The 3"-5" guns that are mounted on the escorts and eventually some merchants do some pretty massive damage. Their accuracy is rather poor so luckily you only get hit by a few shells.
As pointed out many times by several retired sailors, the larger ships would never waste the bigger munitions on a u-boat. Something small like a DD designed for ASW would open up with anything its got, while a heavy cruiser wouldn't fire any of its main batteries only possibly its smaller ones if there wasn't anything else around (like a DD, trawler or even sqwall). Firing an entire broadside of twelve to sixteen 12"-15" guns at a single u-boat would've likely gotten the captain in hot water. Unless the target was confirmed to be a priority (such as being possitively identified as Prien or Kretshcmer's boat) justifying such a large monetary expendeture on the target would have been difficult at best.
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