Chapter 266: Perilous Voyage

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At 4 AM, the sky had not yet brightened. The rest time for the U-211 was over. Prien looked up at the sky, then waited for his crew to climb

At 4 AM, the sky had not yet brightened. The rest time for the U-211 was over. Prien looked up at the sky, then waited for his crew to climb back into the submarine one by one. He was accustomed to being the last to enter the submarine so that he could personally check and secure the hatch.

Soon, everyone was inside the submarine. Prien closed the hatch, and the fresh, cold sea breeze was replaced by the stale air inside.

“Continue diving! Depth set to 35 meters. Conserve electricity in five minutes. Maintain course,” Prien commanded loudly.

His first mate was already in position, repeating his command loudly. “Continue to vent and dive. Depth set to 35 meters underwater. Main lighting will be turned off in five minutes!”

The situation had become clear, and the combat mission had been declassified. Prien had already told his crew that the next day’s mission was to enter Scapa Flow. Since they would have to spend almost the entire next day underwater, Prien ordered everyone to conserve air and electricity and not to move around unless necessary.

About five minutes later, the main lighting inside the submarine was cut off. The sounds of the instruments in the submarine’s control room, the dripping of water from minor leaks in the pipes, and the sound of the sea pressing on the hull from all sides mixed together, creating a hair-raising feeling, which, accompanied by the rotating roar of the machinery, became the noise inside the boat. All around was darkness, with only the lights on a few instruments allowing the people inside the submarine to vaguely make out the surrounding contours.

At 4 PM the next day, the entire crew had finished their meal. The tables, chairs, and utensils had all been put away, and the crew’s bunks had been folded up.

“You take a few men and place the explosives we brought on the bottom of the submarine,” Prien said, feeling that the time was about right. He began to make all the preparations before the attack.

The first mate nodded and, with a few men and a flashlight, walked out of the command cabin. They installed the explosives in places like the torpedo room and the engine room. The expressions of the few men were very serious. They knew that this mission might indeed be very difficult.

Subsequently, Prien gave another order for everyone to check their life vests. At the same time, these submarine officers and men also carefully tore the fleet insignia from their caps to avoid revealing their identity if they were captured.

“Damn it,” Prien knew that what followed was a long wait, waiting for a miracle. He gripped his pocket watch, his heart pounding with tension. So he swallowed hard and forced himself to calm down.

“All hands, attention! In the next few minutes, we risk being sunk at any moment! All hands, prepare for battle! We are heading for Scapa Flow. Our mission is very simple—to wreak havoc in Scapa Flow and to avenge our old High Seas Fleet,” Prien announced the full order loudly.

The entire submarine’s command cabin fell strangely quiet. Everyone stared silently at their captain, their commander. They had originally thought this was a reconnaissance mission, or a minelaying mission, but they had never imagined that this time, it was for real.

“Revenge!” After a long, stunned silence, a sailor finally echoed in a suppressed voice. “Revenge for our predecessors of Operation Rainbow!”

“That’s right! Revenge! We’ll let the Brits know who is the master of this sea!” the first mate said excitedly.

“That’s right! That’s the spirit we need! Even if we die, we must tear a piece of flesh from the British!” Prien said with a nod. “Maintain course! Continue to advance!”

Time passed, minute by minute. Everyone was waiting for the moment they could act. It was like a bride waiting to get into her wedding sedan, full of joy and anticipation, yet extremely apprehensive and nervous.

“Periscope depth!” After an unknown amount of time, Prien finally gave the order. He pressed his face to the periscope, raised the only device that could observe the surface from underwater, and carefully looked at the surrounding situation.

“This channel cannot be navigated while submerged, otherwise we will hit those sunken ships,” he said. After looking at the surrounding scenery and comparing it with the navigation chart with his first mate, which was densely marked with the positions of many sunken ships, a precise map completed over many years of hard work by German merchant ships and spies.

“Then what do we do? We surface?” the first mate asked, looking at his commander in surprise, a little incredulous.

“Surface!” Prien said with a nod.

At 7 PM, Prien gritted his teeth and finally ordered the submarine to begin surfacing. The electric motors began to operate at full speed. They sailed for another half an hour at a depth of about 25 meters. It wasn’t until the sonarman’s underwater listening device reported that no noise was detected from the sea surface that Prien once again observed the surroundings with his periscope.

He felt that he hadn’t been so cautious and nervous in years. When he had surfaced to a depth of 5 meters, Prien ordered the periscope to be raised again. After observation, night had fallen and the sea conditions were good. At 7:15, Prien finally made up his mind and ordered the submarine to surface.

The submarine’s ballast tanks squeezed all the seawater out, and this behemoth of nearly 1,000 tons finally surfaced. Under the cover of night, the U-211 was sailing almost right along the coastline.

Because there was a source of air, the submarine’s diesel engines began to run. For the next two hours, the U-211 had plenty of power and sailed with the tide to the northwest of Hoxa Sound at almost full speed.

But at 9 PM, they ran into trouble. A British cargo ship appeared on their course, so the U-211 began a frantic emergency dive. It finally submerged below the surface a minute before it was discovered.

To avoid the passing ships on the surface, the submarine frequently dived, and at the same time had to contend with the gradually strengthening sea currents. The calculation for the time of entry into Scapa Flow was a bit off. A strong tide was currently flowing into Scapa Flow. Like a canoe caught in a raging torrent, the U-211 barely managed to enter Kirk Sound in the night.

At 23:31, the submarine began to enter Scapa Flow. During this time, the bottom of its hull even scraped against the mooring cables laid on the seabed, causing the submarine to turn sharply to the right and run aground. Because Prien had previously ordered the submarine to proceed in a semi-submerged state according to the water depth, now he only had to continue to vent the ballast tanks, and the U-211 successfully re-floated.

The channel ahead gradually widened, and the current also slowed down. To prevent submarine attacks, the waters of the channel, which was less than a kilometer wide, were densely filled with man-made sunken ships and other underwater obstacles. According to the intelligence gathered before departure, it was extremely difficult to enter Scapa Flow through the route of Kirk Sound; it was almost impossible to penetrate. And at this time, the U-211 was sailing forward along this very route.

At 12:27 AM, Prien finally confirmed a result. They had already entered Scapa Flow. But just as everyone was breathing a sigh of relief, the most frustrating thing happened. Suddenly, a bright light shone on the U-211, illuminating its conning tower fairwater.

Prien, who was on the conning tower observing everything, was stunned by the scene before him. He was even ready to fight to the death. The bright light came from the headlights of a taxi that happened to be passing on a road on the shore of the small town of St. Mary’s. Under the strong light, Prien and the first mate on the conning tower could even see the trucks and sentry posts used by the Royal Navy on the shore.

Everyone was in a panic. It seemed their position had been exposed, and an attack was inevitable. The first mate’s hand was already on his pistol holster, and Prien beside him had even drawn his own P-38.

But everyone knew that, let alone relying on the few handguns in their hands, even including the 88mm cannon on the bow and the 40mm anti-aircraft gun at the stern, they had no chance of winning. Prien, holding his breath, could even see two British sentries lighting each other’s cigarettes. Perhaps in the next second, these two men would fire a warning shot, extinguishing the last glimmer of hope for Prien and his men.

This time, it seemed that God had chosen to stand with the Germans. The thing that Prien had been worried about never came. In the end, fortunately, the taxi did not spot the submarine but turned a corner and continued on toward Scapa Flow.

“If that happens one more time, I’m going to be scared to death here,” the first mate said, leaning against the conning tower fairwater and gasping for breath. His hand was still trembling.

For a few seconds, he was even in awe of the silent Prien, feeling that this commander was calm to the extreme. But this admiration did not last long, because when the first mate looked down, he saw his captain trying to put his P-38 pistol back into its holster with a trembling hand. He failed twice before he succeeded.

“Maintain a careful watch! We need to find the best attack position. We only have one chance. Since we’re here, let’s make it a big one,” Prien said after recovering for a while.

The first mate nodded, and the two of them raised their binoculars and continued to keep watch on their surroundings. In any case, there was no turning back from the current situation. The U-211’s current mission was to find an attack target as soon as possible. While commanding the submarine to continue sailing west, Prien carefully observed the sea surface.

The dark night enveloped the British Isles. The entire Royal Navy was in a state of gloom over the disastrous defeat off the coast of the Netherlands. Under the strong advocacy of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill, the King had already ordered the summoning of more warships to deal with the threat of the German Navy.

So, almost all of the Royal Navy’s available carrier strength was gathered at Scapa Flow. The newly commissioned aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, the HMS Glorious and its sister ship the Courageous, and the old carrier HMS Hermes. Churchill intended to use an equivalent number of carriers to cover a battleship raid on Wilhelmshaven and to take out the German High Seas Fleet in one fell swoop.