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Originally Posted by makhno
3. During World War II, a German U-boat was sunk by a truck. The U-boat in question attacked a convoy in the Atlantic and then rose to see the effect. The merchant ship it sank had material strapped to its deck including a fleet of trucks, one of which was thrown in the air by the explosion, landing on the U-boat and breaking its back.
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It is a myth. There was none of the German submarines that were sunk in this way in WWII
The story comes from WWI when the German submarine U 28 sank after having fired on the British ship Olive Branch with the deck gun.
One account, in
Under the Black Ensign by R.S. Gwatkin-Williams (London: Hutchinson, 1926), says that when the cargo of ammunition carried by the British ship
Olive Branch was touched off by one of
U 28's shells in a close range surface bombardment, a truck carried as deck cargo was blown into the air, only to land (from a great height) on the U-Boat, sinking it.
Although this version first appears in print several years after the event, it is feasible that the blast of the explosion, followed by the resultant tidal wave could have laid the submarine over far enough to swamp her open hatches. A heavy lorry crashing down on deck would have contributed to the damage, though probably not sufficiently to be fatal to a strongly built vessel like a submarine.
May 15th, 2010
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