A thousand suns

That had been June 1944. Since then, the English Channel had continued to be a death trap, with Royal Navy patrols densely plotted along the narrow stretch of sea. The last of the U-boats were mostly holed up in Norway and the Baltic Sea, with a few venturing north around the Shetland Isles to the Atlantic to attempt the occasional daring attack on the convoys that now passed largely without incident from America to Britain. U-1061 met these few boats south of the Faroe Isles; they rarely seemed to require replacement torpedoes, just fuel and supplies.

Lundstrom didn’t envy them. The best they could do was silently stalk the convoys. Any attempt to attack a ship was inviting disaster. The best they could hope for was to catch a ship that was falling behind and beyond the protective range of the escort.

They had been making good time yesterday evening, heading towards an arranged rendezvous co-ordinate south-west of the islands, cruising comfortably at eighteen knots under diesel power, when one of his men had spotted a Royal Navy destroyer bearing down on them. The bastards were getting too good at spotting them. They had dived, and within two hours a second destroyer had joined the first. Within four hours they had three Allied vessels circling above.

It seemed the Royal Navy had discovered this part of the North Sea was a rendezvous point and had ships in the area, patrolling it.

Lundstrom and his men had endured nearly eight hours of well-focused depth charging and as this particularly nasty game of hide and seek played out through the night, none of them had had a chance to sleep, even during the lengthy periods between bombardments of unsettling quiet.

There had been a lull now for well over two hours and the men anxiously looked at their captain, aware that time was running out and that he must be agonising over the decision to risk going to periscope depth for a quick reconnoitre.

Leutnant Holm ended a silence that had lasted a long time. ‘Sir?’

Holm was reminding him tactfully. We have to go up soon.

Lundstrom turned to him.

‘Okay, periscope depth.’

The Leutnant barked out the order, and almost immediately the U-boat tilted gently upwards. Lundstrom leaned into the angle of ascent. He looked around the young faces with him. Many of these boys were only seventeen; Hitler Youth hurriedly drafted and half-trained to fill the rapidly depleting ranks of the Kriegsmarine. By comparison, Leutnant Holm, aged nineteen, standing beside him with a face like a choirboy, was an old, seasoned veteran.

He felt the boat tilt further as her stern lifted and she began to rise steeply. He held on to the edge of the map table and looked around the bridge, watching his crew subconsciously lean into the ascent. It was a silly thing but often, when he was ashore and walking up a shallow hill or a ramp, he half expected to hear a rating counting away metres of depth.

The angle of ascent quickly flattened out and he watched and smiled as everyone in the bridge synchronously leaned back in response. The helmsman called out a depth of seven metres.

‘Periscope depth, Captain,’ Holm announced.

Lundstrom grabbed the periscope’s handle and pulled it firmly up. It locked with a clunk into the extended position. He pushed his peaked cap back and hunkered down to look through the viewfinder.

He quickly spun it through 360 degrees, and then again more slowly, before pulling away from it and standing straight.

‘Clear!’ he announced loudly, almost shouting. ‘ Thank God for that,’ he whispered, allowing himself the release of those words. Holm, standing next to him, was attempting to suppress a tight-lipped grin. He’d heard. Lundstrom winked at him. The lad undoubtedly had been contemplating a phrase far more colourful.

U-1061 had been fitted with a snorkel, which could be raised to allow them to proceed at periscope depth using the diesel engines. It allowed them to suck in air for the engines and vent the exhaust fumes. But it was only of any use if the sea was calm, which wasn’t often the case here in the North Sea. This morning, however, it seemed fortune was smiling on them. There was a light chop, enough to make it difficult for a plane to spot the snorkel’s wake, but not so rough that it might be submerged by a wave and the air flow blocked. For the first time in eight hours he allowed himself a sigh of relief.

‘Raise the snorkel and let’s get the old girl going,’ he shouted cheerfully. The ratings on the bridge cheered, and Leutnant Holm passed the order on at the top of his lungs. A moment later the submarine was filled with a rhythmic chug and a subtle vibration as the twin MAN diesel engines slowly came to life. There was a thud as the propellers engaged, and U-1061 was, at last, again under way.