Quote:
Originally Posted by SabreHawk
In real life this was not a smart thing to do and was used only as a last resort move.
Because it's a do or die thing, if you miss or the torp is a dud or malfuntions you are dead because you have to let the DD get in close enough that he cant out maneuver the torp. And as we all must surely know, no Uboat can outrun or out manuever a DD, nor can he dive fast enough to avoid getting killed with the DD that close, for even if you did get under you still are too close to the surface to avoid the depth charges.
No real life captain would risk it just to kill a DD, if he could escape him any other way. And he certainly wouldn't do it for the fun of it, unless of course he'd gone completely mad and lost his mind.
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Except that there was a US skipper in the Pacific in WWII who routinely did just that. On the other hand, he didn't make it back on his last patrol. Sam Dealey of the Harder (which is mentioned in the link above).