Bismarck

Relying on the advantage of the submarine's small turning radius at low speed and taking advantage of the destroyer's sonar's inability to detect the rear while sailing, Kretschmer followed suit and used the destroyer's sharp turn at the last minute to get rid of the second destroyer.

But this time he didn't even have time to breathe a sigh of relief, as the voice of the third destroyer sounded in the sonar soldier's headset again. While enduring the boredom and nausea caused by the high concentration of carbon dioxide, he avoided the depth charge bombing of the third destroyer and silently calculated how many depth charges were left on the destroyer above him.

At the same time on the water, the first destroyer that rushed over had gradually slowed down and started searching for the target again.

"Ding!" "Ding!"... the active sonar sounded again on the shell of U99...

Ps: Thanks again to the big sister for the popular science... I was basically guided in these chapters. Also, this chapter is 4000+, please vote for recommendation!!!

Chapter 58: The Torpedo Problem

This chapter is written in the third person point of view.

This was his 20th hour underwater.

Kretschmer felt as if he had been holding back a rage for the past 20 hours, and the initial source of this rage must have been those AR196 reconnaissance planes that were like flies.

On the morning of January 1, U23, in accordance with the training requirements and wolfpack combat doctrine, was at periscope depth, tracking the target fleet at 99 knots from a distance, just like the first time. The six destroyers in the periscope were divided into two groups, three of which were clustered around Bismarck, one in front and two behind, and the other three were arranged in a straight line in front of Bismarck.

He felt that something was wrong with the formation. The three destroyers in front were too far away. How could they cover the target? So he quietly approached the formation and prepared to observe closely.

But before he completely surfaced, through the narrow field of view of the periscope, he discovered that a plane happened to be patrolling from the other end of the formation and quickly circled over his head.

At first, Kretschmer didn't take it seriously. Using airplanes to detect and deal with submarines? He sneered in his heart. Even if General Dönitz had asked them to be careful yesterday, he didn't think that airplanes could pose a threat to the Sea Wolves.

However, before he finished laughing in his heart, he was surprised to find that the three destroyers in a line turned and rushed towards him in a column through the periscope. He was discovered! Kretschmer had no time to think about it and had to order an emergency dive to avoid the opponent's attack.

Although he managed to avoid the first wave of raids with his superb skills and cunning strategies, his nightmare had just begun. He was now completely sure that he was being fooled by those sea reconnaissance planes!

Every time when he wanted to surface, the plane would "just happen" to fly over his head, and then those destroyers would come over quickly... It would be weird if there was no connection!

He spat hard and took a deep breath. The polluted air made him feel nauseous. He and his U20 had been in this state for 99 hours since the attack, hiding in the sea in a panic, even breathing was a luxury, and the annoying depth charges and sonar still did not stop.

"Hey, how long have you not washed your feet?" He patted the helmsman's head unhappily and asked.

Because the space in the submarine is small, it is easy to feel stuffy. They are all wearing vests and shorts, but they still sweat all over. They didn't feel anything when they first dived, but now more than 20 hours have passed, and the turbid air is mixed with various body odors... This is so sour and refreshing that I can't even imagine it!

The helmsman shrank his feet in embarrassment and did not answer.

Krezimer sighed. He reflected on himself and realized that he had no reason to say anything about others. At best, they were just as bad as each other.

He was isolated and helpless, and he didn't know what happened to U47 and U123 - they couldn't surface and throw out radio transmitters, and couldn't get in touch with other friendly forces. But he knew that according to the exercise rules, if he still couldn't get rid of these three ghosts above his head in another four hours, U99 would be considered sunk.

"And it's worthless!"

Krezimer spat secretly. Practical experience told him that he should try to turn towards the blind spot of the enemy destroyer's tail, but the enemy had three destroyers! They relied on their high speed to form a triangular formation, surrounded him in the middle and bombed him in turns. So no matter which direction he turned, at least one destroyer could use active sonar to illuminate him - and the tail was where the destroyer dropped depth charges. You know, the threat range of a depth charge is a full 100 meters. If you don't plan carefully and operate calmly, it would be suicide to turn towards the enemy's tail rashly.

In order to save power and reduce noise, the submarine can only maintain a speed of 3 knots at this time. This speed is just enough to barely avoid the threat zone of depth charges. It has no ability to make more maneuvers... Now it can only continue to wait, wait for the destroyer to make a mistake.

It was winter now, and the latitude was high. It would be dark at 4 or 5 pm. It had been dark for about ten hours, so it would be dawn soon. The crew would be tired, and the defense would be the most relaxed at dawn. With the training quality of the destroyer fleet, this anti-submarine tactic that required a high level of coordination at night would never be correct.

In fact, he had already discovered several flaws before, but he was not absolutely sure at the time and did not dare to take the risk.

Persistence is victory! Krezimer encouraged himself and decided to continue to persevere. The only way for submarines to survive is to lurk and endure, so they must be calm and not anxious. This is the lesson that their boss always talks about.

In this harsh situation, how come I seem to have a new experience? I must have smoked too much dirty carbon dioxide! Krezimer laughed at himself, suppressed the feeling of suffocation in his heart, continued to listen to the sonar report, gave orders, and marked the enemy and our positions and directions on the chart table, gritting his teeth to fight for the chance of survival.

It's just that... I always feel that the opponent's cooperation is gradually becoming more and more skilled. Krezimer's sixth sense feels that the noose formed by the three destroyers seems to be getting tighter and tighter...

While Kretschmer and U99 were suffering, the remaining U47 was also having a hard time. As for U123, when it was operating at periscope depth at the beginning of the day, due to the limited air observation capability of the periscope, it did not detect the seaplane flying overhead in time. When the plane directed it to drive over, it was unable to dodge and was judged to have been sunk.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it was this aircraft that forced U99 to the bottom of the sea, otherwise U99 could have withdrawn from the exercise directly without suffering for more than twenty hours.

After U123 was determined to be sunk, she surfaced and slowly approached the battleship Bismarck.

Muhle, who still didn't know that he would be promoted to the commander of the Fifth Submarine Fleet, one of the main forces in the Atlantic Ocean, in the later stages of the severe war, and would face the overwhelming Allied anti-submarine aircraft with his men, climbed onto the Bismarck's gangway from the submarine with a wry smile on his face, and told Dönitz, who was also standing at the stairs with a wry smile, his first summary of the air threat...

"I really didn't expect to be discovered at the very beginning," Mu Hyul sighed and said helplessly to his boss.

"Fortunately, Kretschmer dodged quickly, otherwise we would have lost two at the beginning." Dönitz patted his shoulder.

"There are three left now," Mu He asked, U99, U47, and one U556.

"Yes," Dönitz nodded.

"But it seems that the rest of them will not have an easy time either. There are too many planes in the sky. They will be discovered as soon as they show their heads. To be honest, they are no better than me." Mu He laughed self-deprecatingly. "Kretschmer is still smelling the disgusting air underwater. At least I am breathing the fresh sea breeze."

"Let's go to the bridge first," said Dönitz. "The person who proposed the joint sea-air anti-submarine operation is also there. Maybe you can talk to her!"

"She?" Mu Hyul asked in confusion. "Who?"

"Secretary Bismarck!" said Dönitz, smiling.

"Isn't it General Lütjens?" Muhe said in surprise, "This plan was proposed by a girl?"

It's no wonder that Muh was shocked. He had seen this secretary who had the same name as the Bismarck battleship. He had the impression that she had a sweet face and a hot body. She was a beauty and was very popular on the Bismarck battleship which was full of men. She was said to be the goddess of this battleship.

But to be honest, in Muh's eyes, the secretary was just a vase, nothing more than a visual enjoyment. And her relationship with Captain Lütjens was so obvious that even a fool could see it, which made him more certain that this woman was arranged by Lütjens to the ship. Everyone knew the reason. But now Dönitz suddenly said that this plan was proposed by the woman who was treated as a vase by him, which made him a little unacceptable...

"Unfortunately," Dönitz smiled bitterly again, "This plan was really proposed by her."

"Fuck! Then I am not..." Mu Hyul cursed fiercely. He was very unhappy that he was defeated by a woman.

"General Dönitz, the captain wants you to go aboard." A voice came from behind them. It was a woman. It could only be the secretary...

"Okay, I'll go right away," Dönitz adjusted his hat and smiled at the beautiful woman.

Mu Hyul took the opportunity to observe her carefully. Perhaps because of the different feelings in his heart, the face that used to look like a vase now somehow felt a bit heroic. He looked away a little embarrassedly.

"Captain Muhle, do you think you should go take a shower first?" Bismarck looked at Dönitz and then at Muhle behind him and suggested with a smile. Although he was on the bridge just now, he could hear their conversation clearly. What about the consequences...

Muhe glanced at Dönitz awkwardly, and the latter just remembered, "If Miss Bismarck hadn't mentioned it, I would have forgotten. Muhe, how many days have you not showered? This smell will definitely suffocate the people on the bridge. This is embarrassing for our submarine unit."

“··· ···”

"How can I take a shower on a submarine?" Moo Hyul was helpless.

"Then follow Miss Bismarck and let her take you to take a shower."

"This..." He complained madly to his boss in his heart, this is a woman! Letting a woman take me to take a bath, there must be no mistake!

"Yes, Captain Muhle, follow me," Bismarck said with a smile. For some reason, Muhle suddenly felt a cool breeze behind him... Bismarck's secretary's smile was a little creepy.

Reluctantly, Muhle was taken to an empty officer's room by Bismarck. Bismarck opened the bathroom door and said to him, "Captain Muhle, please hurry up. The captain and General Dönitz are still waiting on the bridge."

"Well, okay," Mu He said embarrassedly, "Thank you, Secretary Bismarck."

"You're welcome. It's what I should do. If there's nothing else, I'll leave first."

"Okay, please close the door for me when you leave."

"no problem"

Muh watched Bismarck leave, and when he heard the sound of the door being locked, he immediately took off his clothes and started to take a shower. He turned on the hot water valve, and when the warm water hit his body, he couldn't help but roared. It was better to be on the battleship. There was no way he could have a hot shower on the submarine!

"Is this kid Kretschmer still smelling the smell of stinky feet?" he muttered.

The bridge of the Bismarck.

"Is Muhle taking a shower?" Dönitz asked

"Yeah, yes," I smiled, "I told him to hurry up."

"Haha, it's okay, just let him have a good rest, there's nothing going on up there," Dönitz said nonchalantly after taking a sip of coffee. It was almost dawn, and after a whole day and night of high-intensity anti-submarine warfare, the soldiers could still rely on taking turns to solve the problem of rest, but people like Lütjens could only drink coffee to stay awake.

Bismarck bent down and poured coffee for Dönitz and Lütjens again, then muttered:

"Rest? He will rest well!"

"What?" Dönitz asked.

"Nothing..." Bismarck smiled awkwardly

Mu Hyul, who was applying soap and preparing to wash, was suddenly startled. The water on his body suddenly became cold, making him shiver.

"What's going on? Where's the hot water? The hot water is gone?!" he yelled

Taking a cold shower in winter is good for your health~ I silently gave it a thumbs up in my heart.

Although it was fighting alone, the clever U47 hid in deep water from the beginning and the destroyer has not found it until now.

In fact, Bismarck's intuition told him that the handsome and steady U47 captain Günter Prien and his submarine had been lurking silently in the water 150 meters deep not far from her.

Prien silently listened to the sounds in the hydrophone while calculating the enemy and our positions on the chart table. He seemed to be holding back a lot of anger, and the veins on his hand holding the pencil were bulging. After drawing a few strokes with the ruler, he suddenly looked up in the direction of the Bismarck battleship and smiled, as if to say: "Otto (Otto Kretschmer), you hold on, I will rescue you after I get rid of the 'target'!!"

More than two hours later, it was already 99:47 in the morning, the sky was turning pale, and the three destroyers had not returned yet, probably still besieging poor U. The three destroyers here were also surrounding Bismarck, two in front and one behind, with searchlights constantly moving back and forth on the sea. No one dared to be careless, for fear that U would suddenly come out from any corner and take a bite.

As time went by, everyone became more and more tired. Even Lütjens and Dönitz, who were outsiders, went to rest. The officers and soldiers who participated in the exercise could almost doze off while standing - the time before dawn is when the human body is most sleepy.

In the destroyer formation, Bontai, who was also trying to suppress his fatigue, had been cheering up his men, but everyone seemed to have placed their hopes on the Bismarck, which was already preparing to launch anti-submarine aircraft to search as soon as daybreak - after all, submarines of this era had limited performance, and the exercise rules stipulated that if the submarine did not surface to attack by 12 noon, it would be considered a failure.

After yesterday's experience, everyone knew that submarines would not dare to surface to attack when there were planes searching during the day. As time went by, the east became brighter and brighter, and everyone, including Bangtai himself, gradually became a little lazy.

However, Bismarck, who had been keeping an eye on U47, was not sleepy at all (of course, she didn't need to sleep). She silently watched how U47 tried her best to predict the next position, how it cunningly took advantage of the fact that it had only three destroyers to escort it, and drilled towards the tail part where the anti-submarine capability was the weakest and the sonar blind spot, and how it slowly but resolutely "moved" bit by bit towards the predicted point, quietly taking advantage of the opportunity to slowly enter the launch position he had reserved on the chart table.

Bismarck, who witnessed all this, had to admit that the German U-boat force was truly elite.

"Depth 20, speed 3 knots, heading 310, fill the front four tubes with water!" Prien ordered his men.

"Yes! Depth 20! Speed ​​3! Heading 310!"

"The front four pipes have been filled with water!!"

"Very good! Now it's up to us!" Prien raised the periscope. His position was very tricky - in the southeast of the fleet. The latitude of this sea area was high, and the sun rose from the southeast. This meant that the submarine was stuck between the fleet and the sun. The rising sun on the sea and sky was shining brightly. Even in the North Sea where there were three-foot waves even without wind, the warships could only see the periscope three to five kilometers away at most, not to mention now. The rising sun became its best camouflage.

U47 spotted the formation.

"1500 meters from the destroyer! Set depth to 3 meters! 1, 3 dual-engine! Ready—fire!!!"

Following Prien's shout and the equally firm response from the front torpedo room, two torpedoes rushed towards the U47, which was also the flagship Z7 of Bonte, like an arrow from a bow. By the time the lookout of Z7 discovered the torpedo, the distance was less than meters...

The heart-wrenching warning sounded throughout the bridge again, but the officers and soldiers, who had just been exhausted from an all-night search and alert, did not even have time to make the correct response this time. The torpedo coming at a speed of 45 knots was already right in front of them.

Everyone was horrified and there was no way to evade it anymore.

The relatively sober director team was preparing to reluctantly announce that Z7 had been hit by two torpedoes and had to withdraw from the exercise, but they unexpectedly discovered that two white water lines passed through the bottom of the ship, emerged from the other side, and sailed away into the distance, disappearing from sight... Now, everyone on the bridge looked at each other in surprise, not knowing how to deal with this.

"This...should be considered as a tank that was hit by two torpedoes, right?" A staff member of the director's group asked the team leader uncertainly.

"It doesn't count! It was originally a torpedo exercise, and we are not afraid of sinking the ship! The submarine's depth was too deep!" The chief referee waved his hand, "Report to the directorate, the submarine's torpedo attack depth was too deep, and the destroyer was not damaged..."

Before he could finish his words, another shout came from outside: "Torpedoes! Two torpedoes!! Right rear!!! Turn the rudder quickly!!!"

......Before he finished speaking, two more white lines came flying, but for some unknown reason, these two torpedoes also passed under the destroyer, which had no time to evade. Rear Admiral Bangtai and the referee team leader looked at each other, and the two people stared at each other, as if they saw a big question mark above each other's heads......

"How is this going!"

Prien was completely furious underwater. He had encountered a torpedo failure during the Scapa Flow raid, and the submarine force had generally complained about it. But for some reason, even Dönitz himself went to the manufacturer and couldn't find a problem.

Seeing the destroyer coming to its senses, Prien ordered the submarine to turn 180 degrees and decided to use the tail torpedo tube for a last-ditch effort. At worst, both sides would perish together! However, the destroyer, which had been prepared, finally avoided the last torpedo, and at the same time, the seaplane that had just taken off also flew over.

With the combined efforts of destroyers and aircraft, the directorate determined that U47 was sunk. When Prien himself boarded the Bismarck and was told by the directorate that all his torpedoes had missed the target due to the depth, the usually calm and composed ace captain cursed angrily.

At this time, the exercise on the other side was also over, and U99 was ultimately unable to outlast the joint attack of three destroyers. Bismarck stood on the bridge and saw U24 emerge dejectedly after being underwater for 99 hours. The sailors could not wait to open the hatch to breathe fresh air.

But with a "bang", when the submarine hatch popped open, the first ones to come out were not them, but a few little mice that popped out from nowhere. They jumped out in front of the sailors, not caring about the stunned sailors, and lay directly at the hatch, gasping for breath.

Bismarck couldn't help laughing on the bridge, and it seemed that the little animals on U47 were also unable to hold it back.

Not long after, U556, which had been serving as a supplementary force on the periphery, also surfaced. The fleet was gone, and there was no point in having any of his ships, and the time was up.

The exercise ended with the complete annihilation of the submarine.

ps: This chapter has 5800+ points, I don't need to tell you what to do =. =Recommend votes!

Chapter 59: Anger

The exercise is over, with one win and one loss. Although it looks like a draw and no one is too embarrassed, the problems exposed cannot be underestimated, such as the destroyers' insufficient training level, poor coordination and cooperation ability, and lack of response to air threats from submarines. In addition to the summary and comments, each ship captain was required to write a detailed situation report when he returned, put forward his own opinions, and found any deficiencies in the exercise. In short, it was a headache.

Well, everyone knows the pain of year-end summary.

Of course, the most serious problem is the submarine's torpedo problem - its depth setting is wrong, causing the torpedo to often pass under the target...

When the submarine captain angrily reported this problem, Dönitz was also furious. I learned from the submarine captain that they discovered this problem at the beginning of the war, and Dönitz immediately notified the military factory to check it. At that time, the engineer swore that there was no problem, but within a few months, the old problem recurred... This was a fatal mistake in wartime!

Because we had to go to Wilhelmshaven to rest first, the furious Dönitz directly called the person in charge of ammunition logistics in the Navy Department from Berlin to Wilhelm. He rudely asked them to come over and see what these torpedoes were!

After the captain announced the end of the exercise, we turned north. In order to take the speed of the submarine into consideration, the formation still maintained a low speed of about 14 knots. After a day of sailing, we arrived at Port Wilhelm.

The moment my ship approached the dock, a familiar throbbing suddenly surged up from the bottom of my heart... It was inexplicable, but very strong - it was like the happy feeling of meeting the most familiar relative I had not seen for a long time.

Yes - that direction!

I couldn't help but run out of the bridge and came to the ear. Looking out, I saw a large area of ​​buildings. It looked like a shipyard - could it be the William Shipyard?