pretty cool U-boat diorama

There is one sunk off the coast of N.J. as well. Uboat archives in Germany had U-869 listed as missing off coast of north Africa. They believe it surfaced to fire a torpedo. The torpedo gyro failed and the torpedo made a big circle, and they blew themselves up.

Since it was later in the war, the U boats were told to surface at certain dates and times to recieve orders, but not to transmit back, because by this time in the war the hunters had become the hunted. PB4Y Catalina were really good at triangulating a signal and coordinating with depth charge boats.

Because of this, after patrolling off the N.J. coast, they were told to patrol off north Africa, no other orders after that because the war was over. They never returned home. It was assumed that they made it to north africa and were sunk there.

The model is really fantastic.