activity. While she was patrolling off Palermo on 26 July, a formation of twin-engine Junkers Ju 88 medium bombers attacked her group. Two near misses flooded both main engine rooms in , and Wainwright joined in escorting the stricken warship into port under tow. Later, she supported the "leap-frog" amphibious moves employed by Major General George S. Patton in his rampage across northern Sicily to the Strait of Messina. During her stay in Sicilian waters, the destroyer also supported mine-sweeping operations and conducted anti-shipping sweeps. In mid-August, she returned to North Africa at Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria, where she remained until early September. On 5 September, she resumed convoy duty, this time between North Africa and Sicily, frequently warding off Luftwaffe air raids. Italy proper had been invaded early in September, and late in October, the warship was called upon to bombard enemy installations around Naples in support of the 5th Army’s advance on that city. She resumed convoy duty soon thereafter. Her next noteworthy contact with the enemy came on 13 December. While conducting an antisubmarine sweep north of Algiers in company with , , and , she made contact with . First Wainwright and then Calpe attacked with depth charges. Those attacks brought the submarine to the surface, and Wainwrights gun crews went to work on her. In less than two minutes, the German crew began to abandon their vessel. Wainwright responded with a boarding party. The American sailors rescued survivors but failed to save the U-boat. After returning to Algiers and delivering her prisoners to British authorities there, she resumed convoy and patrol duties in North African waters. 1944 At the beginning of 1944, she provided support for the troops trying to break out of the beachheads at Anzio and Nettuno on the Italian mainland. Those duties occupied her until early February when she received orders to return to the United States. She steamed homeward in company with Ariel (AF-22) and Niblack via Ponta Delgada in the Azores, arrived at New York on 12 February, and entered the navy yard there for a three-week overhaul. When that chore was finished on 6 March, the destroyer began 13 months of escort and training duty along the eastern seaboard. 1945 That routine ended on 27 April 1945 when she passed through the Panama Canal into the Pacific Ocean. After a stop at San Diego, California and exercises out of Pearl Harbor,