I've blasted the dickens out of ships only to have them float burning for hours and then finally limp off into the distance.
Actually, the only time I had a ship, that I had torpedoed, limp off was when I was trying to kill more and more ships in that convoy. I guess i was getting greedy. I shot this one destroyer off my tail but she didn't sink. She did, however, drop to about 2 knots speed. I let her go because I had much juicier targets to shoot at and so, I set off to catch up with a convoy that was now running for its life. I sank every merchant in that convoy. Once all the merchants were sunk, the remaining destroyers lost me because I'd gone deep and silent. They went back to their original NNE course. I headed back SSW and when I surfaced, I could see the smoke from that first destroyer at what looked like just over the horizon. I was amazed to find that she was still afloat. So I headed down there to kill her once and for all - which I did. After she sank, I marked the spot on the map and then measured the distance between where she sank and where I first torpedoed her. I still had all my Xs on the map. It was an amazing 53 miles.
On another mission, I sneaked into Rabaul just to see what was there. There were no destroyers protecting the harbor but there was quite a handful of merchants tied up at their moorings. I blasted all of them one by one and one freighter split right in two just like described in this thread. I did not notice how long the two ends floated. I didn't think about it. But both pieces were still floating when I left the marina now that you mention it.
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