And in real life there was one kind of ship uncannily difficult to sink and that was an empty tanker. They had a double hull with fairly wide separation between. You could fill the outer hull full of torpedoes and they would sail away. More than one WWII American sub captain groused about the number of torpedoes they could take and not sink.
This was made even more maddening by the fact that a FULL tanker, especially if they were full of aviation gas, made for a very easy and spectacular target. They were among the most valuable of targets and could not be ignored. In fact it was just as important to put the empty ones out of business as the full ones, so it was not an option to save your torpedoes, sail away and hope the target could not be repaired. You just about had to shoot until it went down or you were out of torpedoes.
"Captain, we have good news, and we have bad news...."
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