SUCCESS IN ATLANTIC

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 7, 4 October 1943, Page 3

SUCCESS IN ATLANTIC

Baby Aircraft Carrier

U-BOAT PACK BEATEN

LOS ANGELES, August 17.

The United States Navy Department lias announced that one of its new-type baby aircraft-carriers established a record of sinking two submarines aud possibly sinking eight others while escorting Iwo convoys across the Atlantic. The carrier attacked 11 submarines ‘luring the crossing, suffered damage to but one of its planes and helped deliver every ship in the two convoys safely .to port. In addition to the two known submersibles sunk, the Navy described four others as “very probable’’ and four more as “probable.” “It is believed that this record of defence and attack over a similar period of time has not been equalled by any other vessel in the history of anti-submarine warfare,” the Navy Department stated. Forty-one prisoners were taken from the Iwo submarines sunk. The vessel, designated “Escort Carrier B,” carried Grumman Avenger and Wildcat planes. It began its first attack at dusk when an Avenger returning from paired dropped two depth charges on a submarine many miles off the starboard bow.

The pilot reported that after tbe attack he could find no trace of the target. During that night, a U-boat wolf pack shadowed the convoys and deployed for attack at dawn; But simultaneously two Avengers spotted two submarines riding the surface and pressed in for attack against anti-aircraft lire. Two possible hits were scored under the stern of one and one depth charge threw the other violently to starboard. Both submersibles wont under stern fit's!, and searches by surface ships found no further traces of the enemy. But. because no evidence of wreckage could be found, neither attack was scored as a “kill.”

U-boat No. 4 apparently was put out of commission in a nomj attack, and the first sure sinking followed in the late afternoon, with 21 of the crew, _two minor officers and the skipper of No. 5 being taken prisoner. Two Avengers damaged No. 6 protecting another convoy, and Nos. 7 and 8 were damaged almost simultaneously. The last attack on this wolf pack came when a Wildcat strafed a surfaced submarine, and an Avenger dropped a denth bomb on it.

No. 10 was badly damaged in a later dusk attack, and the last engagement polished off No. 11 in a 2S-minute at-' tack by American planes. Seventeen German survivors were picked up by a United States,destroyer.