Department of Veterans' Affairs
Transcript
But in we went, trying to dodge all the way and it was too much even for him and he pulled out away, pulled out to port and as he pulled out he noticed the (Consolidated B-24) Liberator was still there and the Liberator had been following him in and the Liberator had taken over going down so we turned around and came in behind the Liberator and the Liberator was hit and it pulled up to starboard smoking like anything and then, by this time, we were pretty close to the U-Boats and for some unaccountable reason, the nose gunner was firing at them and suddenly the shooting stopped from the one we were after, stopped, and he went cross and dropped seven depth charges, straddled it with seven depth charges and it broke the U-Boat. It was split in half.
One would have sunk it, but he gave it seven and he was going down and he pulled around. We had to take a photograph of the wreckage and survivors, you know, to prove that we had sunk a U-Boat, otherwise it wouldn't be accepted.
Oh, you should have seen it. Looked down and it was sinking. It was the most horrible thing I have seen in my life.
I looked down and I was thinking 'What have we done? What have we done?'
It was the support U-Boat. It was full of oil and as it went down all this oil was gushing up and in amongst it all was the bits of wreckage from the U-Boat and dead men, with arms and legs.
'Oh Gee, I'll never forget that.'
Anyway, we took our photographs and went around again, and the skipper said, 'Drop them one of our dinghies.'
So we did, we dropped a dinghy and there were about ten survivors and they swam over to it and then Captain Walker's sloops came in and they were picking up, the U-Boat that went in two was sinking and their radar, the underwater thing, was picking them up and were thinking U-Boats and they were throwing out depth charges so these poor blokes in the water were copping it and that's another long story.
Anyway, well that was it, that's when we left them and got another one on the way home, or at least attacked another one, we didn't get it.
