Basically what you see is realistic. After May 1943 it was perfectly normal to lose a couple of dozen of u-boats per month with little to show for it.The only rational reason Donitz pressed on was to tie down allied assets, particularly bombers, and force them to stick to the convoy system, inefficient from a transport point of view.
Escorts could be increasingly spared to pursue contacts and contacts were increasingly pursued beyond the limits of u-boat underwater endurance.
For example to counter the snorkel u-boat offensive in british waters in late 1944 and early 1945 the Royal Navy sent over four hundreds surface escorts to the area. While the snorkel and bottoming usually enabled the u-boats to reach the assigned zone once they fired at something they were as good as dead, with escorts swamping the surroundings and not leaving until the u-boat was pretty much confirmed to have been destroyed.
As for thermal layers SH3 commander kinda does them and there is some mod for simulating bottoming. But in general the u-boats were massacred regardless.
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