A British submarine commander used gunfire around wreckage and lifeboats, a controversial practice opposed by members of his own crew. At the time, using gunfire to finish a damaged target remained an accepted submarine tactic, making the legal boundary less clear than the moral one. Senior Royal Navy command nevertheless rejected the action and ordered that it not be repeated, both because it was not considered acceptable conduct and because it could provoke reprisals. Wartime personnel shortages and the absence of a clearly written prohibition help explain why the commander was retained rather than prosecuted or dismissed. The episode remains deeply troubling, especially amid propaganda claiming that enemy submarines routinely attacked survivors. It differs from cases in which survivors were taken aboard, interrogated, and then deliberately murdered or thrown into the sea. The comparison warns against both national self-exoneration and false equivalence in war-crimes history.
Notable Point · 1:42:20-1:47:54
Why the video rejects an easy victors' justice argument
A Royal Navy submarine incident complicates the moral picture, but the video argues that it was not equivalent to deliberate attacks on interrogated or captive survivors.