Chapter 560: A Tortuous Course

In this era, a submarine’s submerged speed while conserving power was generally around 3 to 4 knots, no different from a turtle, to put it bluntly. A destroyer, on the other hand, had a speed of over 30 knots, and if it was a newer design, it could even exceed 35 knots. In other words, for a destroyer to catch a submerged submarine was a very easy matter.

Of course, this calculation was based on the destroyer actually being able to chase in the right direction. If you didn’t know the submarine’s position, no matter how fast the destroyer was, it couldn’t use different headings to catch a submarine that was intent on escaping.

“The enemy is approaching!” The sonarman was the submarine’s eyes underwater. The German sonarman, holding his headphones, frowned after a few seconds of silence and reported to Prien, who was waiting on the side, “The enemy is approaching the position where we just fired our torpedoes. A very accurate judgment.”

“…” Prien knew he was in serious trouble. Who could have predicted before the attack that the opponent would have a commander so proficient in anti-submarine warfare? The Soviet fleet’s formation just now had been completely amateurish, yet this amateur had instantly turned into a professional.

“Change course, full rudder to port, evade it!” After thinking for a moment, Prien decided to change course to see the opponent’s reaction. If it was just a reckless greenhorn charging in, Prien might even consider sinking him to add to his own kill count. But he had not expected the other side to come so quickly. Based on past experience, he had not left the detection range of the destroyer’s sonar.

“Maintain speed, reduce to 3 knots! Minimize noise!” Prien continued to give combat orders. The sailors turned off some non-essential equipment to reduce the noise the submarine made in the sea. But it was clear that in the water, the sounds from the rudder, the engine, and the propellers were the main sources of noise. Unless all power systems were shut down, the probability of the opponent detecting them was still very high.

But no one would really shut down all the power systems. If they did that, the entire submarine wouldn’t last very long. If the enemy still hadn’t left by then, their situation would become even more dangerous.

Prien waited quietly, waiting for the opponent to show his strength, so he could judge how to respond. The initiative was now in the hands of the faster destroyer. He had to let the opponent make the first move to find his own opportunity.

On the surface of the sea, the sharp bow of the destroyer cut through the waves, leaving a trail of its high-speed advance on the water. On the bridge, the bearded captain was judging the probable position of the submarine. “Sonarman, still no contact?”

He was certain of his judgment, confident that he would not be wrong. He would definitely find the German submarine in the vicinity. A submerged submarine couldn’t be that fast, at least not in his experience.

“I have a strange signal source. It’s not very strong, doesn’t sound like a submarine, but it also doesn’t sound like a natural noise,” the sonarman reported, having repeatedly checked what he had heard. He still couldn’t be sure what it was, so he had to report the truth. The sound was coming from a direction perpendicular to their course, right on the edge of the sonar’s maximum detection range.

The bearded captain’s eyes lit up when he heard the sonarman’s report. He immediately guessed the opponent’s course of action. It seemed this submarine was also an experienced old hand. The moment it had confirmed that his destroyer was accelerating towards it, it had changed its course, almost evading his sonar equipment.

This was not a good sign. To catch such an experienced opponent would definitely not be an easy matter. The bearded captain immediately gave the order to turn. If he didn’t adjust his course now, he would lose his target in a dozen seconds.

The destroyer suddenly turned at sea, pointing its bow directly at the German submarine’s position. This made the German sonarman a little nervous, because he heard the signal of the opponent getting closer and closer. For a submarine, a destroyer getting closer was definitely not good news. The problems revealed by this news were all potentially fatal.

Either the opponent’s sonar had picked up the submarine, or the opponent, through sheer luck and various other reasons, had closed the distance between them. If the two sides got any closer, then the destroyer could roughly guess the submarine’s position through its sonar. At that point, the battle would become a pure slaughter.

The destroyer would use multiple sonar sweeps to confirm the submarine’s course and then drop depth charges in advance on the submarine’s path. One after another, the depth charges would be dropped, and these powerful weapons would explode in the deep sea. As long as the submarine was within the blast radius, it would be immediately damaged and sunk.

The ridiculous thing was that at that moment, the deep sea, which protected the submarine from harm, would immediately become a cold-blooded monster that devoured it. A surface ship sinking at least had a process, whether fast or slow. A submarine sinking didn’t need a transition—it was already submerged.

“Captain! They’ve turned and are still closing on us,” the sonarman reported, looking up at Prien. “The distance between us has been narrowed.”

Prien was no slouch either. He immediately judged the coverage of the opponent’s sonar. This was a British sonar; its range had been confirmed by German submarines in the North Atlantic. Now that he knew the approximate detection range of the opponent’s sonar, he could accurately calculate the opponent’s blind spots during the subsequent escape.

The first time the opponent had charged over, it was clearly based on experience and judgment. This Prien could guess. The second time, for the opponent to correctly turn with his submarine, was a real reaction that could only be made after having detected the submarine.

“Increase speed! To 5 knots!” Prien decided he had to do something. Since he couldn’t hide, then he would shake them off. “Continue to dive. Level off at 50 meters! Then notify me!”

The noise was significantly louder than before. The submarine’s electric motors began to work frantically. Only a few emergency lights in the entire submarine were still giving off a dim glow. The rest of the space was pitch black, making the people inside even more nervous and anxious.

“Turn! Full rudder to port!” As if guessing that the opponent had already caught up with him, Prien frowned and gave the order to turn. His defensive strategy had changed. The original quiet, slow tempo was suddenly accelerated by the German submarine. This great shark, which had been lurking in the deep sea, began to speed up and frequently twist its body.

The zigzag course, the basic standard for a submarine to escape a destroyer’s pursuit. Its core idea was to use its variable course to interfere with the destroyer’s depth charge drops, to reduce the opponent’s hit probability, and then, when possible, to break the opponent’s sonar contact and complete the escape.

Sure enough, as Prien had expected, on the Soviet destroyer that had just caught up above his submarine, at the command of the bearded captain, the sailors had already pushed the depth charges onto the ready-to-launch racks. However, with the German submarine’s sudden acceleration, the order to attack with depth charges was changed to standby.

At this time, the bearded captain had plenty of his own troubles. The German submarine below him had, until now, shown no discernible pattern in its movements. And a state of no discernible pattern was a state where one could not predict the opponent’s next move. For a destroyer that had to attack in advance, this was not a good state to be in.

At the beginning, the bearded captain had used the direction of the torpedo attack to deduce the approximate position of Prien’s submarine. This was an important deduction that had allowed the Soviet destroyer to maintain sonar contact with the German submarine, which was crucial for a destroyer attacking a submarine. Otherwise, if you don’t even know where the enemy is, how can you even talk about the subsequent problem of attacking?

Subsequently, Prien’s submarine had been moving at a constant speed, and not a fast one. This had allowed the Soviet destroyer to quickly arrive above the submarine and to grasp its approximate depth. But in the next moment, the German submarine had suddenly changed all its states: its depth had changed, its speed had changed, and its course had changed.

And so, the prepared attack could no longer be used. The Soviet destroyer had to re-determine the data of the enemy submarine to prepare for its own attack: it had to determine the new course of the submarine, then repeatedly confirm its speed and course to judge the opponent’s next approximate position, before it could launch the next attack.

Anti-submarine warfare, limited by the era and the weapons, is almost unimaginable today. Today’s submarines and destroyers can accurately locate their opponents with sonar, and anti-submarine torpedoes and depth charges can easily attack their targets—there are even more advanced anti-submarine missiles or submarine-launched anti-ship missiles to attack the opponent from a long range. But in this era, everyone had to use more complex and less efficient methods to do everything they could to sink their opponent.

“Full rudder to port! Stay with this submarine! We can’t let him get away!” the bearded captain said, tracing a line on the sea chart with his finger, hoping to grasp the opponent’s movement patterns as soon as possible, to sink this cunning opponent as quickly as possible.

After all, in the distance, over 1,000 Soviet soldiers were in the water because of this German submarine’s attack, and hundreds had already been frozen to death in the icy sea. The cruiser, leading the other destroyer, was rescuing the men from the water, but because the progress was too slow, many of them had already frozen to death in the icy water. What made the Soviets even angrier was that the ship that had sunk was named the Sovetsky Soyuz.

Published: 2025-09-05T01:20:01.000+00:00
Last Edited: 2025-12-28T17:22:13.000+00:00
URL: https://www.patreon.com/caleredhair/posts/mtr-c560-course-138142948

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