The U-Boat "Threat"

I am NO authority on WW2 or submarines.
But i have Heard/Read it discussed many times that the U-Boats never came close to winning the war.
Of course, i have also heard that by January of 1943, the same U-Boats were about to bring England to stagnation.
What say the members here.?

Was it one or the other.......not near a war winning strategy by Germany, or was England on its last legs by early 1943 from the U-Boats.?
Or......is there more to it than that.?
Thank You

 

The War against the U-boat was the longest campaign of WW2. It started on the outbreak of war in September 1939 and ended May 1945.
It was the only campaign Winston Churchill said concerned him.
At the start of the war the U-boat had the advantage in the central Atlantic as the allies did not have long range aircraft but by mid 1941 the very long range B-24 Liberator came on charge with the RAF and was able to close the mid Atlantic ‘gap’
By 1943 the U-boats were fighting back against attacking aircraft by staying on the surface and returning fire against the aircraft, but by then the tide was turning in the allies favour with more advanced technology and better attacking techniques.
Rather a long campaign which requires a more detailed reply,
But basically I believe it was the aircraft that won the Battle of the Atlantic.

 

Chip have a look at this

https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/docume...als/Bracknell-No-2-Battle-of-the-Atlantic.pdf

 

Good Heavens, that is a wealth of info, including German Perspectives. Thank You

Where do you guys find this stuff.?

 

You will find plenty of information on the U-boat war here.
The U-boat Wars 1939-1945 (Kriegsmarine) and 1914-1918 (Kaiserliche Marine) and Allied Warships of WWII - uboat.net

Monthly shipping losses here with maps showing distribution around the world.
Ship losses by month - uboat.net

And U-boat losses by month.
Chart of U-boat losses - Fates - German U-boats of WWII - Kriegsmarine - uboat.net

 

What was termed the Battle of the Atlantic had to be won if the invasion of Europe was to be successful.

As it was,war materiel and manpower from the US was in place for the planned operation Overlord.Without that the liberation of Western Europe would have slipped back.

As Peter has stated it was important to close up the Atlantic Gap with the Liberator, a long range aircraft to supplement the Catalinas,Cansos and Sunderlands which had less endurance.

An important feature was the emergence of ASV radar which put to risk any U Boat on the surface, usually in the important task of charging its batteries.Overall was intelligence from Ultra which helped to disrupt U Boat tactics against conveys and account for mounting U Boat losses.Fortunately Donitz never suspected that the Kreigsmarine radio codes had been broken.

 

From the German point of view, in a nutshell:
The U-boats had literally "won themselves to death.", when Dönitz ordered the abort of the convoy battle in the North Atlantic on May 24, 1943
The majority of the approximately 780 German U-boats sunk during World War II, with nearly 27,000 crewmen killed, were lost after this order.

 

Well now, THAT is something i did not know and would have never guessed.
Very interesting indeed.

 

I think this is a suitable, general thread about the German U-Boat factor / campaign here.

Three passages taken from a book review by Dr. Robert Lyman:

From: Wolf Pack

 

I am afraid that this under estimates how close the U-boats came to defeating Britain, particularly in 1941 and 1943 in what should have been called The Atlantic War, for it was a long series of battles. Success should not be credited only to the RAF closing the Gap. The breaking of the ENIGMA codes was probably the single most important event, but so many other things played an important part. The Navy improved their escorting, later the convoys had their own aircover; at first from merchant CAM ships, then escort carriers and then the Merchant Aircraft Carriers (though by the time these came into service things were already much improved). But most of all it was the fortitude of merchant seaman that ensured that we were not starved into submission and got the men and materiel from the USA, Canada and elsewhere to enable the D-Day landings.

 

I think the Battle of the Atlantic was critical. The U-Boat crews referred to the "Happy Times" when they were having success in the first years of the war.
Churchill was deeply concerned.
The Convoy system helped but did not solve the problem of U-Boats having free reign in the centre of the ocean out of reach from Allied Aircrews.
Coastal Command in Northern Ireland were able to use the secret 'Donegal Corridor' through Neutral Eire which stretched the range of Aircrews to cover the ocean.
Andy.

 

While the B-24 gets much credit for closing the Atlantic Gap, it wasn't until 1943 that it appeared in numbers.

The first CC Liberators were just 13 (IIRC) GR.1 conversions from LB-30B / B-24A airframes (only 20 of this model were delivered to the RAF). 120 squadron received a handful of unarmed LB-30B Liberators for training purposes in June 1941. The first GR.I was received on 6th Aug and the first operational sortie was on 20th Sept 1941. These were supplemented by just 11 GR.II (conversions from LB-30 airframes) from Nov 1941. These conversions didn't arrive all at once, they arrived over a period of months with later aircraft making up for earlier losses.

Next to arrive were 11 Liberator GR.IIIa in March / April 1942 based on the B-24D airframe as an emergency "Battle of the Atlantic" batch. These had originally been destined for the USAAF, but due to events in the Atlantic were diverted to the RAF. April 1942 saw delivery of GR.III, again based on the B-24D airframe, for the RAF begin. Only about 60 of these were delivered for CC in 1942. Delivery of GR.V with centimetric radars began right at the end of 1942 with just 4 delivered that year.

The second CC Liberator squadron, 224, began to receive its Liberator GR.III in July 1942 but it was 20 Oct 1942 before it began operations on the type. The third CC Liberator squadron began to receive Liberators in Oct 1942 but it was Feb 1943 before it began to fly operations on the type.

An aircraft in CC that gets little credit is the B-17 Flying Fortress. Delivery of the Mk.IIa began in early 1942. 220 squadron became operational with these in July 1942 followed by 206 squadron in Aug.

 

It is easy to forget that in the early war period convoys were not escorted all the way across the Atlantic because the U-boats based in Germany were not operating that far out into the Atlantic.

The game changer came with the fall of the Biscay ports to the Germans in June 1940 and the first U-boat patrols beginning from there in Aug 1940. No one could have foreseen that happening pre-war and therefore it did not figure in Admiralty planning until it happened. Over the next 8-12 months the escorts had to extend their escort duties westward. See map.
https://c7.alamy.com/comp/G0W4TX/at...anti-submarine-escort-1939-41-1954-G0W4TX.jpg

In Aug 1941 FDR agreed that the USN would escort convoys to / from the Mid Ocean Meeting Point south of Iceland so relieving the pressure temporarily on RN / RCN escort groups but risked drawing the US into the war before PH.

 

Interestingly, the German Admiralty felt the same way: in 1940, they had pursued the Norway option and accepted considerable losses as a result.
Because this gave them the starting bases for a tonnage war in the Atlantic, which was considered necessary in the theoretical planning before the war.
They would not even have dared to dream that shortly afterwards the French Atlantic ports would also be available.

 

Reading through this discussion, nearly everyone's focused on the military side - the destroyers, the aircraft, the tactics, the technology. Only one person Roy Martin has even mentioned the Merchant Navy. That's exactly the problem with how we remember the Battle of the Atlantic.

Once America entered the war the Allies had massive military resources - warships, aircraft, technology, manpower. And yes, the cost was staggering. But all that military might was completely meaningless without the Merchant Navy doing its job.

It's a bit absurd when you think about it. We celebrate the RAF for closing the mid-Atlantic air gap, which absolutely mattered - but who brought them the fuel to fly those missions? The merchant seamen. We credit the Navy's destroyers and corvettes with hunting U-boats - but who delivered the oil to power those ships? The merchant seamen. Every bullet fired, every tank built, every soldier and civilian fed depended on those convoys getting through.

Churchill's famous quote about the U-boat peril being the only thing that frightened him makes for great drama in his memoirs, but I doubt the average British citizen was sitting around philosophizing about strategic naval warfare. They knew one thing: if the ships stopped coming, they'd starve. It was that simple and that immediate.

The Battle of the Atlantic was absolutely a combined effort - Navy, Air Force, intelligence services, shipbuilders, the lot. Nobody's disputing that. But the Merchant Navy wasn't just one piece of the puzzle alongside the others - they were the actual objective. The whole point of the military effort was to protect merchant ships so they could deliver the goods. Without merchant seamen willing to sail into a war zone repeatedly, knowing full well they might not come back, there's no battle to fight. There's just surrender.

It's completely circular: the military needed supplies to protect the convoys, but the convoys had to get through to supply the military. The merchant seamen were civilians doing their job while being actively hunted by U-boats, yet they've been written out of the story as if they were just cargo that needed protecting rather than the heroes keeping Britain alive. With the attrition rate of the Merchant Navy being higher than the fighting services, it is important to give them their due. They were quickly forgotten after the war which they surely did not deserve.

Regards
Hugh

 

HEAR HEAR HUGH!

Well said, and a loud and resounding Hear Hear! to you again.

Seconded to the hilt!

Always remember, never forget,

Jim.

 

I spent a few weeks, following the latest Defence Review, trying to alert the government to our lack of a merchant fleet. This seems to be something that successive governments and military planners wish to ignore. I attach a one pager that I have sent via a couple of routes- predictably it has also been ignored.

On a slightly different note the Merchant Navy has no museum of any sort, it is as if the largest merchant fleet ever known did not exist.

Back to the theme, Bomber Harris didn't help by refusing the release long range aircraft to assist in the protection of the convoys, then failed to use them to delay the building of the submarine pens at Brest.

 

An excellent piece Roy. The starkness of those figures leap from the page. How can they be ignored by those in the position to do something about it? Makes you want to spit.

Please keep banging the drum, always,

Jim.

 

Getting too old now to even have the strength to bang a drum Jim. I am hoping that those who follow after will take up the stick and hope that Hugh and others will be granted more time to continue their good work.

 

I'll take this opportunity to recommend Tom Hanks' movie, "Greyhound". "das ist grauer Wolf!" Aooowww!