of a challenge than I had anticipated. I'd been advised to pay close attention to the first signs of straying off course, then immediately counteract it with a compensating turn of the wheel. Minutes could elapse before the ship would show evidence of a shift in its rudder. By then, the ship might already be comm itted to a wild swing in the wrong direction . This could only be forestalled by initiating a countercorrection at what one hoped would be the propitious moment. Blackie had his own way of scolding the errant leviathan into behaving. The rest of us, lacking his experience and powers of persuasion, had to bear the ignominy of carving highly visible "S" curves in our track, praying that the watch officer wouldn't notice. At the day's end, as The Time Of The Submarine approached, the off-dury watch would collect on the fantail to mull over topics large and small, survival at sea being among the more imperative: "This ain't li ke the Murmansk run. We couldn't see nothing-no planes, DEs, nothing. Then BOOM!- we takes a fish right in the rudder- " "You mean, like, right here, where
we're sitting?" "You bet your sweet ass it was. All's we could do was carve circles, round and around. The only good thing about it was the sub-he never could get us lined up again for another shot!" Sooner or later the conversation would work aro und to an examination of our present predicament, "Ir's hotter than hell down there in the compartment." "Yeal1, I'm sleeping on deck." "But what about the rain? Can't sleep in the rain!" "Hell!, just put
land. Fire amidships, so some of the guys took off over the rail, some even afire. The ship kept on a-go ing for another mile. We got a boat over and went back looking for the guys who'd jumped. Never did find 'em." Blackie summed it all up: "The!#&* moral is !#&*ing stay with the !#&*ing ship as !#&*ing long as !#&*ing possible! " To which everyone nodded, Amen. "Well,
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on rubber-ducky thatyour way you'll be all setsuitwhen you're blown overboard." "Not me! I'm sticking with one a them oldfashioned cork preservers." ''Are you nuts? You jump overboard with one of them things on, they come up under your chin and knock you out cold ." "Nothing. You're better off with nothing on. That way you can dive down and swim away under the burning oil! " "Ha ha ha! We ain't picked up any oil yet." "No? So, we're empty. What d'ya think then? Empty holds blow up like KA-blooey!" "We was hit off Scot-
Commissioned in 1943, U-995 is a Type VII submarine, the largest class constructed by Germany during the war. In World Wtlr fl U-Boats sank approximately 2, 778 ships, with nearly 90% of that number sunk in the Atlantic. 1 One of two surviving U-Boats, U-995 is on display in Laboe, Germany, supported in a concrete cradle on shore. Closer to home, U-505 is on display at the Museum ofScience and Industry in Chicago. 1 'U-995: Wtlr at Sea" by Eric Dietrich Berryman, PhD; Historic Naval Ships Association We>b Site: www.hnsa.org.