On this day in military history…
The sinking of the German submarine U-127 by the Australian destroyer HMAS Nestor on 15 December 1941 remains one of the standout moments of Australia’s naval involvement in the Atlantic theatre. Nestor, an N-class destroyer carrying around 190 men, was a fast, modern warship commanded at the time by Commander Alvord Sydney Rosenthal. She was equipped with six 4.7-inch guns, torpedo tubes and, most importantly for this encounter, depth-charge racks and sonar gear that made her well suited for hunting submarines. The submarine she encountered that day was U-127, a long-range German Type IXC U-boat under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Bruno Hansmann, carrying roughly fifty men. It had only recently begun its first operational patrol and was on its way toward the convoy routes where Germany hoped its large ocean-going submarines would strike a blow against Allied shipping.
On the 15th, Nestor was operating with other Allied destroyers off Cape St. Vincent, an important gateway between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. When a sonar contact was picked up, it became clear that a submarine was attempting to slip past the screen. Nestor moved in quickly, using her ASDIC equipment to track the U-boat as it tried to dive and evade. Rosenthal ordered a depth-charge attack, and the destroyer thundered over the suspected position, dropping patterns of charges set to explode at different depths. After one of the runs, a violent underwater explosion was felt, followed by rising oil and debris—signs that the submarine had been fatally struck. No survivors were found, and U-127, along with all of her crew, was lost.
The victory was significant not only because an Australian-manned ship had successfully destroyed a German submarine in a theatre far from home, but also because it came at a particularly dangerous stage of the Battle of the Atlantic, when U-boats were causing immense losses. For Nestor’s crew, it was a moment of pride during a demanding tour of duty that took them through some of the most heavily contested waters of the war. Tragically, the destroyer herself would be lost only months later after suffering severe bomb damage in the Mediterranean, but her role in the sinking of U-127 remained one of the most notable achievements of her short, intense career.
