At 20.00 hours on 15 June 1942 the Bennestvet (Master Olaf Nøstdahl) was hit on the port side in #3 hold by a torpedo from U-172, broke in two and sank within one minute. The master and eleven crew members were lost, the first engineer was the only surviving officer. As there was no time to launch the lifeboats the survivors had to jump overboard and rescued themselves on two rafts. The U-boat surfaced, questioned the survivors and gave them two loaves of bread. The commander wanted to shake hands with them, but this was refused. Two days later the survivors were located by an aircraft, picked up by the submarine chaser USS PC-458 and landed at Cristobal on 18 June.