RL Depth Charge Damage: U-175

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by Brag

...That Allied ASW ship commanders acted with unnessesary brutality against surfacing U-boats, there is no question about it.

Horsepoop.

A surfaced U-boat (even obviously damaged) can fire a torpedo.

In war it is KILL or BE KILLED.

Preventing the crew from abandoning the U-boat by laying suppressive fires on it... and discouraging said crew from scuttling it... can give a boarding crew time enough to get to the U-boat and have an opportunity to capture battle winning information.

In so doing, a captain launching a boarding party places his own boat at risk of attack by other potentially undetected U-boats.

Controlling the scene surrounding a foe that may still yet have his teeth and will to fight isn't brutality. WAR is brutality. War IS Hell. To fight a war, regardless of which side you are on... you must come to peace with the idea of ending someone's life.

It can also be argued that it was brutal for convoys to be under orders not to pick up survivors of previous attacks.

It can also be arguably classified as 'brutality' when you are forced to commit to a DC run through survivors already in the water from lost vessels... You must deny the enemy his attack and its possible consequences...

These things necessarily happened more than you may realize.

You must also understand the stress caused by constant uncertainty... and the compressing weight of being continuously close to death at any moment, for all involved.

Firing SOMETHING... ANYTHING... EVERYTHING at an enemy that you can FINALLY lay your eyes on... becomes almost unstoppable.

However, when the threat for the moment ends, humanity returns... and the urge to rescue "Those men in the water!" returns, whether or not it is possible given the circumstances of the moment. Whether or not they are friend or foe no longer matters.

...The needs of the many? The needs of the few? Make the wrong decision and you wouldn't be a captain for long... and may even be shot for dereliction of duty.

Maybe in the future, before making such sweeping statements as you did concerning ASW ship commanders and their implied regularity of brutality, you can take a few minutes to walk in their shoes as best you can.

There is a lot more to it than what meets your eye.

It certainly wasn't anywhere near as simple as you made it out to be.

[seafarer]

Originally Posted by baggygreen

I can completely understand that seafarer, the uboats put crews into the cold atlantic with no warning, the desire to kill them with no mercy is understandable to an extent.

I was thinking more though of the fact that had they decided not to shell it into oblivion, they could've gained a treasue trove of information before it sank - surely the shelling only made the boat sink with all the more speed...:hmm:

The problem, at least for convoy escorts, was that they were usually far too few to properly protect the convoy in the first place. So most had strict orders not to spend too much time on any one contact. If they had a firm contact, of course the pressure was there to make the actual kill and not just force the boat to break off. Even then, in the early years, most of the escorts efforts were directed to just breaking up attacks - forcing the u-boat to break contact and run. There were just too many u-boats and far too few escorts to really spend the time hunting down and trying to kill a contact.

Even if a kill was to be made, it needed to be made quickly, and then high tail it back to their station with the convoy. A lot of the corvettes would have orders to never get more then a certain distance from the convoy, no matter what, since their low top speed could take awhile to catch back up with the main body of ships.

Hunter/Killer groups, of course, acted differently. And even things like HMS Bulldog's capture of the first enigma machine (and more importantly the naval code books) was really just good fortune. Bulldog rammed U-110 with the intent to sink her - capture was only a late thought, too late to fully avoid hitting her. U-110 then
luckily obliged by not sinking too quickly, allowing a boarding party to get aboard and stabilize the boat and seize the goods. In both the case of U-110 and U-505, the allied ships got lucky too in that the u-boat crews abandoned ship quickly (U-505 was still underway when the boarding party got on her on - the crew had got out so quickly that they'd left motors running, and had failed to make proper preparations for scuttling).

I'd say it was a matter of expediency. Even in 1943, the time of the action in the first post, the u-boat presence was such that convoy escorts did not have the time to mess with capture, boarding and such (plus the weather in the Atlantic could often make such an effort a very lengthy and risky procedure anyway). They just needed to make the kill, and move on to the next crisis, and hopefully make it into port.

[Hitman]

Horsepoop.

A surfaced U-boat (even obviously damaged) can fire a torpedo.

In war it is KILL or BE KILLED.

Preventing the crew from abandoning the U-boat by laying suppressive fires on it... and discouraging said crew from scuttling it... can give a boarding crew time enough to get to the U-boat and have an opportunity to capture battle winning information.

In so doing, a captain launching a boarding party places his own boat at risk of attack by other potentially undetected U-boats.

Controlling the scene surrounding a foe that may still yet have his teeth and will to fight isn't brutality. WAR is brutality. War IS Hell. To fight a war, regardless of which side you are on... you must come to peace with the idea of ending someone's life.

It can also be argued that it was brutal for convoys to be under orders not to pick up survivors of previous attacks.

It can also be arguably classified as 'brutality' when you are forced to commit to a DC run through survivors already in the water from lost vessels... You must deny the enemy his attack and its possible consequences...

These things necessarily happened more than you may realize.

You must also understand the stress caused by constant uncertainty... and the compressing weight of being continuously close to death at any moment, for all involved.

Firing SOMETHING... ANYTHING... EVERYTHING at an enemy that you can FINALLY lay your eyes on... becomes almost unstoppable.

However, when the threat for the moment ends, humanity returns... and the urge to rescue "Those men in the water!" returns, whether or not it is possible given the circumstances of the moment. Whether or not they are friend or foe no longer matters.

...The needs of the many? The needs of the few? Make the wrong decision and you wouldn't be a captain for long... and may even be shot for dereliction of duty.

Maybe in the future, before making such sweeping statements as you did concerning ASW ship commanders and their implied regularity of brutality, you can take a few minutes to walk in their shoes as best you can.

There is a lot more to it than what meets your eye.

It certainly wasn't anywhere near as simple as you made it out to be.

I fully agree and want to add: According to standard and internationally approved naval war rules, no combat ship ceases to be treated as hostile/enemy until it has unmistekably surrendered, f.e. waving a white flag and/or lowering its own national flag. A surfaced U-Boot has not necessarily surrended and still retains potential to attack the enemy. Plus a surfaced U-Boot the crew is leaving WITHOUT previously surrendering is still a combatant. Self-sinking practices are not allowed once surrended, thus any ship involved in self-sinking is still hostile.

[Wilcke]

Danlisa,

Thanks for the post, nice pics. Brutal it was with no quarter given. Such is war.

Wilcke

[seafarer]

Originally Posted by danlisa

I pray for this level of detail in any Silent Hunter series.

I'm suprised this boat even surfaced but the pressure hull seems to be intact.

Click Me: It's a biggie.


Read about the entire attack here:
http://www.uscg.mil/history/WEBCUTTE...ncervsu175.asp

DoH! I just realized too, that the USCGC Spencer is the same class (treasury class) as the USCGC Taney. The USCGC Taney is a museum ship in Baltimore's inner harbour - I took my nephews on her this summer.

[Morts]

i bet this is what the guy onboard the uboat was thinking

:rotfl: :rotfl: yea im bored