my favorite has always been "Moon" Chapple who charged into Lingayen Gulf with an ancient S-boat and took on the Japanese invasion fleet all by himself, sinking a transport in the process.

http://can-esc.com/media/photos/2010...eLigne1944.png

Werner Lott
Kaleu of U-35 from 1937 until her loss in 1939.
Not the most successful, or perhaps daring, but a true gentleman.
When you look at U-35s war patrol, you see incidents such as that of the Arlita, Lord Minto and Nancy Hague where U-35 sunk both the Arlita and the Lord Minto with gunfire but spared the Nancy Hague so that she could take the crew of the two sunken trawlers home.
The Alvis, a fishing trawler, was spared when U-35 realised that the thirteen man crew would never have made it to land with the available lifeboat, in return the crew of the Alvis warned U-35 that the Ark Royal was in the area.
Then came her most famous moment, the Greek steamer Diamantis. A 4490 ton vessel which U-35 encountered in bad weather. They warned the steamer that they were going to sink her and took the crew of 28 onto the Uboat as the weather was too rough for lifeboats.
U-35 then sailed to Ireland and put the Greek crew ashore in Dingle Bay, with Walter Kalabuch rowing the Greeks ashore several at a time. It was a violation of Irish neutrality but the captain and crew of U-35 were humans first, sailors of the Reich second.
Alas, her next patrol was her last, but her crew were all saved.

http://www.nvmu.ru/images/admin01/Br...Pereskopov.jpg
Captain Second Rank Igor Anatolievich Britanov
Commander of K-219
Anyone who has read Hostile Waters will know that Captain Britanov was another man who put his crew before his orders. After K-219 had her incident, Britanov tried in vain to save her, but when poison gas started leaking through the compartments, and with four crewmen already dead (including Sergei Preminin, a young 19 year old hero who sacrificed his life to manually drop the reactor rods, thus stopping K-219s runaway reactor.) Britanov ordered the evacuation of K-219. Moscow judged that Britanov was giving up too easily and ordered the political officer to take command and put the crew back on the boat, but before he could do K-219 sunk, cause unknown but it's widely accepted that Britanov deliberately scuttled her.
Britanov returned home and was charged with negligence, treason and sabotage, thankfully before he could be sentenced, the Soviet defence ministers changed and the charges were dropped.
His judgment, bravery and courage to defy Moscow remain unacknowledged by the Russian government to this date. Rutger Hauer does a good portrayal of Britanov in Hostile Waters, although the events of the film differ from reality (K-219 did not collide with an American sub)
He had a plate fixed in the control room of K-219, "Submarine life is not a service, but a religion." Needless to say the zampolit was not amused but he was just one man in a crew that was very loyal to Britanov.

Same here, for obvious reasons. Share the same birthday, too, though his predates mine.

For the daring capture of a German submarine, instinctively knowing how to operate and use it effectively in combat, securing the Enigma machine, single-handedly turning the tide of the Battle of the Atlantic, and simultaneously doing more damage to the war contributions of our allies in the eyes of the American moviegoing public than even the Germans could, I hereby nominate........
http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o...mes/a-hole.jpg

...........this jerk.

Der Alte, of course!

http://www.moviemarket.com/library/p...190/190405.jpg


:salute:

On my list.:salute: That's one of my favorite sub stories.

Not to forget...

Commander Wreford-Brown RN

Commander of HMS Conqueror 1982

Nice one James :DL

Yea yea, Otto, Gunter, Dick and Mush were great but what about this dude?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Launders

Only sub commander (AFAIK :03:) that tracked and sank another sub, while both were underwater.

Or what about this dude:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Lunin

a good commander in a very underperforming submarine force (the Soviet navy in WWII) whose personnel mostly served as infantry managed a difficult though probably unsuccessful attack on the Tirpitz and managed to sink 17 German vessels in the North.

I wonder if the Baton Rouge/Sierra collision counts?

Both were so badly damaged that they had to be decommissioned.

I'll take ol' Ajax. An illustration that all leaders are subject to fallibility.

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...q9h-j28CCQ&t=1