USS Beaver (AS-5) - World War II in The Atlantic

World War II in The Atlantic

On 3 September 1942, Beaver and six submarines formed SubRon 50 at New London, a special unit intended for Operation "Torch" — the planned November landings in French North Africa. In October, while five of her submarines sailed with Task Group 34.11 (TG 34.11) for operations off North Africa, Beaver joined convoy HX 212, bound for the United Kingdom. On 24 October, the 48-ship convoy ran into a patrol line of German U-boats which closed to attack. Starting on the 26th, and continuing over the next two nights, seven U-boats attacked the convoy. Although the convoy escorts — including the Coast Guard cutter Campbell and three British Commonwealth corvettes — drove off most of the attackers, three merchant ships were sunk and another two damaged by U-boats that broke through the defensive screen. The rest of the ships, including Beaver, came under RAF air cover out of Iceland on the 28th and arrived at the Firth of Clyde on 1 November.

The submarine tender then steamed to the naval operating base at Rosneath, Scotland, near Glasgow, where she established a temporary submarine base for SubRon 50. After the squadron's submarines returned from "Torch" operations, where they had conducted reconnaissance patrols off the beaches, they were assigned patrol areas in the Bay of Biscay. Between December 1942 and March 1943, the submarines searched for blockade runners out of neutral Spanish ports. Starting in April, they patrolled off Norway, Iceland, and then the mid-Atlantic, searching for enemy U-boats and waiting in case the German surface fleet broke out from its Scandinavian bases.