Submarine Sighted and Sunk
For the next five months, Trumpeter conducted patrols out of Brazilian ports with antisubmarine task groups. The escort carrier hunter-killer group was an innovation in antisubmarine warfare which effectively blunted the efficiency of German submarines in the Atlantic shipping lanes. Each group, composed of one escort carrier and its screen of destroyer escorts or old destroyers, aggressively sought out and destroyed enemy submarines in Atlantic waters with notable success. When Trumpeter began patrols in March 1944, however, German submarine activity was not so extensive as it had been earlier in the war; and many of her patrols were uneventful. In June, while Trumpeter was patrolling in mid-Atlantic with Solomons, a plane from the carrier detected the presence of a German submarine. Planes dispatched from Solomons eventually sank the submarine. While Trumpeter remained behind to screen the carrier, Straub and Herzog (DE-178) set out for the area of the sinking, some 40 miles away, to rescue survivors. The two DE's picked 23 Germans from the waters, but the flier, whose bold low altitude bombing run had finished off the U-boat, was still missing when the search was ended.
Read more about this topic: USS Trumpeter (DE-180)
Famous quotes containing the words sighted and/or sunk:
“At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:
‘Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!’”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“And they wrapped him up in an old cow’s hide,
And they sunk him in the Lowland sea,
And they sunk him in the Lowlands low.”
—Unknown. The Golden Vanity (l. 43–45)