I remember a history channel show some years back about the war. While I can't remember any of the details, they mentioned an incident where a US sub put no less then 6 torpedoes into a relatively small coaster tramp steamer. She settled, on an even keel, until the decks were nearly awash. But, she did not sink. Upon seeing the crew abondon the completely disabled ship, the sub surfaced and pumped a fair number of deck gun rounds into her from (effectively) point blank range.
Turned out the ship was full of bails of raw rubber. As far as anyone knows, she never sank, and was, in fact, efffectively unsinkable - at least until her cargo could be gotten out of the way somehow. Since she was so full of water, they couldn't even get the raw latex to ignite and burn off. The sub just gave up and went back to patroling.
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