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Ping Panther · 12-05-08, 06:04 PM

Yet another question d'jour:

From all of my reading of various historical accounts of naval battles that involved ASW attacks (yes, of WW2), I have become familiar with the term of "an embarrassing charge" in many of the stories.

The British Navy seemed to use the term of deploying an "embarrassing charge" when almost all hope of a certain u-boat location was lost from their escort searches. An "embarrassing charge" was when one of the remaining escorts would drop just 1 depth charge at the area that was presumed to be the very last place to assume a previously spotted u-boat was lurking.

Was this embarrassing charge done as though they may have one last speck of a chance to get a very odd direct hit, or just to at least spook a sub crew to staying under? To me it always seemed this 1 DC drop would just blow an spread of bubbles and deafen any escorts, more so than get a 1 in a million hit by pure chance on a lost sub.
What do you think? :hmm:

12-05-08, 06:04 PM	#1
Ping Panther Lieutenant Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: the armpit of the Mid-Atlantic / Quadrant CA42 Posts: 262 Downloads: 8 Uploads: 0	And yet another convoy quiz question Yet another question d'jour: From all of my reading of various historical accounts of naval battles that involved ASW attacks (yes, of WW2), I have become familiar with the term of "an embarrassing charge" in many of the stories. The British Navy seemed to use the term of deploying an "embarrassing charge" when almost all hope of a certain u-boat location was lost from their escort searches. An "embarrassing charge" was when one of the remaining escorts would drop just 1 depth charge at the area that was presumed to be the very last place to assume a previously spotted u-boat was lurking. Was this embarrassing charge done as though they may have one last speck of a chance to get a very odd direct hit, or just to at least spook a sub crew to staying under? To me it always seemed this 1 DC drop would just blow an spread of bubbles and deafen any escorts, more so than get a 1 in a million hit by pure chance on a lost sub. What do you think? :hmm: