Top 10 U-Boat aces in World War II 274,333 tons (47 ships sunk) Otto Kretschmer 225,712 tons (43 ships) Wolfgang Lüth 193,684 tons (34 ships) Erich Topp 186,064 tons (29 ships) Karl-Friedrich Merten 171,164 tons (34 ships) Victor Schütze 171,122 tons (26 ships) Herbert Schultze 167,601 tons (28 ships) Georg Lassen 166,596 tons (22 ships) Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock 162,333 tons (30 ships) Heinrich Liebe 160,939 tons (28 ships), plus the British battleship HMS Royal Oak inside Scapa Flow Günther Prien