Check out this pic:
Caption: Canadian ship rams German U-boat caught in the open!
Comments?
What … did it back into the ship? … coz that looks like a depth charge sitting there which i would assume would be on the rear of the ship or maybe ive just played to many submarine games.
why do they need to do that?
they are out of ammulition?
Well ramming a uboat in any since is usually going to work out better for the ship on top than the uboat.
Well ramming a uboat in any since is usually going to work out better for the ship on top than the uboat.[/quote]
Ramming is practically guaranteed to sink the U-boat, and funnily enough works perfectly well at short range. Gunfire doesn’t work very well (submarine hulls are actually very well armoured) and in any case doesn’t work at very short range and takes some time (naval gunfire is very accurate, but not all that accurate).
There was a case of a destroyer that had run out of AP ammo for its guns and only had HE which was very ineffective. As I think about it, it may have been a theatre/area who had run out or did not have a large quantity. So this may have been the only option.
Is that a depth charge on the right? And was it a RCN or merchant?
As far as I can tell (from my Great Uncle) ramming was definetaly an option as a Ship would just slice through the U-Boat. Caught on the surface at fairly close range, ramming was the way to go as the U-Boat would take a wee while to dive.
Ramming didn’t usually do the ship much good either - IIRC one of Capt Walker’s escort group ships ended up with no Sonar, flooded compartments & a well bent shaft; sank the U-Boat though.
Hi,
Yep, that’s an RCN picture! I got it from the Canadian archives. Good call. Are you from Canada?