The North Atlantic in November 1943 was not a sea; it was a churning, black-and-silver throat of ice and salt, waiting to swallow the living whole. At 0153 hours, the world of Lieutenant Charles Hutchkins shattered into a primal, screaming reality that defied every manual ever written at the Naval Academy. Imagine a thousand tons of ancient American steel rising like a breaching whale, propelled by a twenty-foot swell, only to come crashing down with the bone-jarring shriek of rending metal directly onto the deck of a German killing machine. This was the USS Borie, a rusted “tin can” from a forgotten era, literally perched atop the U-405, locked in a grinding, mechanical embrace in the middle of a midnight gale. The sound was a cacophony of hell—steel teeth gnashing against steel skin, the roar of a forty-knot wind, and the sudden, terrifying realization that the war had ceased to be about torpedoes and sonar. It had become a bar fight in the middle of a graveyard. Below the bridge, men were no longer sailors; they were hunters and prey, illuminated by the blinding, flickering glare of a 24-inch searchlight that turned the spray-slicked deck of the U-boat into a white-hot stage of death. This was the moment the technology of the 20th century failed, and humanity regressed a thousand years. There were no calculated firing solutions here. There was only the sight of German submariners scrambling out of a conning tower, their eyes wide with the shock of the impossible, reaching for guns that could shred the Borie’s unarmored hull in seconds. It was a race toward extinction, played out on a seesaw of metal over a forty-four-degree abyss. In those first few heartbeats of the collision, the air was filled with the smell of diesel, cordite, and the metallic tang of fear. The screams of the ships were louder than the men, a screeching groan as the Borie’s hull plating began to buckle and part, water already rushing into her belly. But on the deck, the order was silent and understood: kill or be killed. The American reservists, men who months ago were selling life insurance or packing crates in Indiana, found themselves gripping Thompson submachine guns and riot-control shotguns, staring down into the faces of the German elite. It was a sight that would haunt the survivors until their dying breaths—the visceral, face-to-face horror of a naval boarding action that belonged to the age of sail, resurrected in the cold, dark heart of World War II. The drama of the North Atlantic had reached its peak, a fever dream of violence where the next ten minutes would determine who would live to see the gray dawn and who would be dragged three miles down into the silent dark.
At 0153 on November 1st, 1943, Lieutenant Charles Hutchkins stood on the bridge of the USS Borie, tracking a radar contact 8,000 yards north of the Azores, watching the blip move through fifteen-foot seas in complete darkness. He was thirty years old, with only six months as a destroyer captain and zero U-boat kills to his name. The German submarine U-405, his prey, had already sunk five Allied merchant ships and carried forty-nine experienced crewmen under Corvette Captain Ralph Hinrich Hopman. Two years earlier, Hutchkins had worked as a salesman at his father-in-law’s packing company in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was a Naval Academy graduate who had resigned his commission to get married, but Pearl Harbor changed everything. Now, he commanded one of the oldest destroyers in the United States Navy, a Clemson-class tin can built in 1920. Most of his crew were reservists who had never fired a shot in anger. Task Group 21.14 had been hunting U-boats for three months. The escort carrier USS Card provided air cover during daylight, while the destroyers hunted at night. Borie had detached from the group six hours earlier to investigate a submarine contact reported by Card aircraft. They found one U-boat and damaged it. Then, radar picked up a second contact.
The North Atlantic in November was brutal, with 44-degree water, winds gusting to 40 knots, and visibility near zero. These were the kind of conditions that made depth charge attacks difficult and surface gunnery nearly impossible. But Hutchkins closed the distance anyway. His radar operator lost contact at 2,800 yards, but then sonar picked up the target, which was moving at six knots and trying to escape on the surface. Hutchkins ordered depth charges. However, every charge on one rack rolled into the water simultaneously due to a mechanical failure. The massive explosion literally blew U-405 to the surface. Damaged and unable to submerge, Hopman had no choice but to fight on the surface. Borie’s 24-inch searchlight snapped on, and the German submarine appeared in the beam 400 yards away. Crewmen poured from the conning tower, racing toward their deck guns. U-405 mounted one 88 mm cannon and four 20 mm autocannons in multiple mounts—enough firepower to shred an aging destroyer at close range. Both ships opened fire. Borie’s 4-inch guns barked, while 20-millimeter rounds from U-405 slammed into Borie’s forward engine room. The German deck gun crew traversed their 88 and took aim at Borie’s waterline, but then Borie’s gunfire found them. Every exposed German on deck died in seconds. The 88 never fired a single shot.
But Hopman was a veteran commander with seven war patrols; he knew how to fight. U-405 began turning in tight circles. The submarine’s smaller turning radius kept Borie from bringing her full broadside to bear. For twenty minutes, Hopman frustrated every attempt to line up a killing shot. The U-boat’s stern torpedo tube kept pointing at Borie, and one torpedo could end everything. Hutchkins made a decision: he would ram. Borie accelerated to 25 knots. Hutchkins aimed for U-405’s starboard quarter, intending a perpendicular blow that would crush the pressure hull. Hopman saw it coming and turned hard to port, but he started his turn too late. Borie closed the distance—200 yards, 150. Then a wave hit. A massive swell lifted Borie’s bow up, and the destroyer rose at a 30-degree angle. Her bow crashed down, not into U-405’s side, but onto her foredeck. The weight of 1,200 tons of steel slammed onto the submarine, but instead of crushing through, Borie stayed there, perched on top of U-405 like a seesaw. The two vessels locked together at a 20-degree angle. The destroyer sat on the submarine. Waves lifted both ships together, then dropped them. Metal screamed as Borie’s hull plating began to part. Seams split, and water poured into compartments below the waterline. Both ships rolled in 20-foot swells, neither able to break free.
Hutchkins looked down from the bridge. He could see the conning tower thirty feet below and could read the numerals painted on the side, as well as the polar bear insignia. Germans were climbing from the hatches, running toward their guns. If they reached those four 20-millimeter autocannons, every man exposed on Borie’s deck would die. For ten minutes, they would stay locked together—ten minutes of a kind of naval warfare that hadn’t been seen in a century. There were no torpedoes and no depth charges, just two crews fighting face to face in the darkness with whatever weapons they could find. Lieutenant Philip Brown had drilled his crew for exactly this scenario. The executive officer had spent months running a boarding drill that nobody thought would ever happen. Every man, except the engine room crew and gun crews, knew what to do. The moment Borie locked onto U-405, they raced to grab weapons. Thompson submachine guns came up first, then rifles, shotguns meant for riot control, pistols, and even Very flare pistols—anything that could shoot. Brown and a signalman took positions on the bridge and opened fire. The rest of the crew lined the rails. Borie’s searchlight stayed locked on the submarine. Every German who emerged from a hatch appeared in brilliant white light.
The Germans kept trying, as they needed to reach those four 20 mm autocannons. Those guns could sweep Borie’s exposed deck and kill dozens of Americans in seconds, but reaching them meant running across the open deck under the searchlight. German after German climbed from the conning tower, ran toward the guns, and died before getting there. Fireman First Class David Southwick watched a German sailor sprint toward the nearest gun mount. Southwick had no ammunition left, so he pulled his sheath knife and threw it. The blade buried itself in the German’s stomach, and the man fell over the side into the black water. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Walter Kurs commanded the number two 4-inch gun mount, but his gun couldn’t depress far enough to hit the submarine. It was useless. However, Kurs had a 4-inch shell casing—empty brass that weighed several pounds. Another German reached for a gun, and Kurs threw the casing like a club. It caught the German in the chest and knocked him overboard.
One German sailor took a Very flare directly in the chest. The phosphorus burned straight through; he screamed once and collapsed. Another made it to a gun mount and fired three bursts before American gunfire cut him down. 20 mm rounds punched holes in Borie’s hull below the waterline, leading to more flooding and more damage. The Germans fought back from inside the hatches. Small arms fire crackled from the darkness below—sporadic and desperate. A few bullets hit Borie’s superstructure, and though most went wide, they kept firing anyway. Hopman’s crew refused to surrender, even though surrender was the only rational choice. The waves lifted both ships together, dropped them, and lifted them again. Metal screeched. Borie’s port side crushed against U-405’s hull. Plating buckled and seams opened wider. The destroyer was being torn apart by the submarine she was trying to kill. Ten minutes felt like hours. The Americans couldn’t see how many Germans remained alive below, and the Germans couldn’t reach their deck weapons. Both crews were trapped, and both ships were locked in a grinding embrace that was destroying them both. The cold Atlantic tried to pull them under with every wave.
Then Borie’s hull gave enough. The ships began to separate. Slowly at first, the bow sliding off the submarine’s deck—six inches, a foot, two feet. Then the wave action wrenched them fully apart. Borie pulled away, free. U-405 wallowed in the swells fifty yards distant. Both vessels were damaged, yet both were still capable of fighting. Hutchkins immediately turned to pursue. U-405’s tighter turning radius became a problem again. Hopman maneuvered his submarine brilliantly despite the damage and kept his stern tube pointed at Borie. That single torpedo could still sink the destroyer. Hutchkins couldn’t get a clean shot without exposing his ship to that stinger. The submarine tried to speed away, making perhaps twelve knots, with Hopman hoping to escape in the darkness. Hutchkins ordered the searchlight extinguished to let U-405 think she was safe, tracking her on radar instead and waiting for the submarine to show her broadside. It worked. U-405 increased speed to twenty knots and tried to run. Hutchkins snapped the searchlight back on and brought Borie around. Now he could bring his 4-inch guns and depth charge projectors to bear. But Hopman saw the trap. U-405 turned hard and came straight at Borie, attempting to ram the destroyer. Two damaged ships, both bleeding, and both captains refusing to break off, were about to collide again in the middle of the North Atlantic.
Hutchkins threw his rudder hard left and backed full on the port engine. The stern kicked toward the submarine, exactly what he wanted. The range closed to six feet. Hutchkins fired every depth charge from his starboard projectors—three charges set to detonate at thirty feet. They hit the water directly alongside U-405’s conning tower and exploded. The submarine stopped dead, her stern six feet from Borie’s starboard side. But U-405 wasn’t finished, and neither was Hopman. The submarine still had one weapon left that could decide everything: the torpedo tube. U-405’s stern tube remained operational. Hopman could still fire. At a six-foot range, a torpedo couldn’t miss, and even a destroyer couldn’t dodge at six feet. The German commander had one shot. If he took it, he would take Borie down with him. Both crews tried to disengage. U-405 backed away while Borie pulled forward. The ships separated again—twenty yards, fifty. But Hopman kept his stern toward Borie. That tube tracked the destroyer like a weapon sight. Hutchkins had to turn away or risk everything. He turned.
U-405 tried to launch a torpedo, but it missed, porpoised to the surface, and ran wild. Borie fired one torpedo in return, which also missed. Both weapons were wasted. Now it was guns again—4-inch shells against a submarine that refused to die. Fire Controlman First Class Bob Maher directed Borie’s main battery from his station above the bridge. He had a perfect view of everything: the submarine lit by the searchlight, the bodies floating in the water, and the Germans who kept fighting despite impossible odds. Maher would have nightmares about this night for months, but right now, he had a job. He kept the guns on target. Borie’s shells walked up the submarine’s hull. One hit near the conning tower, another struck the pressure hull, and a third found the starboard diesel exhaust. Black smoke poured from the submarine. The engine died. U-405 slowed, lost power, and wallowed in the swells like a dying whale. The German crew knew they were finished. Some fired white Very flares, the international signal for surrender. Others kept running for the guns and kept firing small arms from the hatches. The submarine’s crew was split between those ready to quit and those determined to take more Americans with them.
Hutchkins ordered a ceasefire when he saw the white flares and observed Germans climbing into yellow rubber life rafts. He counted fourteen survivors. However, the gun captain on one of the galley deck house 4-inch mounts had removed his headphones and never heard the order. His gun kept firing. One shell caught a German sailor standing on the conning tower waving his arms and decapitated him. The body fell into the sea. U-405 began maneuvering again. The ceasefire had been a mistake, or maybe some Germans genuinely wanted to surrender while others didn’t. Either way, the submarine wasn’t done. Hopman’s diesel was dead, but he still had battery power and maneuverability. He used it. The submarine began sinking by the stern—not fast, but in a controlled manner. Then an underwater explosion rattled both ships, possibly from a scuttling charge or flooding reaching the battery compartment. U-405 lifted her bow, and the stern went under. Then she slid beneath the black water, gone, taking forty-nine German sailors with her. Most were already dead from the gunfire; the rest drowned in the cold Atlantic.
Every man on Borie’s deck cheered—a yell that probably could be heard in Berlin. They had done it. They had sunk a U-boat in surface combat. A tin can destroyer built in 1920 had defeated a modern German submarine in a knife fight. Hutchkins allowed himself one moment of satisfaction, then he looked at his ship. The forward engine room was flooded, the hull plating was crushed along the port side, and seams had opened below the waterline. 20 mm holes were punched through compartments, the steering was sluggish, and power was reduced. Borie was dying. Maybe not as fast as U-405, but she was dying. Hutchkins maneuvered toward the German survivors—fourteen men floating in life rafts, some wounded and being loaded by their comrades. The Americans would rescue them as per standard procedure. Hutchkins brought Borie around and approached from the port side, close enough to see their faces. Then the sonar operator reported a torpedo on the same bearing. Another U-boat had to be nearby. Hutchkins had no choice. He rang up maximum speed and threw the rudder hard left. Borie surged forward. The torpedo passed down the port side, missing by yards, but the destroyer’s bow went directly over the life rafts. The propellers churned through the yellow rubber and the German sailors. None of them were seen again. Hutchkins hadn’t wanted that and had tried to rescue them, but staying to pick up survivors meant dying to a torpedo. So fourteen Germans drowned instead of being saved.
The battle was over. U-405 was gone, and the German survivors were gone. Now Borie had to try to survive the night, and that was going to be harder than killing a submarine. The battle had lasted sixty-four minutes from the first radar contact to the sinking of U-405. Now came the hard part: staying afloat. Damage reports flooded the bridge. The forward engine room was completely flooded. Portside hull plating was crushed and buckled below the waterline, and multiple seams had opened. 20-millimeter holes had punched through compartments, and water was coming in faster than the pumps could handle. The steering was damaged but functional. One engine was still operational, but speed was reduced to maybe fifteen knots maximum. The seas were building. What had been fifteen-foot swells during the battle grew to twenty feet, then thirty. The wind increased, and visibility dropped to near zero in the darkness and blowing spray. Borie wallowed in the troughs and climbed each wave sluggishly. The destroyer had always been tender and top-heavy; now, with the flooding forward, she was even worse.
Hutchkins tried to rejoin Task Group 21.14. USS Card and the other destroyers were forty miles north. Borie made perhaps twelve knots through the heavy seas. Every wave stressed the damaged hull, and every roll threatened to open new leaks. The crew worked the pumps continuously and fought to keep ahead of the flooding, but they lost ground slowly but steadily. Dawn came. Gray light revealed the full extent of the damage. The port side looked like it had been hit by a giant hammer. Hull plating was dished inward, frame members were bent, and paint was scorched from gunfire. The forward section sat lower in the water than it should, and Borie had a list to port—not severe, but enough to worry about. USS Barry and USS Goff tried to come alongside and attempted to pass a towing cable, but the seas were too rough. Forty-foot swells by mid-morning and winds gusting to fifty knots made it impossible. Every time one of the destroyers approached, the wave action threatened to smash them together. After three attempts, they pulled away. Towing was impossible in these conditions.
The crew began jettisoning weight—anything to raise the bow and improve stability. Torpedoes went over the side first. Nine Mark 15 torpedoes, each weighing over 3,000 pounds, splashed into the Atlantic one by one. Then came the ammunition—cases of 4-inch shells, 20 mm rounds, and small arms ammunition. Hundreds of pounds of brass and explosives were dumped overboard. The 20 mm gun mounts came next. Crews unbolted them from their mounts, manhandled them to the rail, and pushed them over. The guns disappeared into the gray water. Anything topside that could be removed went over: depth charge racks, empty shell casings, spare parts, tools, and personal gear. The crew threw away everything except what they needed to keep the ship afloat. It wasn’t enough. The pumps ran continuously, yet the flooding continued. Water gained on them inch by inch, hour by hour. Borie settled deeper, and the list increased. By afternoon, the destroyer was clearly dying. The only question was how long she had.
Hutchkins requested permission to abandon ship, but Captain Isbel on USS Card refused. He told Hutchkins to keep trying, keep pumping, and keep fighting. Maybe the seas would calm, or they could get a tow cable across, or Borie would make it to port. Hutchkins kept his crew working, but he knew. They all knew. Fourteen hours after the battle ended, the situation became critical. The forward bulkhead of the flooded engine room began to give way. If it collapsed, the flooding would spread to the next compartment, then the next, and Borie would sink in minutes. There would be no time to abandon ship properly and no time to get everyone off. The seas remained at forty feet. USS Barry and USS Goff circled nearby but couldn’t approach. The sun was setting, and in another hour, it would be completely dark. Trying to abandon ship at night in forty-foot seas was suicide, but staying aboard a sinking destroyer was also suicide.
Hutchkins made the decision. They would abandon ship now while there was still light, while the destroyer still had enough buoyancy to give them a chance, and while USS Barry could attempt to rescue them. It was abandon now or die. The crew began preparing, breaking out life rafts, inflating life jackets, and gathering on deck. Most had never practiced abandoning ship in calm seas, let alone in conditions like these—forty-foot waves, freezing water, and a destroyer rolling thirty degrees with every swell. And they had to jump. One hundred and forty-three men were on board; twenty-seven would not survive the next two hours. The abandon ship process began at 1600 hours, with two hours of daylight remaining. USS Barry positioned herself as close as she dared—300 yards. Closer meant a collision. The destroyers rose and fell on opposite sides of the wave cycle. When Borie climbed a crest, Barry disappeared into a trough. When Barry rose, Borie dropped. Trying to jump between ships was impossible. The crew would have to go into the water, swim to Barry, or reach the life rafts and paddle across. In 44-degree water, that meant hypothermia in minutes and death in perhaps fifteen minutes without rescue. Every man knew the odds. They went anyway.
Life rafts went over first—yellow rubber rafts designed for calm water. They hit the surface and immediately began tumbling in the swells. Some capsized, while others broke loose from their lines and drifted away. The few that stayed upright became tiny targets in massive seas. Reaching them meant swimming through waves twice as tall as a man. The crew began jumping. Some dove, some climbed down cargo nets and dropped from there, and others simply stepped off the rail. All hit the water hard. The cold was instant and total—breath-stealing and muscle-locking. The Atlantic in November killed fast. Men thrashed toward the life rafts. Some made it and hauled themselves aboard. Others missed, got swept past, and disappeared in the troughs between waves. The life jackets kept them afloat but couldn’t fight the current or overcome the exhaustion from the cold. Men simply stopped swimming, went under, and were gone.
USS Barry launched her motor whaleboat, a small boat with an outboard engine. It crashed through the swells, picking up survivors. The crew worked frantically, hauling men aboard—some conscious, some already unconscious from hypothermia, and some dead but still wearing life jackets. The whaleboat made trip after trip, each time risking capsize in the massive seas. Borie’s crew chief, Engineer Lieutenant Morrison Brown, stayed aboard to supervise the evacuation, making sure every man got off, checking compartments, and counting heads. He was one of the last to leave. He jumped from the stern, hit the water, and started swimming toward a raft. He made perhaps twenty yards, then stopped, treaded water for a moment, and then slipped under. His body was never recovered. Seaman Second Class Max Blaine reached a life raft and tried to climb aboard. The raft flipped, throwing him back in the water. He tried again, and it flipped again. The third time, he didn’t have the strength. The cold had taken too much. He floated face down in his life jacket, dead at twenty years old.
Ship’s Cook Second Class Warren Henderson swam toward USS Barry. A strong swimmer, he made good progress until a wave caught him wrong and slammed him into debris floating in the water, knocking him unconscious. He drowned without ever waking up. The whaleboat found groups of men clinging to wreckage—some alive, some already gone. The crew pulled aboard everyone they could reach, living or dead. Nobody was left behind if they could help it, but the seas were vast and the men were scattered across hundreds of yards of water. Hutchkins was among the last to leave. He stood on the bridge, watching his crew abandon his ship. She was twenty-three years old when she was built and had served in the Black Sea, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. She had survived twenty-three years of peace and three years of war, and now she was dying because she had killed a submarine. Hutchkins climbed down to the main deck, walked to the rail, and jumped. He swam to a raft, pulled himself aboard, and watched USS Barry’s crew work. He watched his own men fight for their lives in the freezing water and watched some of them lose.
By 1800 hours, most of the survivors were aboard Barry. One hundred and sixteen men had been rescued—cold, exhausted, and some injured, but alive. Twenty-seven men were still in the water, most already dead, some unconscious, and a few still fighting. Barry’s searchlights swept the area. The whaleboat made one last sweep, found three more men, and pulled them aboard. That left twenty-four. Darkness fell. The searchlights could only cover so much ocean. Forty-foot seas made it impossible to see into the troughs. The missing men were scattered, dying, or already dead. Barry searched for another hour but found no one else. Captain Hutchkins gave the order to stop searching and save the men they had. Twenty-seven sailors were lost—twenty-seven men who had survived the battle with U-405 only to die in the Atlantic. USS Borie remained afloat, empty, abandoned, and rolling in the massive swells. She refused to sink.
USS Borie stayed afloat through the night. The forward section sat low in the water, and the list increased to fifteen degrees, but she wouldn’t go down. The Clemson-class destroyers were tough, built with multiple watertight compartments designed to take damage and survive. Even gutted and abandoned, Borie clung to life. By dawn on November 2nd, the situation was clear: the destroyer could not be saved and could not be towed. The seas remained too rough, and the damage was too extensive. Borie would eventually sink, but if left alone, she might drift for days and become a hazard to navigation, or worse, the Germans might find her and her salvage equipment, intelligence documents, and codebooks. Captain Isbel on USS Card made the decision: USS Barry would sink her, putting Borie down cleanly and making sure she went to the bottom in deep water where nobody could reach her. It was the last service one warship could provide another.
USS Barry positioned herself 1,200 yards away. The gunnery officer selected his target points to ensure Borie sank quickly: the waterline amidships, the remaining engine room, and the forward magazines—shells that would open her hull to the sea and finish what U-405 had started. The 4-inch guns opened fire. The first shell hit Borie amidships, punched through the thin hull plating, and exploded inside. The second hit forward, and the third aft. One shell after another opened new holes, each letting in more water. Borie shuddered with every impact and rolled with the explosions, settling faster. After twenty minutes of sustained fire and forty shells or more, Borie’s hull was Swiss cheese. Compartments flooded rapidly. Now the list increased to thirty degrees. The bow went under, then the forward section. Water poured into spaces that had stayed dry during the battle—spaces that had survived twenty-three years at sea were now flooding in minutes. The stern rose, and Borie’s propellers lifted clear of the water. The destroyer hung there for a moment, bow down and stern up, silhouetted against the gray Atlantic sky. Then she slid under, stern first, going down in the same waters that took U-405.
Two warships built by different nations and designed to kill each other were now resting on the same piece of ocean floor forever. USS Barry’s crew stood silent, watching a sister ship die. Hutchkins stood on Barry’s deck with his survivors, watching his command disappear—the ship he had captained for five months, the ship that made him the youngest destroyer commander in the United States Navy, and the ship that killed a U-boat and died doing it. She was gone, at 49 degrees north and 31 degrees west, three miles deep. The survivors returned to the United States aboard USS Card—one hundred and sixteen men who were cold, exhausted, and grieving for the twenty-seven shipmates who didn’t make it. They reached port in mid-November, where they were debriefed, evaluated, and then awarded.
Lieutenant Charles Hutchkins received the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism in action against an enemy submarine, for commanding his ship with skill and courage, for ramming U-405 when ramming was the only option, for fighting a surface battle against impossible odds, and for saving one hundred and sixteen men while losing twenty-seven. Engineer Lieutenant Morrison Brown received a posthumous Navy Cross for staying aboard to the end, ensuring every man got off before him, and dying in the water trying to reach safety. Twenty-seven other men received no medals, just graves in the Atlantic. Task Group 21.14 received the Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary performance in operations against enemy submarines. The group sank eight U-boats between July and November 1943. Borie’s kill of U-405 was the last and the most costly, but also the most remarkable.
The battle became famous immediately. Press coverage appeared within days, and Life magazine featured Hutchkins. The Navy released paintings of the action, and artists depicted the moment when Borie rode on top of U-405, the two ships locked together and crews fighting face to face. It looked like something from the age of sail—John Paul Jones and wooden ships, not 1943 and steel destroyers. But it happened, documented in action reports, confirmed by survivors, witnessed by USS Barry and USS Goff, and recorded in German naval archives after the war. U-405 was lost with all hands, forty-nine men, including Corvette Captain Ralph Hinrich Hopman, a skilled commander who fought brilliantly until the end. The question remained: why did this battle matter? Two ships sank and seventy-six men died. What changed? The answer lay not in what happened that night, but in what it represented about naval warfare itself.
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest continuous campaign of World War II, lasting from 1939 to 1945—six years of submarines hunting convoys and destroyers hunting submarines. Thousands of ships sank, and tens of thousands of men died. Most battles followed the same pattern: U-boats attacked with torpedoes from underwater, and destroyers responded with depth charges. Ships rarely saw each other, and combat happened through sonar contacts and underwater explosions. USS Borie versus U-405 broke every rule: surface combat, ramming, small arms fire, hand-to-hand range, and weapons that included knives and shell casings. It was naval warfare that looked more like 1800 than 1943. It shouldn’t have happened. By all modern naval doctrine, it was impossible, but it did happen, and that made it significant. Ramming was the oldest naval tactic in existence. Ancient galleys rammed each other, Viking longships rammed enemy vessels, and age of sail warships occasionally rammed as a last resort. But by World War II, ramming was considered obsolete and suicidal. Torpedoes and gunfire made it unnecessary. Why risk your ship when you could sink the enemy from a distance?
Hutchkins had no choice. U-405’s tight turning radius prevented effective gunnery. The submarine’s stern torpedo tube remained a threat, and depth charges worked only if the submarine was underwater. On the surface, in heavy seas with limited visibility, ramming became the only option. The last resort became the only resort. The ramming itself failed; the wave lifted Borie onto U-405 instead of driving through her hull. It was pure chance—random ocean mechanics that nobody could predict or control. But that accident created something unprecedented: two modern warships stuck together, unable to use their primary weapons and forced to fight with whatever they could reach. The Germans fought harder than they had to. Hopman could have surrendered immediately after the ramming. His submarine couldn’t submerge, escape, or win. Surrender was the rational choice, but his crew kept fighting, trying to reach their guns and firing from the hatches. They knew they were dead but fought anyway.
That kind of courage existed on both sides—the Americans throwing knives and shell casings, and the Germans running into searchlight beams knowing they would die. Neither crew quit, and neither crew broke. Both sides fought with everything available until one side literally sank. That level of determination was rare even in World War II. The technological mismatch made it stranger. Borie was built in 1920 and was twenty-three years old—ancient by naval standards—with an obsolete design, weak armor, and limited weapons. She should have been scrapped years earlier. U-405 was built in 1941 and was a modern submarine with advanced torpedoes and an experienced crew. By every measure, the U-boat was superior. But age didn’t matter in that fight, and technology didn’t matter. What mattered was seamanship, leadership, and the willingness to close with the enemy regardless of cost. Hutchkins commanded a tin can destroyer with a crew of reservists, most of whom had never seen combat. He himself had been a salesman two years earlier. None of that mattered when the shooting started.
The battle lasted sixty-four minutes. In that time, both ships fired everything they had, expended every weapon, and used every tactic. When the guns couldn’t reach, they threw things. When ammunition ran out, they threw empty brass. When brass ran out, they threw knives. The fighting continued until one ship sank and the other was too damaged to continue. Seventy-six men died total—twenty-seven Americans and forty-nine Germans. Two ships were lost—one submarine and one destroyer. The cost was enormous for a single U-boat kill. Other destroyers sank submarines with depth charges and lost nobody. Borie paid in blood for a victory that could have been achieved more efficiently. But efficiency wasn’t the point. The battle proved something that naval planners had forgotten: that ships are commanded by men, that courage and determination could overcome technological advantage, and that sometimes the oldest tactic was still effective. Ramming still worked if you were willing to pay the price.
The Battle of the Atlantic continued for another eighteen months after Borie sank. Hundreds more U-boats were destroyed and thousands more merchant ships were lost, but no other battle looked like this one. No other destroyer rode on top of a submarine, and no other crew fought with knives at sea. This battle was unique, and that’s why these men deserve to be remembered. Lieutenant Charles Hutchkins returned to Terre Haute after the war, went back to civilian life, married Anne McCormack in 1946, and worked at Wabash Fiberbox until he retired in 1964. He lived quietly and rarely talked about that night in the North Atlantic. The Navy Cross sat in a drawer; the memories stayed private, but the battle stayed famous. Naval historians studied it, and the ramming became a case study at Annapolis—how two ships could end up locked together, how surface combat evolved when primary weapons couldn’t engage, and how crews improvised when doctrine failed.
The battle that shouldn’t have happened became required reading for destroyer captains. The wreckage of USS Borie remains on the ocean floor at 49 degrees north and 31 degrees west, three miles down—too deep for salvage and too deep for divers. She sits in darkness with U-405 somewhere nearby, two enemies forever linked by one night of combat. The cold Atlantic is their monument. The twenty-seven men who died during the abandon ship have no graves; their names are listed on tablets at sea and remembered in naval records, but the ocean took them and never gave them back. Morrison Brown, Max Blaine, Warren Henderson, and twenty-four others survived the battle and killed a submarine, only to drown in the aftermath. Their sacrifice was complete even if their victory was temporary.
The forty-nine Germans aboard U-405 are also listed only in records. Corvette Captain Ralph Hinrich Hopman and his entire crew fought a hopeless battle and fought it well. They refused to surrender even when surrender made sense and went down with their submarine in water too cold and too deep to survive. They were the enemy, but they were also sailors who died doing their duty. One hundred and sixteen survivors carried the story forward. Most returned to civilian life after the war, and some stayed in the Navy. All remembered that night—the destroyer riding on a submarine, the Germans climbing toward their guns, the knives and shell casings, and the men who didn’t make it. They told their families, their children, and their grandchildren, keeping the memory alive when the official history moved on to bigger battles.
Bob Maher wrote a memoir decades later. As Fire Controlman First Class, he was the man who had a box seat for the entire fight. His account preserved details that official reports missed: the sounds, the chaos, and the nightmares afterward. His writing ensured the human cost wasn’t forgotten when historians focused on tactics and technology. The battle proved one final thing: that in war, ships don’t fight—men do. Borie was steel and rivets, and U-405 was welded plates and diesel engines. Neither ship decided to fight, and neither ship chose courage over surrender. The men made those choices. Hutchkins decided to ram, Hopman decided to fight on the surface, and the crews on both sides refused to quit. Modern naval warfare has moved beyond this kind of combat, with missiles engaged from over the horizon and submarines launching torpedoes from miles away. Ships rarely see each other. The age of surface combat ended decades ago. No crew will ever ride on top of an enemy submarine again, and no sailors will throw knives in a naval battle. That era is gone.
If this story moved you the way it moved us, do me a favor and hit that like button. Every single like tells YouTube to show this story to more people. Hit subscribe and turn on notifications. We’re rescuing forgotten stories from dusty archives every single day—stories about sailors and destroyer crews who fought with knives, courage, and determination. These are real people and real heroism. Drop a comment right now and tell us where you’re watching from. Are you watching from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia? Our community stretches across the entire world. You’re not just a viewer; you’re part of keeping these memories alive. Tell us your location and tell us if someone in your family served. Just let us know you’re here. Thank you for watching and thank you for making sure Lieutenant Charles Hutchkins and the crew of USS Borie don’t disappear into silence. These men deserve to be remembered, and you’re helping make that happen.
