Sinking
On 21 June 1921, three Navy Felixstowe F5L flying boats flying at an altitude of 1,200 feet bombed and sank U-117 at anchor in smooth water 50 miles (80 km) East of Cape Charles Light Vessel, with twelve 163 pound bombs, each loaded with 117 pounds of TNT.
The bombs were dropped in two salvos, one of three bombs and one of nine bombs. Both salvos straddled and fell close to the target, all within 150 feet (46 m) of it, all bombs functioned as designed. The submarine sank within seven minutes after the second salvo. The Board of Observers did not inspect her. The submarine was an easy target, being at anchor with no one on board.
Read more about this topic: SM U-117, Service History
Famous quotes containing the word sinking:
“I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire,”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“We all indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it comes to saying, even to someone opposite, what we think, then how little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with a wandering light.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“I consider that that “that” that worries us so much should be forgotten. Rats desert a sinking ship. Thats infest a sinking magazine.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)