[mookiemookie]

Allow me to offer one up: The story of U-570's maiden voyage.

In August 1941 U-570 left Trondheim on its maiden voyage commanded by Captain Hans Rahmlow. The boat was already a mess, having bottomed out while trying to escape an airplane on the way out. Hydrophones weren't working, diesels and air compressors damaged, batteries not strapped down properly, unsecured torpedos.....

On August 26, U-570 was ordered to interecept a convoy off the coast of Iceland. While waiting in position, a large portion of the crew became seasick in rough seas. Captain Rahmlow submerged to give them a bit of a rest, and after a couple hours popped up his scope in preparation to surface. Seeing no ships, he gives the order to surface the boat. What Captain Rahmlow DIDN'T check for were enemy planes. As soon as he opened the hatch and stepped on to the bridge, he heard aiplane engines and ordered a crash dive. The plane dropped a couple D/Cs right on U-570's head. Dials and lights shattered in the command room, and the crew panicked and evacuated the aft compartments of the boat, saying there was flooding in the batteries, resulting in chlorine gas. Rahmlow tried to dive, but as Clay Blair in Hitler's U-Boat War Volume 1 puts it "nothing happened. The impact of the explosion had disengaged or broken the electric busses and fuses and there was no one in the aft room to reset or fix them, a simple task."

Luckily for U-570, the plane above had dropped all of its D/Cs and was now only armed with a machine gun. But Rahmlow panicked, and ordered an emergency surface and prepared to scuttle the boat. The Engima and other secret materials were thrown over the side, and as the Coastal Command plane came about, it saw the crew flooding the bridge. It made a couple strafing runs until the pilot realized that the crew wasn't manning AA guns...they were waving white flags and surrendering. To a single plane armed only with a machine gun.

To further illustrate what a great Kaleun Rahmlow was.... when Allied ships arrived on scene, the officers and Rahmlow left U-570 first ahead of wounded crewmembers, and the displeasure of U-570's crew at this was even noted in the office American intel report.

When Rahmlow and his crew were later taken to a POW camp in England, no less of a figure than Silent Otto Kretschmer himself (who was already being held in this camp) convened a "Council of Honor" made up of senior U-boat POWs to "try" Rahmlow (who was being held in isolation) and his officers for cowardice. They were found guilty and sentenced to be excuted. After the "trial" U-570's first watch officer was shot trying to escape and the English transferred Rahmlow to another camp for his own safety.

Now you tell me that's not a pretty craptastic captain :rotfl: