Hi Steve,

I can’t answer your question however there were many claimed U-boat sinkings that never happened off the east coast of the U.S., especially that early in the war.

Some of the boats were damaged and got away and others got away without damage at all. Some attacks may not have even been on U-boats.

That area is littered with shipwrecks (many sunk by U-boats) and the water isn’t that deep there. Depth charges sometimes brought up oil and wreckage from them and the inexperienced crew of an airplane wasn’t necessarily able to distinguish between the diesel fuel used by U-boats and the fuel oil used by merchant ships.

Some of the shipwrecks I dived on off the east coast several years ago were so pulverized by depth charges they were hard to recognize as ships but some were still occasionally leaking oil.

U.S. forces were inexperienced and poorly trained and equipped at that time and they frequently didn’t persist with their attacks long enough to actually sink their target. The depth charges were sometimes so poorly aimed that the only comment you find in the KTB of the target was about explosions in the distance but they nonetheless claimed a kill and their claims were routinely accepted and reported to an American public that desperately needed to hear we were doing something about the slaughter of allied merchant ships right off our coast.

U-352 was the only U-boat sunk off the U.S. east coast in May of 1942 and she was sunk on the 9th by the U.S. Coast Guard vessel Icarus.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Ken Dunn