Comments by "William Cox" (@WildBillCox13) on "The Invention of the Depth Charge - Kaboom? Yes Jellicoe, Kaboom!" video.
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I can see it now as though it were yesterday. U372, under our beloved Fregaten Kapitan Alfred "Alfy" Krosse, had slaked our thirst for the enemy on the fat tankers of Shell and Esso, sinking 37,000 tons in a week and two days. On a cold, gray, Tuesday in early February, 1942, we were on the surface, recharging our batteries and pooping over the side, when our air watch lookout, der unterste Offizier Gus "who drank all the Echt Kölnisch Wasser?" Mestik, cried: "It is BALLOON!"
We had been discovered by a division of the dreaded K-Class "Papier Schlachtschiffe"! Streaking toward our poor Iron Pig at a blistering 18 kilometers per hour, the courageous madmen of the Helium Corps squeaked like so many chipmunks as they attacked. Empty beer bottles rained down upon us like the wrath of Bacchus, forcing some men over the side and driving the rest of us below.
After a torturous minute the deluge slackened. A brave soul-I think it was Gunther Bateman- opened the hatch and popped his head out. A bucket of chum was his reward, dumped from the closest of the three K luftschiffe. In an instant, he was mobbed by all the seagulls in the ocean, eaten alive, dying by the dance of many beaks as the old salts used to say.
We came about and raced for home, pursued by the angry squeaktoy squeals of our Helium Corps harassers.
As one might well imagine, this sad chapter in the KM's honorable history was not recorded in U372's log.
-- Senior putterman Wilheim "All Hands" Heimlich in The History Channel interview, May 1989.
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