The first American ship lost to an Italian submarine was the T. C. McCobb, a tanker owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey. McCobb was en route from Buenos Aires to Caracas when in the late afternoon of Mar. 31, 1942 gunfire was heard in the distance. The Pietro Calvi, under the command of Emilio Olivieri, was running on the surface firing shell after shell at the McCobb.

Captain Robert W. Overbeck turned into the sun and made an attempt to outrun the submarine, but the McCobb could only make a little over 12 knots while the Calvi was running at 17 knots, it was not long until the Calvi was in range and shells began hitting the ship.

Before 6 p.m. Overbeck could continue to run no more and he ordered the engines stopped and the ship to be abandoned. Two crewmen had been killed by the shelling, but the remaining thirty-seven got off the ship, thirty-four in two lifeboats and three on a raft. Soon after dark the Calvi slammed several torpedoes into the hulk and she sank by the stern, Olivieri apparently made no attempt to contact or help the survivors.

Before morning the boats had become separated, and they were on their own, it would not be a quick rescue. Two of the boats were picked up a week later, all 34 men in these boats survived their terrible ordeal, for the men on the raft it would be a much different story.

The raft drifted for 50 days before being picked up, by then two of the men had died, one of illness one of madness. The only survivor was near death, but recovered. However before he would get home he would survive two more sinkings. In fact eight other survivors were also sunk again before getting home.