Action
On the night of 15th/16th the attack started; U-100 was able to torpedo a tanker, which burst into flames, but survived to reach port; all other attacks that night were frustrated by the activities of the escorts.
Keeping up with the convoy on the surface during the day, the pack tried again as night fell on the 16th.
U-99 managed to penetrate the convoy from the north, on its port side, and sank four tankers and a freighter in under an hour. Remaining with the central column of the convoy she sank another freighter 15 minutes later before making her getaway.
Meanwhile the escorts, searching for U-boats outside the convoy perimeter, found U-100 around 1.30am moving in on the surface. She dived, but Walker attacked with a depth charge pattern at close range. U-100 evaded further damage, and surfaced, to be sighted and rammed by Vanoc just after 3am; Schepke was killed when Vanoc smashed into his periscope structure and U100 went down with most of her crew.
As this was happening, U-99 was making her escape; she nearly collided with a destroyer in the dark and dived. Picked up on ASDIC by Walker, she was depth-charged and severely damaged. Saving U-99 from being crushed as she sank deeper and deeper, Kretschmer brought her to the surface, where she was fired on by the encircling warships. U-99 was sunk, but Kretschmer and most of his crew were saved, to be taken prisoner.
There were no further attacks on HX.112 and the convoy arrived in Liverpool on 20 March.
Read more about this topic: Convoy HX 112
Famous quotes containing the word action:
“Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)