Submarine

I had taken the position of the three [enemy] ships before submerging, and I succeeded in getting another flash [look] through my periscope before I began action. I soon reached what I regarded as a good shooting point. Then I loosed one of my torpedoes at the middle ship. I was then about twelve feet under water, and got the shot off in good shape . . . I climbed to the surface to get a sight through my tube of the effect, and discovered that the shot had gone straight and true, striking the [enemy] ship . . . There were a fountain of water, a burst of smoke, a flash of fire . . . Then I heard a roar and felt reverberations [a boom] sent through the water by the detonation [explosion]. [The enemy ship] had been broken apart, and sank in a few minutes.

—Otto Weddigen, A Memoir of the Sinking of the Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue by U-boat U-9, 1914