This story is from “The twilight Of the U-Boats” by BERNARD EDWARDS
The period is January 1943, the place is the North Atlantic and the ship,the tanker DAGHILD is loaded with 13,000 tons of diesel fuel with her clear decks loded with a 143 ton landing craft and all other space filled with aircraft.
The DAGHILD, fifth ship in Column 11 of the slow convoy SC118,was lagging behind when she came into Siegfried von Forstners (u-402)
cross wires,a target most U-Boat commanders could only dream of.Few ,if any,were lucky to come across a deep-laden tanker with a huge landing craft perched forward of her bridge and a deck full of aircraft. Forstner took careful aim,and put a torpedo in DAGHILD"sengine room.The explosion ripped open her hull,and she slowly came to a halt,tolay stopped and listing heavily.
Judging the condition of the DAGHILD to be terminal Captain Egidius gave the order to abandon ship,and all the tankers crew got away in two lifeboats.Luckily,the Corvette LOBELIA was to hand ,and despite the heavy seas,the boats where brought alongside and the men where rescued.LOBELIA then tried to sink the DAGHILD with gunfire,but she stubbornly refused to go down or catch fire.She was last seen drifting forlornly astern ,beam onto the wind and sea and rollingher rails under,with her valuable deck cargo still lashed securely in place,obviously destined to go to the bottom with her.She was found the next day by Wolfgang Strater in U-614,who wasted a torpedo on her ,for she still refused to sink.Strater lost sight of the DAGHILD in poor visibility,and she was not seen again until the early hours of the 8th,when U-608 found her 57 miles astern of the convoy,still afloat but very low in the water.U-608s torpedo broke her back and she slipped beneath the waves at dawn taking LCT 2335 with her. BERNARD EDWARDS