BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

 

BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

A successful German U-Boat attack.

BACKGROUND

The German Navy (Kriegsmarine) benefitted from the lessons learned during WWI with respect to how she operated her submarine fleet. Near the end of 1917, with the German Army(Deutsches Heer) stagnate on the Western Front, the Navy ordered her submarines to conduct ‘unrestricted’ attacks against any and all targets of opportunity across the Atlantic.

With the 1939 commencement of combat operations in the Atlantic, the Kriegsmarine attacked independent merchant vessels and cargo fleets as they originated in the United States and Canada. As the war progressed, the German submarine fleet operated in groups and plied the seas as far as the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, the North and South Atlantic and along the coasts of both the United States and Canada.

Despite never having enough U-Boats the 1940 to 1942 period saw incredible losses to Allied shipping. The United States, late in entering the war, were also late in adapting to the threat and slow in formulating anti-submarine tactics, implementation of coordinated convoys and building of modern convoy escorts capable of combatting the U-Boat scourge.

Both the United States and Great Britain had spent the interwar years (post 1922 Washington Naval Treaty) building up major surface vessels such as destroyers, cruisers, battle ships and aircraft carriers. Attention had hardly been paid to building up the requisite surface forces for convoy escort and antisubmarine warfare. The German submarine fleet during the late 1930’s was thought to be small and not much of a concern due to the advantages of modern patrol aircraft and the emerging technologies used in the hunt for submarines.

The Germans, however, under the Submarine Flag Officer, Commodore Karl Donitz, implemented a “strategy of disruption against the Allies.”[1] The disruption was highly effective and strained both the Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) as they convoyed back and forth across the rough Northern Atlantic seas. Always in demand were convoy escort vessels, especially destroyers of which there were never enough.

Overall, the Germans lacked the submarine and surface forces necessary to either completely cut off the Atlantic convoys or force the Royal Navy surface fleet close to port and coastal waters. The Germans, however far and wide they deployed, still had to deploy from the North Sea and the North Atlantic, a natural chokepoint. Further, the Germans delayed building up the requisite submarine fleet for almost 12 months and thus, by 1941, the Royal Navy and the RCN had concentrated on coordinating and deploying convoys, convoy escorts, and anti-submarine forces for the fight ahead.

In time, and with the addition of long range patrol bombers deployed across Iceland, Greenland, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the North East United States, the noose tightened across the Atlantic. As the U.S. war effort transitioned into high gear, more and more Destroyers, Sub-Chasers, Corvettes, and technologies such as ASDIC/SONAR, HF/DF (Direction Finding) was employed and the Kriegsmarine U-Boat menace, although never completely destroyed, was eventually contained.

 

BLOCKADES

The British and ultimately, the Allies with the United States in the lead, eventually implemented a series of blockades against the Axis powers. Japan was dealt with almost singly by the U.S. Navy in the Pacific from the winter of 1942 to the end of the war. The Mediterranean became the domain of the Royal Navy and the Atlantic was shared between the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, and the Royal Canadian Navy.

As for German surface forces, they were most heavily deployed (or blocked in) in the North Sea and Norway. The Atlantic struggle remained the domain of the Kreigsmarine U-Boat fleet. Of the Allied effort to blockade Germany and prevent her from receiving the precious war-making material needed, “the critical balance is that in spite of the very great effort expended by the Allies in trying to restrict German access to raw materials from neutrals and blockade-breakers, and the substantial assistance provided to their naval operations against the latter by their breaking of some German and most Japanese codes, the Germans did get what they most needed.”[2]

Royal Air Force Mosquitos attacking German U-Boat.

Thus, the blockade, on balance, was necessary at the strategic level but ultimately did little to curtail the flow of raw material into Germany. But the blockade across the seas and Europe had at least one major effect; foodstuffs. As the war progressed food shortages and rationing became the norm as the civil populace began to suffer.

 

LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES, GREAT BRITAIN, AND RUSSIA

Since 1939 the British had placed herself on a war footing. The dark days of 1940, when she stood alone, was filled with air raids, bombing of cities and industrial regions, and rationing. The Russians turn came in 1941-1942. Whole cities departed for the deeper Siberian forests and tundra as Leningrad, St Petersburg, and Moscow came under threat. Rationing was strictly enforced and whole industries were moved east.

U.S. Navy Airships escorting Atlantic convoy.

But in Miami, Florida? “One of the most reprehensible failures on our part was the neglect of local communities to dim their waterfront lights, or of military authorities to require them to do so, until three months after the submarine offensive started.”[1] It eventually took until April 1942 for all coast cities and town to accept that the ‘tourist season had changed’ and to adhere to blackout conditions.

---

[1] Milner, Marc, Battle of The Atlantic, (St Catharines, ON: Tempus Publishing Ltd, 2003), 22.

[2] Weinberg, Gerhard L., A World at Arms, A Global History of WWII, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 402.

[3] Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Two-Ocean War, (New York: Little Brown and Company, , 1963, 402).