Hi, Joe and the rest!

You are right, it's certainly no fun standing on a heaving, wet conning-tower in cold winter conditions! The South Atlantic is every bit as inhospitable as the North, and lookout duties are not pleasant..

Fortunately for us, some of the conditions have changed. During your four-hour watch, you and four other guys rotated every twenty minutes. For example, your first may be on the bridge, then to the Ops room, to work for another twenty minutes with the Plot, then to the wheel to steer, or on standby at the diving-planes. Also, this was peacetime, so sometimes there was an opportunity to go and make coffee or cocoa! In very bad weather, that twenty minutes "upstairs" could really be uncomfortable!

Those guys on the U-boats certainly had it rough!

Garth