[The following is related by Otto Giese, at this time a sailor aboard the German submarine U-405, in the Polar Sea during 1941.]
One late afternoon while we were deeply absorbed in the beauty of this panorama, the call “Alarm!” rang through the boat, followed by the shrill sound of the bells, “Destroyer ahead!”
Through the conning tower hatch we tumbled as the boat plunged to 300 feet. The chief petty officer on watch had seen the enemy some miles ahead of us. “To battle stations, flood the torpedo tubes, course 15 degrees, bring her to periscope depth,” ordered Captain Hopman. Carefully, he and his officers watched the destroyer.
The enemy stopped. No propeller noises could be heard. But a wisp of smoke was rising from her stack and she trailed a low bow wave.
Captain Hopman ordered the chief petty officer to study the enemy through the Spargel (“asparagus periscope”). After a while the officer, shaking his head in disbelief, burst into laughter. “Sir, I beg your pardon, but I think we’re mistaken. This is no destroyer, it’s a lousy iceberg in the shape of a ship!”
Everyone looked through the scopes again and again. Up we went and there we saw our destroyer peacefully drifting along. What we had thought was smoke was a few dainty clouds, and the bow wave we had noted was a long swell running higher on the flat and submerged side of the iceberg. Later this incident would be memorializes by wags in an illustrated pamphlet.
Source:
Giese, Otto, and James E. Wise. “Second Patrol.” Shooting the War: The Memoir and Photographs of a U-Boat Officer in World War II. Naval Institute, 2003. 132-33. Print.
Further Reading:
That gave me a good little laugh