Category: U-Boat

The hulking figure with the silver buckle revealed the hands that had been stoically tucked at the small of his back, a small piece of fabric rested in an outstretched hand. Tom and Paul looked to each other and then to the offering, their eyes a mixture of confusion and terror still. A hand pressed…

Polished brass, well kept steel, ticking gauges, and six broad figures in ancient diving suits towered over Tom and Paul who stared back in a confusion that could only be best described as “complete”. The first object Paul had noticed was the lightbulb in an old fashioned socket, working. Paul considered himself a good around-the-house…

Guns have a terrible tendency not to work underwater. They will fire but they will not do much after that. Bullets tend to lose velocity after only a few meters, fragment and the weapon will concuss the user from the pressure displacement of being fired. Divers are trained to stay deep and move silently, this…

Akin had finished 8th in a graduating group of more than a hundred. His scores in arithmetic and language were perfect, his talents in the classrooms were praised by his teachers endlessly. It was peer to peer activities that tripped him up, sometimes literally. In the entire Coast Guard Academy, if working with peers was…

The first thing they snagged were the lights. First there was the disorienting pull from being dragged by vaccum inside the hull. The narrow torpedo shoot had enveloped and drawn in Tom and then Paul, their ears crashing with radio screams from Perry being jettisoned to the surface, Wells calling out for help, Tom swearing…

“It says what, big-country?” Perry sounded as though he had just been told a bad punchline to a long joke. Tom fumbled with his equipment to try and fish out the crowbar while also keying the mic. The torpedo bay was barely large enough for him with his tanks and there he was worming around…

Perry signaled to Wells, making a motion with his fingers to twist an invisible knob and then held up three fingers, he wanted to change radio channels, he wanted to speak on proximity and off the command network. Away from Akin and the surface vessel. He didn’t want to sound panicky, not in front of…

The storm had managed to park off the coast for a painfully long stretch of time. Trees bent and splintered, windows were broken, water lapped up and into yards and splashed under ties, and all the while the temperature dipped. Icicles began to gather and hang from around the edges of the Watch Tower and…

“Gentlemen, we think that Brunhilde was carrying the worlds first attempt at submarine launched nuclear rockets. We think that the larger bow of U-5198 was to house V-1 or even V-2 rockets that would be fired from the safety of submersion and would allow the ship to escape or even make way to another target….

Hours had passed, so had a few cups of coffee and a few nervous trips to the head (the old naval term for washroom). Tom and Paul sat opposite one another in ill fitting, borrowed blue coveralls without insignia. It had been nice to slip out of the wetsuits, their skin finally having a chance…