As my dad gets older, he more and more reminisces about his 3/4 of a year in the German Navy at the end of WW2. He was stationed on the island of Sylt in support of among other things, the German version of "human torpedoes". I'd actually never gotten around to looking them up until today.
He always talked about the torpedo pilots getting all the best food and best everything else available, while the rest of them ate gruel, because of the very high death rate. The interwebz seems to bear that out. The majority of pilot deaths seem to have been caused by accidents, like the actual torpedo not releasing from the mini-sub. Plus with the earlier designs being non-submersible, I reckon they were sitting ducks after the torpedo release, given how close they had to get to their targets.
Anyway, thought it might be interesting to some:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_torpedo#Germanyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAMoMWmWHSQ
