Quote:
|
Originally Posted by coronas
Spanish Steam San Carlos was a 223 tons vessel:
"At 19.50 hours on 16 Dec, 1940, U-37 missed the San Carlos with one torpedo off Cape Juby and decided to attack the vessel at 20.00 hours from a distance of 800 metres with the deck gun and the 37mm AA gun, but the deck gun broke down after 21 shots. The 15 crew members and 13 passengers abandoned ship in two lifeboats, but one man was lost. The Germans rowed in a dinghi to the ship and placed scuttling charges on the vessel that later sank the ship. Doing so they noticed that the fired rounds had not been able to penetrate the 20cm strong wooden hull of the ship. "
From: http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/722.html |
What a magnificent waste of torpedo and deck gun ammo! Why didn't they just come along side the vessel and rake it with machine gun fire? That should convince everyone on board that the open sea is the safer place to head to. Then you can send some sailors to man the boat and operate it as a scout or a bait.
This is what I would have done in GWX2.1 as well.
And the San Carlos is a Spanish ship minding her own business near the Spanish Cannery Islands, not moving tanks to Plymouth. What was the captain thinking?