[Leandros]

U-65 - IXB - Kaleu Hansen - May 112325 lst 1944 - Lorient Patrol 25

Just entered the U-boat-bunker in Lorient. What a relief! We left Lorient on February 17th, crossed the Atlantic to Barbados via U-488 in the mid-Atlantic. Returned via U-488, too, where we refuelled and replenished (therefore 2 patrols). Outside the north-western corner of Spain we hit on two different convoys. We were able to sink all the escorts of the last one, caught up with it again with our two remaining torps - and ended the day by emptying our deck gun ammo stores again. That took care of a couple of more merchants after dark.

There has been some problems with the torps, particularly four TI's on magnetic which we wasted on an ASW trawler outside Bridgetown. Either the ASW was perfectly degaussed or the torps were duds. There were a couple of others with problems. The sole Falke we brought with us tracked the target but never went off. The boat itself has behaved beautifully. Wonder how long they'll let me keep my very experienced crew....?

A lot of air activity north of Trinidad, otherwise very little untill we approached the outer Biscaya on the return trip - Sunderlands, Mosquitos and rocket-equipped B-24's. When we met those we knew there were some convoys close. Actually a Mossie pushed us under at which our sonar detected a convoy quite close. It had not shown up on our radar.

I have pondered a lot on how to tackle the large convoys with their extensive escort forces. To sink the merchants and not spend all torps on the escorts. It came to me when we were laying "under" that convoy with the extremely miserable weather above. Lined up inside the convoy, in the direction of the convoy's course, one could let off homing torpedoes with a few minutes spacing and a little spread using only the sonar and the manual aiming device. They would certainly hitch up to the several dozens of ships ahead of them.

Beautiful summer in France now, the whole crew is off to a small village in-country. There is a little too much attention by the Bomber Command around the harbour and bunker and much talk about the Allies coming over soon but I am sure they need another year before they dare take the leap. Then we shall certainly have our new super-boats and plenty of homing torps. I built up some goodwill again with this trip. Hopefully we shall get the new RWR and Bold 3 before we leave again. And a lot of homing torps.

Fred