At 16.58 hours on 14 Nov 1942 the unescorted Scapa Flow (Master Samuel Newbold Mace) was hit on the port side under the bridge and at #3 hatch by two torpedoes from U-134 and sank in less then one minute. The ship had been spotted at 11.37 hours on a route on which attacks were prohibited and the U-boat had first to ask the BdU for an attack permission. The U-boat surfaced 45 minutes after the attack, questioned 23 survivors in a damaged lifeboat with two rafts in tow and gave them a tin of bandages. The Germans asked for the master and chief engineer but they were not among the survivors.

The 47 crew members and 13 armed guards on board had no time to launch the four lifeboats. Only a metal boat, which had been obtained from the John Carter Rose at some port where they had been berthed together and four rafts floated free. The master, 25 crew members and six armed guards (they were pinned under the aft gun platform when it collapsed after the hits) were lost. The men on the rafts transferred the next morning into the boat together with the supplies, but one armed guard later died and was buried at sea. The survivors were picked up on 1 December by HMS Armeria (K 187) (T/Lt M. Todd, RNR) and landed at Freetown six days later. On 1 Jan 1943, they were repatriated to New York, arriving on 15 January.