The submarine retired to her base at Kilbotn, Norway, where it remained until Germany’s surrender on 8 May, in a heavily damaged state. These two ships, HMCS Haida and HMCS Iroquois, were on the receiving end of two live torpedoes fired from the U-427 that both missed. Just days before the end of the war, U-427 saw a chance to pop its cherry when it found a pair of 2800-ton Tribal class destroyers of the Royal Canadian Navy loafing about waiting for the war to end. She never managed to sink or damage an Allied ship, be it merchant or naval. She conducted five patrols with five different Flottes and as part of Wolfpack Faust. Her war patrol record reads like monotony and included Convoy escort operations along the Norwegian coast Decemto Februfollowed by Arctic operations against Russian convoys Apto 2 May, 1945. She survived an amazing 678 depth charges dropped on her from Allied ships and craft over the course of the next eleven months. Used for a year as a training craft, U-427 only ventured out to the North Atlantic for the first time on 20 June 1944, two weeks after D-Day. By 1943, with increasing numbers of US escort carriers armed with Avenger torpedo planes, British intelligence reading Donitz’s letters to the fleet, and hundreds of Allied escort ships coming out of the builder’s yards, life for the U-boat arm sucked. U-boat skippers looked back at those years as ‘the happy time’. Throughout 1939-42 the tide was high for Admiral Donitz’s unterseebottes. U-427 entered service as the Battle of the Atlantic was being lost by the German navy. The picture was taken through the periscope of a submarine” (Click larger) “Emergency ascent, the so-called “killer whales jump” (“whale jump”), of German submarine U-427. Famous picture of U-427 crashing the surface.
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