[Leandros]

Patrol 1 - U-531 - IXC/40 - Leu z.S. Krause - Oct 10700 1943 - Lorient U-boat base

Just arrived back in Lorient early this morning. This was to be a shake-down tour - new boat, new crew. I had planned to play it safe, to cruise west of the Bristol Channel approaches. We departed Lorient evening October 1st.

Patrolled for several days but no targets. Set course for the Rockalls in deteriorating weather, moderate sea, light rain and visibility down to 4-500 meters. This kept up for the rest of the cruise.

Early on we received a report on an enemy task force NNW of us, long distance - course SE. As we proceeded northwards other reports indicated it might pass in front of us. Should we go for it? Not really wise with a fresh crew and boat. Our armaments were mainly TI's and III's with one bonus Falke. The weather did not invite to close encounters with deadly escorts. An internal vote said: Yes! Thank you for your confidence.

I changed course to easterly, AK, and in a few hours we picked up their radar transmissions. We could see that we pulled ahead of them. Weather was just as bad. We dived within submerged interception distance and picked them up on sonar. One of them was seemingly an escort carrier. Well, that would be something to bag on the first mission.

The point escort passed ahead of us, distance approx. 1.500 meters. Just before the larger vessel passed ahead of us on about the same distance it was clear that we would never sight it in the bad visibility. I therefore decided to take a chance and fired 4 torps ahead of it in a generous spread - two TI's and two TIII's. One hit was observed!

After that it was only to dive as deep as possible and wait for what to come. For several hours the four escorts blasted us with their salvos, some quite close, some farther off. At one point no. 2 and 4 torpedo tubes were destroyed. In the meantime, in-between silent running and performing repairs, the forward tubes were reloaded. A couple of times I thought we had lost them by releasing Bolds and going full sprint, but they always came back. At one point when all were off circling in the East, behind us, I decided to go full blast to periscope depth and take the fight. This obviously took them by surprise, as we levelled off at periscope depth they were still behind us. Only a little time and the first one approached us directly from behind. I had him in the periscope at 500 meter and continued at a straight course. At 400 meter I released a TI at max. speed, magnetic at 4 meter running depth. It was a USN Butler. He ran straight over it and blew up. The last seconds he tried to veer off but it was too late.

We turned around to take on the next one. As he approached us on the rear starboard quarter I turned full starboard to, lowered the periscope and released a Bold. When I raised the periscope again some seconds later it had stopped in the water, it actually had started backing a little. As we slowly turned around the distance increased to 400 meter and I could give it a deflection shot from a forward tube. From then on it was easy. We now had loaded up the single Falke and could send it towards the third echo. It disabled the target, it turned tail and limped away. The fourth one we had time to line up properly as it approached us on our starboard bow. It made it easy by going directly at us.

Our main interest was now what had happened to the carrier. After surfacing we picked up two radar transmissions. One was obviously from the escort limping away towards the second transmitter. That would have to be the carrier! As it turned out both the fleeing escort and the carrier sank before we reached them.

We still had plenty of torps left but with two destroyed bow tubes and 68% HI I decided to return to Lorient. I had not meant the first mission to be this intensive....