U-707 Patrol 4 : 21/03/1941

21st march 1941

12:30am 21st March 1941 - We are currently ahead of the convoy about 20km, travelling south directly toward it along its northerly course. The weather has changed and made visual conditions difficult, but at least the choppy sea will give us just a little extra cover.
We will submerge once we are 5km from the convoy, or any escorts or ships spotted.

12:46am 21st March 1941 - Made visual contact with the lead escort ahead at long range. Submerged and went to 2 knots. As soon as the escort came to within 5km, we slowed to 1 knot and went to silent running as with previous convoy approaches.
Approach was tense, the escort came to within 400m of our position but we managed to slip by without being discovered.

When we arrived in the middle of the convoy, the darkness made it difficult to select suitable targets, we finally found a large merchant that was fast coming to within 500m distance to the starboard side of the bow. 2 G7e's were fired as soon as it arrive at the maximum point at which the torpedo's could turn to provide and almost 90 degree impact.

As I panned the scope to the port side, the torpedo's impacted, all the convoy ships immediately lit up their search lights and star shells were shot into the sky. Directly in front of my view I was somewhat surprised to see a Light Cruiser in all its gun-bristling glory.
The cruiser opened fire as soon as I realised what I was looking at, shells slammed into our tower and I heard the unwelcome sounds of shredding metal. I orders a crash dive and down we went at full speed to 160 metres with all hell breaking loose on the surface.

At 1:39am we was well on the way to 160 metres and starting to level out, the sonar operator informed me that we had several warships closing in on our position. As soon as we levelled out, we went to 1 knot silent running and changed course. Soon after, the depth charges started falling, we performed standard evasive maneuvers for a good half hour but luckily most of the charges were detonating a little way behind us.
We had a more pressing problem, the boat kept descending, we must of flooded too much water into the tanks during the crash dive!

Setting speed to 1/3 was enough to bring the boat back to its ordered depth but that was also running the risk of being heard by the circling destroyers, I ordered speed set back to 2 knots, but the boat started to descend again.
I had to decide which was the bigger danger at this time, the ones circling above, or the crushing darkness below. I ordered all ballast blown and the boat started to rise upward, when we reached 130m we had the ascent arrested and finally it seemed the boat found its buoyancy and no longer sank downward while running at slow speed.

We had solved one problem but wasn't sure if it aggravated the other problem, perhaps we had been heard and those escorts were coming to finish us of! We waited, and crept slowly away, changing course several times. We finally reached about 1km distance from the escorts hunting us and we could still hear them relentlessly pounding the sea with depth charges.

We just crept away, and by 6:56am the boat was at a safe enough distance to surface.

When the Watch finally got to the tower, they reported the damage. Our Flak gun had been shot to sh*t, but was repairable in a few hours. The most damage was to the structure of the tower and flak gun deck.
We are now heading toward our assigned patrol grid, AM52 and carrying out repairs on the way.

21st March 1941 @ 1:33am

Large Merchant sinking awaiting confirmation from BDU...