Sale, Richard "Warhead"

Bill Brookfield, an English RAF officer invalidated out of the service after being wounded in aerial action over the North Sea, seeks recuperation at the family estate on an island in the Bahamas. Initially all he wants to do is go fishing in the Atlantic aboard the family steam yacht, but war soon intrudes when he learns of a German U-boat in the vicinity which is preying upon British merchant vessels. One day soon after, while picnicing on a deserted atoll, Bill and his wife Marion stumble upon an unexploded German torpedo ("Gott strafe England" is scrawled in a Teutonic hand on its side), and Bill hatches a plot to find the prowling U-boat and sink it with its own lethal armament. That is precisely what he does when, later in the day, he encounters the submarine attacking a British armed merchant vessel (the fictitious steamer RAJAH). Though this short story was published six months before America's entry into World War 2, there can be no doubt as to author Sale's sympathies - he's pro-Britain all the way!