The trailer for the upcoming Tom Hanks movie Greyhound features a scene where a U-boat taunts the titular destroyer using the Talk Between Ships radio frequency.
The C.S. Forester novel, The Good Shepherd, has a similar, albeit less dramatic moment. A character who commands Royal Canadian Navy Corvette says at one point:
"Jerry’s been in on this circuit more than once during the night. He has an English-speaking rating who chips in with rude remarks..."
I've gone through every book I've had on the Battle of the Atlantic and I can't find a single reference to U-boat crews using TBS (or other VHF voice radios) to talk to Allied surface ships, although U-boats like U-524 were able to listen to Allied VHF voice transmissions by late 1942.
So, did this ever happen? Were U-boats A) able to and B) willing to taunt Allied escorts over the radio? Or is this just artistic license on the part of Forester and Hanks?
On the one hand, it is plausible that U-boat officers taunted escort commanders over voice radio. Similar communications were occasionally used in the air, in the hope of misleading Allied pilots. As an example, in his memoir, Fleet Air Arm spotter pilot Mike Crosley recounted receiving German transmissions in the air over Normandy. These transmissions started out by giving the spotters false grid references and rendezvous locations. After a while, they devolved into taunts. Similarly, we know that U-boat commanders were able to listen in on TBS communications between ships. U-boats were issued with a Radione R2/3 radio receiver. This was intended to allow the crews to listen to civilian broadcast radio, for entertainment (though in the Atlantic, they could only receive Allied disinformation stations). However, it covered the VHF frequency band that was used by TBS radio. Several boats noticed this in 1942-43. They were given English-speaking crewmen, to allow them to use this as a source of information - for example, during the March 1943 battles around the convoys HX229 and SC122, U-664 had two English-speaking crewmen aboard. Given these facts, it is possible that this was done - the tactic was used elsewhere, and we know that U-boats listened in to VHF transmissions, carrying English-speakers to aid this. However, the U-boats do not seem to have been issued with a VHF transmitter capable of sending on TBS frequencies. The Radione R2 or 3 were receiver-only sets, and could not transmit. A Lorenz Lo 1 U.K. 35 VHF set was fitted to boats while they were working up in the Baltic, but was typically removed before they entered service. Even on boats where it was not received, it used a frequency band of 40-45 MHz. TBS, meanwhile, transmitted at 60-80 MHz. Without such a transmitter, they would have no way to speak over TBS circuits.