SURPRISE ATTACK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1939, Page 5

SURPRISE ATTACK

END MADE OF GERMAN SUBMARINE BRITISH PILOT’S ACHIEVEMENT. UNOBSERVED APPROACH. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, December 3. A detailed account of the sinking of a U-boat (reported briefly yesterday) states that when 150 miles from land, a pilot who was flying a coastal command aircraft sighted a minute object on the horizon eight miles distant. With his binoculars he was able to satisfy himself that it was an enemy submarine, apparently of the large oceangoing type. So that he might approach unobserved, the pilot climbed into a cloudbank and stalked his quarry from there. When the crew of the U-boat heard the engines of the aircraft above them they made frantic attempts to close the hatch of the conning tower and make a crash dive. It was too late. The pilot swooped down toward his target and released a bomb before the submarine could fully submerge. A direct hit was scored, the bomb exploding on the base of the U-boat’s conning tower. Parts of the submarine and other wreckage were thrown high by the explosion, and the surface of the sea became coated with oil over a large area. The aircraft remained over the position for five minutes to look for survivors. but none were seen. When the aircraft left the scene a long oval patch of bubbling and foaming water covered the spot where the submarine had been. Two members of the War Cabinet, Sir Samuel Hoare and Lord Hankey, were visiting the operations room at coastal command headquarters when wireless messages announcing the destruction of the submarine were received from the aircraft.