The naval academy I've mostly ignored. Sent a couple officers for a course in waiting ashore, and they are good at it now.
Great reports, fellow skippers. I like your style Leaf.
As for U-292.... We couldn't stretch the refit as long as I thought, as the January patrol was so short. So it was that U-292 set sail on February 22, 1944, bound for the waters south of the Azores to meet another Japanese boat to hand over some stuff. A mission like this seemed in order, with less intensive ASW encountered, or so it was believed. We have three milk cows out in the Atlantic now, and I have them on an arc, one south of Iceland, one north of the Azores and one to the south of the Azores. Met the Japanese submarines, made the delivery, got the you are hunted event, met the tanker to top off and set course for BD grid in mid-ocean. We could have gone right home, mission was complete. But it felt wrong to spend all this time at sea and not attempt to damage the enemy. Plus, I reasoned that a wide path way out to BD grid might throw off the hunters, wherever they might be. I'd expect them to be arrayed along our direct course back to France, so while they were burning fuel there, we'd be out in the middle Atlantic. Not the worst plan.
A little more than three weeks after setting sail, we found an inbound convoy. I'm very hesitant to do solo convoy attacks at this stage of the war. But I gave it a go anyway. Submerged many miles ahead and let the formation overtake our silent and still submarine. Fired two acoustics, the first of which was aimed at the lead destroyer to open a hole in the defense. This torpedo instead went for the T2 tanker sailing astern in the center column. It hit the stern, and the tanker exploded, upended and slid stern-first below the waves.
Second acoustic went again for the lead destroyer and he blew up and sank, as U-292 sought safety in depth. Clearing out this destroyer gave us time to escape and we had done so. It all went so well I thought we should return to periscope depth and have a look. Bad move. When we hit 150m we got pinged. We had kicked the hornet's nest. Tried to slip under the formation as it sailed overhead, but this escort group was the best we have encountered, and very determined to even the score. For several hours we evaded depth charges. They were able to ping us at 245 meters. Honestly I though the jig was up. All of my Steam friends who play this game have already gotten the achievement for having 100 DCs dropped on you, but here we were in the 37th mission and had yet to have that happen. This time it did.
U-292 was rocked by close patterns. Honestly, without the little blue hydrophone lines I'm not sure we would have survived, as these let me con the boat reactively and accurately. In a bog standard VIIC, I don't think we would have made it. This was relentless. A pounding by multiple warships. Yet damage was minor, just to the radar detector, AA guns, bow caps and this sort of thing. No hull breach or leaks, and that is down I think to the VIIC/41, the extra 50 meters you can dive makes all the difference. Get this boat. Finally we managed to slip away, still not sure how as they had zero trouble picking us up on ASDIC before. The crew was more stressed now than at any time in the career. It was a close run thing. But we survived.
Still under the hunt we still needed to sail all the way home, and this close call tempered any thought I might have had of looking for more targets. We had had enough for one patrol. Dived the boat for many aircraft radar contacts on the way, but we made it, having sunk the 14k tanker and the DD, and tied up at La Rochelle after about 30 days at sea.
Did another long refit and then took an anti-shipping patrol in the Pit. The outbound leg was peppered with aircraft contacts, and we yo-yo'd our way to the west, submerged during daylight until well west of the Bay. Got in on a convoy and sank two big freighters in BD grid, plus another escort. We took eight! acoustics on this patrol. Without them, we are in trouble. I hope they don't run out! Still at sea in BD grid.
May, 1944
