In 1943 the Allies began using long range aircraft to hunt U-boats in the Atlantic.At first the German strategy was for a U-boat to stay on the surface to fight it out with an aeroplane. On balance this didn’t work in the Germans’ favour. So they soon abandoned the strategy. I’m looking for detailed information about this ‘stay up to fight’ period. Can anybody suggest any sources?
The translated War Diary German Naval Staff Operations Division is available on the web in PDF. You could down load the volumes for 1943. However they are monthly with sometimes more than one volume per month so its quite a lot of material. Look in archive.org archive.org
I haven't read it but this might fit the bill although it analyses the Allied efforts in the Bay: U-Boats in the Bay of Biscay: An Essay in Operations Analysis
Thanks, chaps. That’s a tremendous response. Should keep me busy. I’m interested because I knew a professor at Cambridge who served in Coastal Command and lost a couple of fingers in one of those encounters with a U-boat.
The enclosed contains an analysis of why fighting it out on the surface failed. This had not only been employed against aircraft but also isolated escort vessels.
That seems a decently wrtten article. From it I get the following understanding: Casualties: Atlantic May-June-July 1943 German U-boats 26 lost; 17 damaged British Aircraft (all types) 28 lost; >28 damaged Does this seem plausible? Or is there a significant misunderstanding somewhere?
Norman Franks, "Search, Find and Kill" and "U Boat v Aircraft " ( Frank & Zimmerman) are very good for encounters between Allied aircraft and U Boats. Also, see the earlier work "Aircraft vs Submarines" by Dr. Alfred Price. A German perspective comes from Gunther Hessler's " German U Boats and the Battle of the Atlantic", a history he was asked to write for the Royal Navy,