Dunedin's fatal zigzag into U-124's torpedoes

Dunedin had intercepted blockade runners, captured ships and cipher material, and helped contain Vichy French warships. While hunting the raider Atlantis and her supply ship Python, however, she altered course at precisely the wrong moment. U-124's snapshot was nominally beyond the torpedoes' maximum range, yet two weapons reached the cruiser; she sank in seventeen minutes with only 67 survivors from 486 aboard. The case is a caution against reading every successful attack as proof of flawed procedure, because a normally protective zigzag can occasionally carry a ship into an otherwise unsuccessful shot.