"The sharp, fine bows of the _Whack_ drove home well abaft the
conning-tower, and--though the staggering jar told of the resistance
met--for all the eye could see, cut through like a knife in soft butter.
Indeed, the amazing cleanness of the cut has always seemed to me the
most remarkable feature of the whole show. The bow end of the U-boat,
with the conning-tower, was the section which was cut off on my
side--port--and the even cross-section of it that gaped up at me was
very little different from that I once saw when one of our own
submarines was being sawed through amidships in connection with some
repairs. Even the plating did not appear to be bent or buckled. The
impression that ring of shining clean-cloven steel left on my mind was
of a cut as true and even as could have been done in dock with an
acetylene flame. This was largely imagination, of course; and yet how
photographic my mind-picture is you may judge from the fact that I have
distinct recollection of seeing the thin circle of red lead where it
showed all the way round beneath the grey of the outer paint.
"The heavily tilted main deck of the interior of this section of the
U-boat did not appear to be flooded at this juncture, though any water
that had been shipped, of course, would have been in the now submerged
bows. I have a jumbled recollection of wheels and levers and
switchboards, fittings of brass and steel, and what I took to be three
torpedoes--one on the port side, and two, one above the other, on the
starboard. The most arresting thing of all, however, was the figure of a
solitary man, the only one, strange to say, that anybody reports having
seen. He was scrambling upward toward the opening, and I have never been
quite sure whether he was 'Kamerad-ing' with his uplifted hands, or
whether they were raised preparatory to the dive it is quite probable he
intended to make into the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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