USAAF doesn’t attack the Laconia’s rescuers?

September 1942, the troopship Laconia is sunk with hundreds of Italian POWs aboard. The attacking U-Boats ask HQ for and are granted permission to rescue the survivors. The U-Boats surface and paint red crosses on their decks, and begin radioing in English their intent and that any approaching rescue ships will not be fired upon. A USAAF Liberator flies overhead, ignores the radio calls and instead reports back to Acension the presence of survivors and the rescue operation, and then is ordered to bomb the U-Boats. This was essentially a war crime and an embarrassment postwar to the Americans. It also led to Donitz to order his U-Boats to ignore survivors going forward.

But what if the USAAF is not ordered to attack?

I find this a tough post to answer. I keep circling back to it. Every response I come up with gets repudiated in my own mind. One decent act that should be respected, or destroy the U-Boat that would sink many more ships leaving dead, injured or drowning in its wake? I enjoy reading accounts of humanity shining through brutality but then again, I don't have the perspective of a combatant during 1942. It was a dark time for the Allies.

There are enough examples of U-boats not stopping to pick up survivors both before and after Laconia that I doubt a show of grace by the Americans in that incident would have changed much.

There are considerable instances where U-Boats did assist survivors, more than not prior to the Laconia incident, as well as USN subs in the Pacific, in spite of orders.

If I had been the B-24 pilot, I would have acknowledged the order to attack, and dropped liferafts by the sub and flown off and dropped my ordnance in the empty ocean..."darn, I missed..."