Number of DC carried

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by igorlikespike

When you think of it, out of this impressive numbers of DCs carried, an escort needs to place only one or two near your boat and then ...

Just one will do it. On the other hand there are quite a few reports of u-boats surviving hours of depth-charging and taking little to no damage. The simple fact was that if a DC went off within 25 feet of the hull it could crack it wide open. If it went off more than 50 feet away damage was usually minimal.

One of my frustrations with Das Boot was that in an effort to make an unknowing audience get a feel for what was going on they made most of the depth charges go off so close that any one of them would have killed the boat right there.