When This Destroyer Sat On Top of a U-Boat — Crews Fighting Face-to-Face

When a U.S. Destroyer Rode a German Submarine: The Night USS Borie Fought a Face-to-Face Naval Battle

North Atlantic — November 1, 1943.
At 1:53 a.m., in total darkness and violent seas, Lieutenant Charles Hutchins stood on the bridge of USS Borie watching a radar blip creep across his screen. The contact lay roughly 8,000 yards north of the Azores. The Atlantic was in one of its foul November moods—15-foot swells, gale-force winds, freezing water, and near-zero visibility.

Hutchins was 30 years old and had commanded Borie for just six months. He had never sunk a German submarine. His ship, a Clemson-class destroyer built in 1920, was considered obsolete even before the war. Much of her crew were reservists who had never fired a shot in combat.

The radar contact belonged to U-405, a German U-boat commanded by Korvettenkapitän Rolf-Heinrich Hopman, a seasoned submariner on his seventh patrol. U-405 had already sunk five Allied merchant ships. By dawn, one of the two vessels would be gone. Before that happened, the crews would fight a battle unlike anything seen in modern naval warfare.

A Brutal Encounter at Sea

Task Group 21.14 had spent three months hunting U-boats in the North Atlantic. During daylight, aircraft from the escort carrier USS Card scouted the waters. At night, destroyers like Borie closed in.

Six hours before the encounter, Borie had already damaged one submarine. Then radar picked up a second contact. Sonar soon confirmed it: a submarine moving on the surface at low speed, likely damaged and unable to dive.

Hutchins ordered depth charges. A mechanical failure caused an entire rack to release at once. The massive explosion blew U-405 to the surface, crippled and exposed. Hopman had no choice but to fight on the surface.

Borie switched on her 24-inch searchlight. Four hundred yards away, the German submarine appeared in stark white light. Sailors poured from the conning tower, racing for their deck guns—an 88-millimeter cannon and four 20-millimeter anti-aircraft guns capable of shredding a destroyer at close range.

Both ships opened fire.

American 4-inch shells slammed into the submarine’s deck, killing the exposed German gun crews before the 88-millimeter gun could fire a single round. But Hopman maneuvered brilliantly, keeping his submarine turning tightly and his stern torpedo tube pointed at Borie. One torpedo could end the fight.

Hutchins made a decision few naval officers ever expect to make.

He ordered ramming speed.

Steel on Steel

Borie accelerated to 25 knots, aiming for U-405’s starboard quarter. At the last moment, a massive wave lifted the destroyer’s bow. Instead of crushing into the submarine’s side, Borie rode up and landed on top of U-405, pinning the two ships together at a steep angle.

The destroyer sat perched on the submarine like a seesaw.

For nearly 10 minutes, the two vessels remained locked together in 20-foot swells. Hull plates split. Seams opened. Water poured into Borie’s compartments. From the bridge, Hutchins could see German sailors climbing from the submarine’s hatches only 30 feet below.

If they reached the 20-millimeter guns, every exposed American on deck would be killed.

What followed was something closer to an 18th-century boarding action than a World War II naval engagement.

Fighting at Arm’s Length

Lieutenant Philip Brown, Borie’s executive officer, had trained his crew for a scenario no one believed would ever happen. The moment the ships locked together, sailors grabbed whatever weapons they could find—Thompson submachine guns, rifles, shotguns, pistols, even flare guns.

Under the harsh glare of the searchlight, German sailors sprinted from the conning tower toward their guns. Every one of them became a clear target. They were cut down in seconds.

When ammunition ran out, sailors threw whatever they had. One American hurled a knife that struck a German sailor in the abdomen. Another smashed a German overboard with a heavy brass shell casing. One sailor fired a flare pistol at point-blank range; the burning phosphorus killed instantly.

The Germans fired back from the hatches with small arms, punching holes into Borie’s hull below the waterline. Flooding worsened. Both crews were trapped, locked together, destroying each other.

Then the ships finally tore free.

The Final Exchange

The fight continued. Hutchins extinguished his searchlight, tracking the submarine by radar, then snapped the light back on at close range. Borie dropped depth charges directly alongside U-405’s conning tower. The explosions crippled the submarine.

Hopman attempted one final attack, trying to fire a stern torpedo from just yards away. Both sides fired torpedoes. Both missed.

Finally, Borie’s gunfire found its mark. Shells smashed into the submarine’s pressure hull and diesel exhaust. Black smoke poured out. Power failed. U-405 slowed and began to sink.

Some German sailors fired white flares—the signal for surrender. Others kept fighting.

Moments later, the submarine slipped beneath the Atlantic, taking 49 German sailors with her.

Victory at a Terrible Cost

The battle had lasted 64 minutes. Borie had won—but she was mortally wounded.

Her forward engine room was flooded. Hull plating was crushed. Pumps could not keep up with the water pouring in. In worsening seas, attempts to tow the destroyer failed. As daylight faded, Hutchins made the hardest decision of his life.

He ordered abandon ship.

In 44-degree water and 40-foot seas, the crew jumped into the Atlantic. Rescue boats fought the waves. Men were pulled from the water unconscious, alive, or already dead.

Of Borie’s crew, 116 survived. Twenty-seven sailors drowned after surviving the battle itself.

The next morning, with no hope of salvage, USS Barry sank the abandoned destroyer with gunfire. Borie slid beneath the waves, resting not far from the submarine she had destroyed.

A Battle That Should Never Have Happened

Lieutenant Charles Hutchins received the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism. USS Borie’s fight with U-405 became an instant legend, studied in naval academies and immortalized in paintings and reports.

The battle mattered not because it was efficient—it was not—but because it proved something enduring: war is not fought by machines alone. When doctrine fails and technology breaks down, outcomes still depend on leadership, courage, and human will.

Modern naval warfare would never allow such a fight again. Missiles, sonar, and long-range weapons have erased the possibility of ships grappling in the dark.

But on one violent night in 1943, two crews fought face to face on the open sea—
and paid for it in steel, blood, and lives.