A Very Good article Rupert
After reading the different accounts on the Battle of the Atlantic strong points are to be made as to why Britain and its Allies won..‚.. We certainly could not have done it without the help of the U.S..‚.. However, I believe this campaign was finally won by being one jump ahead of the Germans in inventions and technology...
Only a few hours after war was declared the British passenger ship liner Athenia was sunk in the Atlantic by a German U boat..‚.. Children were on the ship on their way to the States and Canada for safety..‚.. This is what convinced the Admiralty to set up convoy routes to help protect merchant ships.
The two main systems were the North-South convoys to the Mediterranean and West Africa and the East west convoys from North America to Great Britain..‚.. The convoy system was considered to be the navy’s defense against Germanys Wolf Packs..‚.. Destroyers and Corvettes protected merchant ships across three thousand miles of the Atlantic..‚.. The Royal Navy escorts themselves were equipped with Asdic an echo sounding device for tracking U boats, but the problem was it only had a range of 1000 yards..‚.. After that it was useless.
It was in April 1940 off the coast of Norway, the British destroyer Griffin received a signal that a ship in the area had been fired upon by a fishing trawler..‚.. The Commander of the Griffin John Lee Barber spotted the fishing trawler flying the Dutch flag. A lot of men stood on the deck so it was decided they check it out..‚.. .‚..It was a German trawler loaded with weapons..‚.. A pistol was fired and the Germans began showing their secrets..‚.. One of them pitched a bag of code books into the sea..‚.. In a heroic act Gunner Florrie.‚.. Foord dived into the freezing water and grabbed the bag..‚.. .‚..The Enigma material eventually found its way to the code breakers at Bletchley Park, which proved invaluable for breaking the German Naval code.
By June 1940 Germany was in control of the French Atlantic ports..‚.. Hitler let loose his U boats in an aim to starve Great Britain and bring her to her knees..‚.. They were found lurking in every sea lane attacking convoys on their way to Britain.
The worst attacks took place on the mid-Atlantic not covered by air escort called The Black Gap, escort aircraft carriers converted from merchant ships were being constructed in American and British shipyards.
In March 1942 the Germans were winning the war and producing submarines at a rate of 30 a month..‚.. Also they had the ability to read coded messages from the Admiralty to the escorts, which made it possible to put U boat patrol lines across convoy routes..‚.. These Wolf.‚.. Packs, as they were called, caused the Allies heavy losses, in one day alone a convoy lost as many as seven ships including the Canadian destroyer the Ottawa So many ships were lost that year a disaster for the Allies.
However, the turning point came in July 1942..‚.. The R.A.F received Canadians long range Liberator aircraft which they needed to cover the Black Gap..‚.. The United States were mass producing Liberty cargo ships.‚.. Aircraft carriers were built with flight decks that could hold up to 20 planes..‚.. Radar equipped aircraft could take off the carriers and fill the Black Hole and attack German subs.
Finally, with new technologies most escorts and anti submarine aircraft received improved new ten centimeter radar equipment that could detect surface submarines at a long range at night, which had the biggest effect in the Atlantic Campaign..‚.. Then Huff Duff (High Frequency Direction Finders) came along that were able to locate German subs by their radio traffic, this affected the German U boats when they were spread over a wide area they would need to use their radios more often to form their deadly Wolf Packs..‚.. And of course the Allies now having Ultra Secret also had the ability to read the German Naval code..‚.. Advances in technology and the breaking of German enigma codes guaranteed the Allies victory of the battle of the Atlantic and determined the world we live in today.
During a war that lasted six years so many battles were fought, far too many lives lost The losses suffered by the U Boat service was high and of 1158 Boats in service, 637 were lost and of those, 420 were lost in the Atlantic.‚.. There are thousands of German and Allied sailors buried in ships under the sea.‚.. 40,000 men who served in.‚.. U Boats during the war and 20,000 of those did not return. Some 2000 Allied ships were sunk by U Boats 20,000 allied merchant seaman lost their lives and 6,000 aircrew of Allied Coastal Command also. Therefore we should respect the courage and sacrifice of the of all those who operated in a hostile environment
British Prime Minister Churchill afterwards said, the only thing that frightened me was the U boat peril.
Bibliography:
The Second World War by: John Keegan
The Most Secret war by: R.V Jones.‚..
The Unruly Giant by: Norman Rose
