"For a moment, you feel like you might be the most perfect warrior in the world, you can do almost anything, you feel like you can accomplish anything, and you are not afraid to face any enemy...... Dönitz wrote in his diary, his tone full of confidence in battle.

You may yearn to be a ruthless submarine commander hidden in the dark depths of the sea after reading the description of learning to be a submarine commander, but if you really know the job, you will never associate it with romance and coolness. All that awaits you is suffocating waiting, the cold waters, and loneliness and claustrophobia.

Compared to those pilots in the Air Force, the life of a submariner is another world entirely. Pilots perform missions for a maximum of a few hours, and then they can relax. And the officers and men of the submarine need to face any situation alone for more than a month every time they carry out a mission.

For a whole month, every soldier on the submarine was accompanied by the roar of machinery and the terrible cramped spaces. If you really miss life in a submarine, you can spend three days in your own toilet without flushing the toilet.

There are two lavatories on the submarine, one in the forward torpedo compartment and one in the aft torpedo compartment, and often the lavatory in the front torpedo compartment is used as a storage room full of food when the submarine departs for a mission. So the entire submarine generally needs to queue up to go to the toilet.

However, due to technical reasons, the toilet is unusable when the submarine is cruising in the deep sea below 80 feet, so if the people inside want to use the toilet, they can only use a bucket with a lid to solve the problem.

The rear torpedo room of the submarine has two torpedo tubes, but it is indeed an important rest area and dormitory for the officers and men of the submarine. Except for an auxiliary steering wheel, which is used to manually operate the submarine when the steering wheel in the control room fails, the rest of the place is basically for people to sleep.

But even with this arrangement of beds, only 10 people could sleep – two of them in hammocks tied to the ceiling. These positions do not belong to a single soldier, but two people share a bed, which also means that half of the entire submarine is always unable to rest.

It's very frustrating to live in such a small space, and in fact most of the time the sailors are standing on the floor, because the submarine will rock wildly from side to side as it sails through the rough waters of the North Atlantic. Unless you tie yourself to your bed, you wake up to find yourself sleeping in the same bunk as your comrade in the opposite bunk.

When the U34 submarine was ordered to carry out a mission in the rough North Atlantic, Dönitz realized that he had been wrong. He wrote in his diary: "The other day I felt like I could do almost anything, but these days I have been completely dazzled by the real combat environment - the wind and waves here are five times greater than the Baltic Sea, we have to fight with loneliness and boredom, there is oil everywhere and the smell of sweat, and I have to work naked inside minus ten degrees outside, this place is no different from hell." ”

Beneath the quiet water, a few fish were swimming leisurely, and suddenly they seemed to be startled by something, and suddenly they scattered and fled like lightning. After about a few tens of seconds, a huge black shadow appeared slowly and quietly, like a vicious killer whale with a dangerous aura.

By moonlight, the German U34 slowly touched its target, and the young submarine commander carefully checked the markers on his route with his periscope. His submarine moved silently. Because of his nervousness, he seemed to feel the sweat in his palms soaking the grip of the periscope.

The battle plan in Dönitz's hand was detailed and bold, it was a bit unbelievable, if it weren't for Raeder's personal explanation, Dönitz would have thought that he was taking the opportunity to get rid of him. Still, he decided to accept the combat mission, because he was fully confident that it would be successfully accomplished.

The torpedo-laden U34 submarine sailed along a carefully planned route to the North Sea via Wilhelmshaven, where it diverted to the south and submerged to avoid being spotted by surface vessels. The route was drawn up in a highly confidential manner, and there was not even any departure ceremony at the pier at the time of the submarine's departure. What Dönitz didn't know was that the attack plan was not drawn up by Raeder and the General Staff, but was provided by Hua Guo to Germany, and surprisingly Hua Guo provided the battle plan in detail to the direction of the ocean currents and the change of tides - the devil knows why Hua Guo was so interested in a sneak attack on Scapa Bay!

The submarine went along the Danish peninsula into the North Sea, and on the way Dönitz never revealed anything to the crew about this combat mission. The submarine spent most of the time underwater during the voyage, only occasionally surfacing during the day. Ignorant of the mission they were about to perform, the crew often looked at Dönitz with bewilderment, but did not say a word, leaving no doubt that they had complete trust in Dönitz.

It was getting dark, and at night, the U34, which had been underwater for almost a whole day with sonar and blind estimates, surfaced and began to correct its course. The sailors stepped out of the submarine in turn for a brief release, and the weather was completely different from when they went out to sea, there was no heavy snow at sea, but the thick clouds made the starlight disappear, and it was extremely difficult to discern the course and bearing.

"Sir! Where are we going? We are estimated to be close to the UK mainland, so there shouldn't be many transports here. His first mate had a telescope around his neck, leaning against an armrest around the exit hatch of the conning tower, his right hand holding a cigarette was yellow, and after a few puffs, only the butt remained, and he looked like a skilled drug addict.

"Hey! It's the UK, let's go and stab the British in the ass - Scapa Bay, isn't the sting exciting? Dönitz held the binoculars and looked at the shore on one side. Based on the lights emanating from the coast, Dönitz was convinced that he was not far from Orkneyshire.

"Actually, it's called Chrysanthemum, Captain." The first mate smiled and replied, "Do you want us to be promoted and raised, or do you want us to die?" Anyway, it's a very exciting task. ”

Even at night in the North Atlantic, the sea is not calm, the submarine sways from side to side with the waves, and the salty sea water splashes to the corners of the mouth with a fishy smell. After all, this is a warship with only a few hundred tons, and it cannot have the seaworthiness of a surface warship of tens of thousands of tons. At least at this stage, a submarine is only a diving ship, not a potentially underwater one.

At the end of the break, Dönitz waited for his crew to get back into the submarine one by one, and he was used to being the last to enter the submarine so that he could personally inspect the hatch covers. Soon everyone was inside the submarine, and Dönitz closed the hatch cover, and the air mixed with a foul smell replaced the fresh, cold sea breeze.

"Keep diving! Depth positioning 35 meters. After 5 minutes, save electricity and maintain course. Dönitz commanded loudly.

His first mate was already in place, repeating his command loudly: "Continue to exhaust the dive to a depth of 35 meters." Turn off the main lighting after 5 minutes! ”

After about five minutes, the main lighting inside the submarine was cut off, and the instruments in the submarine's control room, the slight leakage of water droplets from the pipes, and the sound of seawater squeezing the hull from all sides mixed together, giving people a creepy feeling, accompanied by the roar of mechanical rotation became the noise inside the boat. It was dark, with only a few instruments carrying lights, allowing the people in the submarine to blur the silhouette of the surroundings.

At three o'clock in the afternoon of April 25, 1910, the U34 submarine approached the target, and no one could have imagined what kind of changes these dozens of people would bring to the world, but it was just a small submarine, just a few small torpedoes, like butterflies with wings, setting off a huge storm on the other side of the ocean.

"Periscope height!" I don't know how long it took, but Dönitz finally opened his mouth and ordered. He put his face on the periscope, raised the only device that could observe water targets under water, and took a closer look at the surroundings.

"This strait can't be navigated in a submersible state, otherwise it will hit those sunken ships." After looking at the surrounding scenery, he compared the navigation map with the first mate, which was densely marked with the location of many shipwrecks, and the sea state map provided by the Chinese people was confirmed to be extremely accurate.

With the support of charts, ocean currents, tides and other intelligence provided by China, Dönitz led the U34 submarine to unbelievably cross shipwreck obstacles, mine obstacles and submarine bollards, and evaded British transport ships by sinking, moving along the coastline little by little under the cover of night. The U34's excellent sonar equipment and diesel engines were another key factor in their success, and Dönitz was even in the mood to appreciate the results of Walter's secret cooperation.

Breaking through the turbulent currents, the U34 finally entered Kirk Strait, the last barrier to Scapa Sound, where the wrecks and moorings spread all over the seafloor caused the submarine to constantly collide with them, but fortunately the submarine did not become part of the wreck. (To be continued.) )