patrol, on 3 April 1941, he sighted a convoy but the ships were at extreme range. On 10 April, a second attack went wrong when his torpedoes' tracks were seen and the convoy took evasive action. Upholder was subjected to a sustained counter-attack and was then forced to crash-dive deep when the hydrophones detected a torpedo closing on the vessel. Rather than give up, Wanklyn decided to reconnoitre convoys. On the 12 April 1941 he sighted five large ships with three destroyers. He surfaced to broadcast their position to Malta headquarters, but an enemy aircraft spotted him and Upholder was forced to dive. Later, Wanklyn repeated the procedure which was acknowledged. He fired a star shell over the convoy to mark its position and the enemy fleet quickly reversed direction to port. It attracted the 14th Destroyer Flotilla, comprising , , and . The force did not make contact that night. Days later, during the Battle of the Tarigo Convoy, the same tactics allowed other submarines to lead the force to devastate an Italian convoy for the loss of one destroyer. In early April, British naval intelligence received a report that Albert Kesselring, the Luftwaffe (German air force) commander-in-chief for the Mediterranean, was setting up his headquarters at the Miramar Hotel in Taormina in Sicily. Simpson selected Wanklyn and Upholder for an operation to land commandos onto enemy-held coastland for an assassination attempt against Kesselring. The town lay 200 yards from a rocky coast cut into a hill side in the middle of an oil grove. Upholder was fitted with a fender to protect the hull from the rocks. 23 commandos were to be landed. They would destroy the hotel and its occupants with explosive and gunfire. Wanklyn gave them 40 minutes to complete the attack and return to the submarine under the cover of the deck gun. The day before the operation it was postponed, and submarines were deployed to intercept a convoy from Naples. Two weeks later intelligence reported Kesselring had left the area and the operation was abandoned. Simpson received a report from naval intelligence that two enemy cruisers and destroyers were leaving port in Sicily to rendezvous with a convoy south of Kerkennah Islands. Wanklyn was ordered to remain off the island of Lampedusa, midway between Malta and Tunisia. Nothing was seen, so Wanklyn sailed to the Tunisian coast and selected an area well known for