! HOW COULD THIS BE POSSIBLE? WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO SEE THAT BLOODY SUB FROM UP HERE, THROUGH THE SURFACE LAYER OF THE SEA. PAUL, DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING ON YOUR RADAR?’’

‘’NEGATIVE! I JUST HAD OUR OWN SHIPS AT FIRST. NOW, THERE IS NOTHING WITHIN FIFTEEN MILES. THIS IS SORCERY!’’

The pilot exchanged a glance with his copilot.

‘’Sorcery or not, we failed in our mission, big time! How the hell are we going to explain this back at base?’’

‘’Let’s think about that later, Ryan. Right now, the important thing is to find the bastard who did all this. That sub will have to come up eventually to recharge its batteries. If we stay on station, we may just be able to find and nail him then.’’

Unknown to the copilot of the HUDSON, his pious wish was quickly fading away, as the U-900 was already moving underwater to another hunting sector.

 

 

18:06 (London Time)

Wardroom of the U-900

 

Hauptmann Rudolph Falke and Leutnant Karl Surren were greeted in person by Ulrich von Wittgenstein and his seven officers when they entered the submarine’s wardroom, where they had been invited to have supper.

‘’Welcome, gentlemen of the Luftwaffe! I hope that you have a good appetite this evening, as our cook promised us a really nice menu.’’

‘’We are indeed fairly hungry, Herr Kapitän von Wittgenstein.’’ replied Falke while shaking hands with Ulrich. ‘’I must say that, the more I see of your U-900, the more I believe it to be a true technological marvel. Your smoking lounge, with its view of the sea outside, is itself quite impressive: I and Leutnant Surren just came from there and the view outside reminded me of Jules Verne’s novel ’20,000 Leagues under the Sea’. Talking of that view, I noticed that we are now on the bottom, at a fairly shallow depth. I would have thought that you would have chosen a deeper place to rest at the bottom, in order to evade aerial observation.’’

‘’A logical expectation on your part, Hauptmann Falke, but I wanted to be able to raise my periscopes and schnorchel above the surface while resting on the bottom. That’s why I chose a spot with a depth of only 23 meters. In order to minimize the risks of detection, I chose a resting position within Irish territorial waters. We are in fact not too far from Dublin right now.’’

‘’Uh, aren’t we breaking the neutrality of Ireland by doing this, Herr Kapitän?”

‘’Maybe, but who cares?’’ Replied Ulrich, smiling. ‘’We found out two years ago that the U.S.A.’s so-called neutrality meant little indeed, so we are only leveling the playing field today. But let’s take place at the dining table before continuing this conversation.’’

All ten men then took seats around the long wooden table, with Ulrich taking the head seat. Falke waited for everybody to be seated before asking another question to Ulrich.

‘’So, Herr Kapitän, when could me and my aviators expect to be back in France?’’

Somehow, Falke didn’t like much the way Ulrich’s expression changed then.

‘’I am sorry to have to say this, Hauptmann Falke, but you may be stuck aboard my U-900 for a few weeks, at the least.’’

‘’A few weeks?’’ replied Falke, his voice hesitant. ‘’Why so long?’’

‘’Because my mission orders, given to me by Admiral Dönitz, state that I am to interdict and block as much as possible the enemy merchant shipping from arriving in either Glasgow or Liverpool and unload their cargo there. I already started fulfilling that mission by mining the approaches to Liverpool and by sinking nine merchant ships waiting off that port, along with their five escort ships. As long as I will have torpedoes and mines aboard, I will roam the Irish Sea and its North Channel and sink the enemy shipping I will encounter, with a special emphasis on tanker ships.’’

‘’And…how many torpedoes and mines do you still have left aboard, Herr Kapitän?’’ asked Karl Surren.

‘’I still have 54 torpedoes and twelve sea mines left aboard, so I have plenty for quite a long hunting season, if I may call it like that. Admiral Dönitz doesn’t only want me to simply sink enemy ships: he wants me to do it in a fashion that will paralyze the enemy and will make him so fearful of the U-900 that the cargo and tanker ships arriving from North America will not dare enter the Irish Sea, thus starving Great-Britain of supplies for an even longer period. With any luck, we may just be able to force the British into asking for an armistice with us in order to avoid starvation for their people. In turn, taking the British and, hopefully, the Americans out of this war against us, will allow Germany to fight on one front only and concentrate on defeating these damn Soviets.’’

The two Luftwaffe officers exchanged a quick glance then: that program certainly sounded very ambitious but, strategically, it made perfect sense and it actually had at least an inkling of a chance of succeeding. Right now, no one in Germany was in any doubt that the Soviets were now the most dangerous and immediate foes of Germany. The United States may have been a mighty industrial giant and a rapidly growing military superpower, but it had already been cut to size by the exploits of the late U-800, which had succeeded in destroying a whole set of locks of the Panama Canal, had blocked the port of San Francisco by dropping the Golden Gate Bridge down in the entrance channel and had sunk more American warships around the Pacific than one could count. One concrete result of that Pacific trip was the fact that it had forced the Americans in switching the priorities of their war effort from Europe to the Pacific, where the Japanese Navy was now roaming nearly at will and where Australia was surrounded, with its maritime supply lanes cut off. Also as a result of that long trip by the U-800, the Kriegsmarine had adopted in service three of the best types of torpedoes designed by the Japanese Imperial Navy and was now mass producing them in Germany. Half the torpedo load of the U-900 in fact consisted of Japanese-designed torpedoes, including initially six of the mighty 610mm Type 93 LONG LANCE heavy torpedoes, with a range of 20,000 meters at a speed of 48 knots and with a 490 kilo warhead.

‘’That is quite a program to be realized by just a single submarine, Herr Kapitän, no offence meant to you or your boat.’’ said politely Rudolph Falke, making Ulrich nod.

‘’No offence taken, Hauptmann Falke. I realize how grandiose and demanding that program may sound like, but we won’t be alone for long: many more boats of the Type XXI class, of which the U-900 is the first to be produced, are being built right now. At least two of them are already doing their sea trials in the Baltic and will go on their first war patrols in a few weeks at the most. Given another six or seven months, the British Isles and the Atlantic coast of the United States will be heavily patrolled by Type XXI submarines and enemy maritime commerce in the North Atlantic will then essentially shrivel and die.’’

The assistant-cook of the boat, Matrosen Ernst Mannerheim, who was acting as steward for the officers’ supper, then started serving wine to the participants, interrupting for a while the discussion. Falke watched him with an amused expression as Mannerheim poured wine around.

‘’Wine being served aboard a submarine at sea… That must be a first.’’

‘’Not at all!’’ replied Ulrich with a wide smile. ‘’When I was still serving with Kapitän Kretschmer on the U-800, we had wine, rum, Cuban cigars, Colombian coffee and hot chocolate, among other things.’’

Falke, like Surren, couldn’t help stare at Ulrich with wide eyes.

‘’Nooo! And how did you manage that? Most of those things are either severely rationed in Germany or are not available at all.’’

‘’Simple: we stole supplies from enemy ships we boarded and captured. For example, one British refrigerated stores ship that we seized off the port of Miami was loaded with hundreds of tons of frozen meat, coffee beans and chocolate products. It was a true treasure chest.’’

‘’Mein Gott! You will have to tell me more about this one fine day, Herr Kapitän.’’

‘’Not before I can add a few more stories of my own during this war patrol, my dear Falke.’’ replied Ulrich while waving his fork and smiling.

‘’Alright, I will be patient, Herr Kapitän. So, what is on the menu for supper?’’

‘’Kipper?’’ answered Ulrich on a malicious tone, using what was often a nickname to designate a British person. That joke was greeted by general, spontaneous laughter.