Shown above, the famous picture of the German submarine U-427 crashing the surface during an emergency ascent, the so-called "whale jump." The picture was taken through the periscope of another submarine. U-427 entered service as the Battle of the Atlantic was being lost by the Kriegsmarine.

By 1943, with increasing numbers of US escort carriers armed with Wildcat and Avenger planes, long-range B-24 Liberators, British intelligence reading Donitz's orders to the fleet, and hundreds of Allied escort ships coming out of the builder’s yards, the effectiveness of the U-boats was greatly reduced.

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. She survived an amazing 678 depth charges dropped on her from Allied ships and aircraft over the course of the next eleven months. However, she never managed to sink or damage an Allied ship, be it merchant or naval.

Just days before the end of the war, two Canadian ships, HMCS Haida and HMCS Iroquois, were on the receiving end of two torpedoes fired from the U-427 that both missed. U-427 surrendered at Narvik, Norway, on 8 May 1945. Most U-boats achieved notoriety for the number of kills they achieved, or the total tonnage of the vessels they sank, but in the case of U-427 fame was achieved in a different way, its ability to survive under harrowing circumstances.

Source: combatpix2