The passage turns the route to Norway into an operational problem in its own right. X8 loses telephone communication with her towing submarine before the tow parts, and the separation goes unnoticed until the craft is due to surface. She later finds X7 and Stubborn, only to lose contact again after a phonetic error corrupts a transmitted course. The repeated searches and recoveries show how communications, navigation, and tow handling could decide whether a raiding craft even reached the enemy coast.
Notable Point · 4:09-6:42
Tow failures and navigation errors before the attack
The X8 episode shows how fragile the approach phase was, with broken tows, lost contact, searching, and mistaken course transmission.