aircraft carrier steaming eastward, but otherwise her patrol was quiet. She returned to Truk on 22 February 1943. Assigned to Submarine Group B on 25 March 1943, I-32 departed Truk that day for her fourth war patrol, in which she operated in the vicinity of Fiji and the Samoan Islands. After an uneventful patrol, she returned to Truk on 1 June, then got underway on 3 June bound for Kure, which she reached on 10 June 1943. July–December 1943 Towing an Unkato supply container — a submersible cargo container that could carry up to 377 tons of supplies, designed for a one-way trip in which the cargo′s recipients released, recovered, and unloaded it — I-32 departed Kure on 30 July 1943 and set course for Rabaul, arriving there in early August 1943. While at Rabaul, she was reassigned to the Southeast Area Fleet on 9 August 1943. On 5 September 1943, she set out for New Guinea, towing an Unkato container, and she made her first visit to Lae, New Guinea, to deliver supplies. After that, she proceeded to the New Caledonia area, where she attempted to launch her embarked Yokosuka E14Y1 floatplane off Nouméa for a reconnaissance mission on 25 September 1943, but a catapult malfunction forced cancellation of the flight. She next made her way to the waters off Australia′s east coast, and she was off Coffs Harbour on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales on 7 October 1943 when she attacked Convoy PG.72, an Australian convoy on a voyage from Sydney in New South Wales to Brisbane in Queensland. All of her torpedoes missed. After sighting one of them surfacing several times between herself and the convoy, one of the convoy′s escorts, the Royal Australian Navy corvette , achieved an asdic contact on I-32, but then lost it before she could mount a counterattack against the submarine. Reassigned to Submarine Group B on 19 October 1943, I-32 received an order on 20 October to attempt another reconnaissance flight over Nouméa, but this order later was cancelled. Instead, she was detached from Submarine Group B on 26 October 1943 and ordered to join other submarines in intercepting a convoy of six U.S. Navy fleet oilers that the submarine had sighted, but the interception effort was unsuccessful. She next received orders to reconnoiter Pago Pago on Tutuila in American Samoa and conducted a periscope reconnaissance of the