Keeling and Dodge sink a U-boat after a periscope sighting becomes a confused close-quarters fight, with the submarine surfacing repeatedly between the destroyers. The encounter turns an uncertain contact into a confirmed destruction, but the victory is inseparable from its costs: Dodge is hit, Keeling loses shipmates, and the fighting consumes scarce weapons. Krause’s closing report makes clear that the escort’s duty continues beyond the moment of success.

Conditions Before the Engagement

The fight takes place against the accumulated demands of convoy protection. Only four fighting ships cover the screen, and their sonar searches are needed to guard the convoy’s immense front. Detaching one ship to investigate a contact risks opening gaps through which other U-boats might pass. Fuel is another constraint: a detached ship could spend hours searching far from the convoy and then need to regain the distance at high speed, consuming additional fuel whether or not it found an enemy. The decision to fight therefore belongs to a larger problem of preserving both the convoy’s protection and the ships’ ability to remain with it.

The crew’s readiness is also a finite resource. Calling general quarters would bring everyone to battle stations, suspend routine work, and leave men without sleep or much opportunity to eat. Keeling has already been operating in Condition Two, with battle stations largely manned and watertight integrity maintained; that posture strains the crew and disrupts the ship’s routine, even though it can be sustained longer than full battle stations. Krause has seen that repeatedly demanding exceptional effort without an evident reason can make men slack in their duties. His restraint about when to intensify readiness is consequently part of the ship’s fighting capacity, not a refusal to prepare.

Keeling’s equipment and staffing add further pressure. New weapons and instruments, together with the extra hands needed to man them, have strained the ship’s living space. There are not enough trained ratings to provide three watches for Condition Two, and even a larger complement would raise the practical question of where the men could sleep and how they could be fed. Meanwhile, the lookouts must search continuously: spray blows across their object-glasses, and a U-boat may expose only a small portion of its periscope for a short time. The sighting that starts the engagement depends on a watch maintained despite fatigue and difficult conditions.

From Periscope to Torpedo Attack

A starboard-side lookout reports a periscope on the starboard beam. Through his glasses, Krause catches sight of a slender grey cylinder with a white ripple at its base, loses it, then finds it again as the ship rolls. The object’s brief appearances make the sighting an urgent but fleeting piece of evidence. Krause calls Dodge over the T.B.S.; Compton-Clowes replies that his officer of the watch has taken the data and that Dodge is turning to course 020 to intercept.

The reports then multiply. A lookout calls a periscope dead ahead, and the talker announces that torpedoes have been fired. Keeling and Dodge each make a run and drop a depth charge, but the account recognizes that this is a feeble attack, with little expectation of a result. A subsequent report places the submarine astern, followed almost immediately by the call that it is alongside. In Keeling’s wake, the U-boat breaks the surface in spray, vanishes, and appears again. The repeated surfacing suggests that a bow-plane may be jammed in the raised position, though the cause remains uncertain: it might be mechanical failure, or a depth charge may have damaged it.

The Destroyers Close In

Dodge is bearing down on Keeling as both ships respond to the submarine’s sudden appearance. For a moment, the destroyers are only a cable’s length apart and turning toward a common point, creating the danger of a collision. The ordinary rules of the road and instinctive helm work keep them from striking each other: both ships stop their inward swing, then their propellers and rudders carry them apart. Dodge passes close along Keeling’s port side. The near miss shows how quickly the effort to attack the submarine can put the escorts themselves at risk.

Dodge turns to port and opens fire with its machine guns as the surfaced U-boat circles alongside, the two vessels following each other’s turns. Dodge’s four-inch gun fires at extreme depression; its shell ricochets from the water and passes overhead. Krause orders his gunnery crew to wait for a clear shot rather than fire into the crowded, shifting encounter. Then smoke breaks out forward on Dodge: the U-boat has scored at least one hit. As the ships circle again, Krause watches Dodge’s bow waver in the smoke and sees that Compton-Clowes is putting the wheel over. He reads the change as an opportunity and orders Keeling to turn to starboard, with the gunnery crew standing by for a target on the port beam.

The maneuver opens a brief stretch of water between the submarine and its sheltering position beside Dodge. Keeling’s five five-inch guns train around as the ship turns. The U-boat, momentarily caught off guard by Dodge’s abrupt change of rudder, diverges from it. Keeling fires before the submarine can regain the protection of close proximity. Shell splashes crowd around the U-boat, and flashes mark hits. A violent shock runs through Keeling; the guns fall silent, leaving Krause briefly uncertain whether the main armament has been disabled. When he looks again, the U-boat has disappeared from the surface.

Destruction and Its Costs

The immediate danger does not end with the submarine’s disappearance. Gasoline is spreading forward on Keeling, and flames are reaching toward the torpedoes. Krause orders the crew to stop using water hoses and use foam instead. Flint can carry out instructions even though, in the crisis, he has been unable to think of the next action himself. He moves through the edge of the flames and releases the torpedoes from their tubes. One by one, all four go over the side and sink. Their deliberate loss prevents the fire from reaching weapons that remain aboard, but it takes torpedoes worth fifty thousand dollars out of Keeling’s inventory.

A request comes over the T.B.S. to turn in and look for survivors. The evidence of destruction becomes unmistakable as oil spreads around Keeling. Krause concludes that the U-boat is gone and that forty or fifty Germans have died with it. He considers that a mechanical failure may have prevented the submarine from diving, but does not treat the possibility as certain. He also recognizes that the U-boat fought effectively on the surface, even though it had been less effective underwater; that contrast may provide a small clue for Naval Intelligence about the captain’s background, but it remains only a possibility.

The encounter has consumed more than the four torpedoes. Keeling’s depth-charge supply was already near exhaustion: a report puts expenditure at thirty-four, with the latest pattern bringing the total to thirty-eight, and the ship has only six charges left. The tactical arithmetic offers no easy remedy. Halving the size of a pattern reduces the chance of a hit to a quarter; reducing it to a third leaves only a ninth of the previous chance. Yet even a charge that misses can have a deterrent effect on a U-boat within hearing. Thus weapons expenditure involves both the declining chance of destroying a target and the possibility of forcing it to evade. The fight ends with a confirmed submarine destruction, but not with the escort’s resources restored or its danger removed.

Report to the Crew

Dodge picks up a survivor, while Keeling has lost shipmates and some of its crew have been badly hurt. Krause addresses his crew by T.B.S. He reports that the U-boat has been destroyed, that its oil is around Keeling, that Dodge has recovered a survivor, and that Keeling hit the submarine repeatedly with the five-inch guns. He also acknowledges that the enemy hit Keeling and that men have been lost. His account does not turn the result into an uncomplicated triumph: he places the dead and wounded within the line of duty, then directs attention forward, telling the crew that the next U-boat must be made to pay and that they must remain alert because the voyage is far from over.

The event’s decisive shift is from a periscope that can scarcely be held in view to an enemy confirmed destroyed, but the closing report refuses to equate that change with safety. The two destroyers have prevented this U-boat from continuing its attack, yet the convoy still needs protection, Keeling’s weapons and crew have been depleted, and another submarine may come. Victory is therefore presented as both an achieved result and a renewed obligation.