To my friends, sorry — I accidentally cut off the end of Item #25 in my previous post. Here it is in full:

25. In one weird encounter, the enemies actually talked to each other in the middle of a battle: Convoy TM-1, a formation of nine Allied oil tankers, was proceeding from the Caribbean to North Africa on January 3, 1943, when it was detected by German U-boats. The under-strength escort group (one destroyer and three corvettes) was no match for the ten U-boats in Gruppe Delphin, who over the period of nine days sank seven tankers totaling 56,453 gross registered tons. At one point, a U-boat brazenly followed the formation on the surface in daylight, knowing the escorts were too few to break away to attack it. Finally, an officer on the British destroyer signaled the U-boat in plain English Morse code: “Why don’t you go away?” The U-boat signaled back, “Sorry, we have our orders.”