How Did The Allies Wage War Against Nazi Germany's U-Boats? | Battlefield | War Stories

Oh, on the afternoon of September 3, 1939, the same day that Neville Chamberlain announced that a state of war existed between Germany and Great Britain, the passenger ship SS Athenia suffered a devastating explosion on its port side. She had been attacked by German Navy U30. The Navy had fired the first shot in the Battle of the Atlantic and Britain and its

allies

were at war with the UBO. The vast

battlefield

was to be the site of the longest continuous battle of World War II. The conflict was not simply a duel between ships. and submarines, aircraft were also going to play a vital role, the battle was going to enter a new tactical realm, initiate enormous technical advances and redefine the rules of naval warfare as an island nation.

Britain had always relied on the merchant navy for trade and supplies, a fact that her enemies had long recognized was no different in 1939 and merchant ships bound for British ports became UOT targets. Germany's goal was to devastate British supply routes to bring Britain to its knees. Germany's clandestine NewBo construction program in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles. He had given Admiral Carl Dernitz, head of the German submarine force, a fleet of some 57 ships at the outbreak of the war, although there was not a sufficient number of long-range attack, it was more than adequate to inflict significant losses on the merchant marine.

British in the early stages of the war. An intelligent strategist, Dernitz constantly developed his strategy to maximize the operational effectiveness of his small forces as more units left the shipyards. Dest was able to expand his field of operations and reach much further than British coastal waters submarines are by nature lone hunters and were initially used on merit. allowed them to act independently in areas where Allied shipping was forced to appear in the early stages of the war, these tended to be the western approaches to the United Kingdom or in the North Sea, as Allied responses became more successful and as more uots became available. moved them further west and deeper into the Atlantic after the fall of France, when ports on the French Atlantic coast became available, it pushed this limit much further west at that stage the uots could operate almost to the coast of America of the North when the United States entered the Atlantic.

War submarines were deployed to the southern Caribbean with notable success, but to remain effective for long periods the OTS operating in these distant waters initially had to be regularly resupplied, this was achieved through the use of disguised merchant ships, thanks to the good intelligence that the Allies soon located. and destroyed these hidden enemies, then he had to turn to the cash cow. Supply submarines to replenish supplies. Derit claimed that the wolf pack tactic was his own invention, but in fact, such methods had been used to attack Allied ships in World War I. Derit developed the concept much further, especially when he was able to deploy more than 40 uots in the Atlantic at any given time.

In practice, this meant that a convoy of Allied merchant ships would be identified by intelligent sources and their tracking could be assessed. The donits would then order as many uots as they could. As practical as it was in its path, this could have up to 12 submarines or even more, this force or wolf pack would be given a code name and a commander chosen, if the plan worked as it did on many occasions, The convoy would then be attacked as it entered the area with the large number of submarines overwhelming the escorts. The uots proved most effective when attacking at night during the day, following the convoy on the surface as darkness descended, the submarine would submerge and find a suitable position for the bravest attack.

The commanders would go within the convoy itself. Ideally, a commander would find a position from which a salvo of torpedoes could be launched at a group of targets. If one of the Salvos misses their first target, there would be a reasonable chance of them hitting a second or more targets. Even thirdly, this firing solution was very difficult to create and usually a commander would have to be content with firing at a target and then changing position before the escort could react; he might have time to launch a second dispersal against another target or part of the convoy using With these techniques, a Uboat could hit two or three targets before the attack had to be abandoned;

In effect, the Germans simply used their uots as torpedo

boats

that could only dive for short periods. The main objective of the Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic was to get Merchant ships arriving at British ports unharmed if the merchant ships sailed alone they would be easy prey for German submarines even if the ships were armed they could do little against a torpedo attack From a submerged submarine the only ships that could sail alone were the large passenger liners, such as the two Cunard Queens, which depended on their speed for protection, other merchant ships were grouped in a convoy, a convoy could be made up of 60 ships, although most had about 40 personnel, they were either fast at about 15 knots or slow at maybe 10 knot convoys were identified by a code based on their destination or origin, for example, in the early days convoys with OA code They sailed from south coast ports OB from Liverpool OG convoys were later diverted, the coding system was changed to make life more difficult for the Germans and to reflect the much more complex pattern of convoy use, ideally would be for the convoys to be escorted, but the shortage of escorts at the start of the war was such that most could only be given naval protection as far as 12° West before and after that. line were alone, even if they had an escort it would probably be an armed merchant cruiser plus perhaps one or two destroyers or trolls as more escorts became available, the protection boundary moved further west until reaching the coast of North America.

North by At the end of 1941, a convoy could have perhaps four or even six escort vessels; In 1943, there were three enough ships for some of them to form escort groups that would roam the North Atlantic ready to reinforce the escorts of attacked convoys or even go hunting. OTS, at will, a convoy could also have one or two rescue ships attached to relieve escorts or merchant vessels of the obligation to rescue survivors from sunken ships. If an escorted convoy were attacked, the escort ships would attempt to find and destroy the OTS submarine could be located using asdic devices and attacked using depth charges, i.e. bombs primed to explode at preset depths underwater using pressure detonators.

The escort would attempt to sail over the submarine and drop its loads over the stern onto the target. Depth charge launchers were then launched. Equipped with ships that allowed them to use a wider pattern of charges, depth charges could damage the submarine enough to force it to surface and sink by firing or even ramming, the latter was discouraged as it often left escort out of danger. action too and on one occasion the ship that rammed was sunk an American destroyer with the entire crew on board a well directed depth charge could sink an ubbo underwater although the preferred effect was to explode a charge on each side of the submarine thus crushing its Hull in the middle, if a plane encountered a ubot on the surface, it would attempt to force the submarine to submerge and release its depth charges just as the ubot slipped beneath the surface when it was at its most vulnerable, such was the rate of success that melted him.

They ordered the ubot commanders to stay on the surface and attack the attacking planes using their anti-aircraft guns, some even managed to shoot down their asants, but this was rare, most of the OTS lost and Derit soon changed his mind. Oh well well, both sides soon realized that intelligence was critical to the battle, the

allies

needed to know where the ubots were and the Germans needed to know the roots of the convoys. Both sides started with little intelligence, the admiralty resorted to the use of signals intelligence, for this it needed an efficient intelligence collection center and an organization that could process the information quickly and send it where it was needed the government code and the Cipher School at Bletchley Park was already using interceptions from OTS and Ubo HQ to determine the location of enemy submarines.

This information was passed to naval intelligence. In the division's submarine tracking room, where senior commanders were advised on where and when convoys should be relocated, the only problem was that Bletchley Park could not instantly decode the information without access to the German codes and the machine. Enigma that encoded and decoded the information to solve this problem. In the issue, Adaly encouraged the crews of Allied ships to attempt to capture an Enigma machine in May 1941. Convoy OB 318 was attacked. Seven OTS were involved, including U10 commanded by Julius LMP, the man who had sunk the Athenia during the attack.

U10 was severely damaged and surfaced on orders from the LMP. The crew abandoned ship and sank the submarine, but the sinking did not go as planned and she did not sink immediately. A British boarding party from HMS Bulldog came aboard and discovered that neither the Enigma machine nor its code books had been destroyed. When these were withdrawn and shipped to the United Kingdom, the Admiralty was overjoyed at the clever use of sauge. The British also managed to convince the Germans that U10 had sunk taking all its secrets with it when this information was combined with improvements in direction finding techniques such as high frequency hfdf systems known as huu gave the British a significant advantage, but the allies still had a problem: they needed to train people to use the technology and interpret it, this took time that the allies did not have, there was also the temptation. with the Enigma information to immediately use to hunt OTS, although this could have saved ships and lives, it would surely have told the Germans that the codes had been broken, the information had to be used very carefully once the capability was known of the Allies to read ubot signals.

The Germans added a fourth rotor to their Enigma machines. It took until 13 December 1942 before B Bletchley Park managed to break the new system, although it would still be some time before the Allies were confident that the information they were obtaining was accurate. The Germans had their equivalent in intelligence gathering, but they never matched the successes of the Allies. Their radio observation service known as B's managed to achieve significant successes in the early stages of the war by using the interception of Allied radio traffic to identify the nature and whereabouts of Allied convoys. The Germans broke Allied codes.

This was most notable in the case of Admiralty Naval Cipher Number Three which BST broke in early 1942. This allowed the Germans to read around 80% of the signals sent using this code. It was early 194 43 before the Allies realized this had happened and a new naval cipher number five was introduced. The Germans never managed to break this attention. Military history enthusiasts prepare for an unparalleled journey to the heart of war with a landmark hit where untold

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from living combat veterans preserving the harrowing accounts of those who lived on the front lines Discover hundreds of hours of award-winning documentaries and podcasts adree with historic hits Sign up to get a special offer through the link in the description the battle of the atlantic had begun with the sinking of the athenia one monthAfter the full potential of the ubot was revealed on October 13 the PR gun on the u47 entered the Scara flow naval base in the minerals and sank the battleship Royal Oak while she was anchored. 786 British sailors died in that first autumn of the war.

German submarines also sank the aircraft carrier HMS Courage and attacked the battleships Nelson and Rodney and the Royal Navy battlecruiser Hood Pride, but Dernitz knew from the beginning that he did not have the resources he needed to conduct effective submarine warfare. In the North Atlantic on September 3, 1939 it had 57 UOTs at its disposal, it was not enough to be effective, it also had other problems. Initially, Hitler was reluctant to introduce unrestricted submarine warfare as he feared the impact it would have among neutral countries. Hitler also insisted that German submarines follow prize rules under which the submarine's commander had to confirm that the target was legitimate before she could be sunk or captured.

The problem with this approach was that the submarine would have to surface and become more vulnerable to counterattack. Dernitz was also not convinced that the torpedoes carried by the uots were reliable enough. This was born when torpedoes failed to explode or went astray, as happened when HMS Hood was attacked, but his experience is one thing. The years of World War I had taught Dernitz that the only thing he cared about was the tonnage his submarines needed to sink Allied merchant ships at a faster rate than they could be replaced by new ones. If this occurred, Britain could be forced to surrender due to starvation if it did not do so.

Britain could then only be defeated by invasion successes against large warships such as the Royal Oak and the Braves were excellent advertisements for the ubot's potential, but Durit argued that the real campaign should be against the merchant ships that supported Britain. fed, nourished and capable. To fight Dernitz, she convinced his commander-in-chief, Grand Admiral Rita, that 300 OTS were needed to ensure success. Hitler appreciated the argument, but stopped short of giving the ubot force his top priority. The German military was still at the root of Hitler's belief in Victory and Guring argued convincingly for more resources for its Air Force, so it was well into 1940 before Dernitz began receiving new submarines in the numbers he needed. , but this did not stop him from immediately starting an aggressive campaign and once again using his world.

During World War I, he wasted no time in introducing his Wolfpack tactics; Meanwhile, the British introduced the convoy system that had tilted the campaign in favor of the Allies 22 years earlier, this was largely imposed on the British who believed that the sinking of the Ler Athenia heralded an early return to submarine warfare without restrictions, but the British lacked strong aircraft escort ships and modern technology such as ASIC and radar. It also took time to assemble the convoys, and while the convoys were being organized, the UOTs swooped on the unescorted merchant ships. -Underwater tactics were also confusing.

The natural philosophy of the Royal Navy was to attack the enemy, not defend the convoys, so escort groups were formed to go out and the British had neither the ships nor the training nor the experience to do this and at first even used them . The Fleet's large aircraft carriers as part of these groups, the loss of HMS Courageous while she was on an anti-submarine patrol helped convince the Admiralty that this tactic was suicidal. The groups were also rediscovering how elusive submarines could be as miles and miles of ocean were surveyed with little success, the Royal Navy soon returned to providing convoy escort, so quite early in the campaign battle was engaged. between the Wolfpack and the Convoy.

His first effort was not a success; However, he hoped to muster nine ships to concentrate on an attack on a convoy in October 1939, but servicelessness, enemy action and other priorities reduced this to three when convoy HG3 was summoned on the 17th, only three merchant ships were lost. before the uots were forced to withdraw during the realization that their force would have to be significantly larger if the tactic was successful, he freed up his submarines so they could return to independent operations, but by that time he had achieved a success. He had persuaded Hitler to relax the prize rules so that ships could be attacked at will;

However, Hitler still did not allocate the necessary resources for his fleet of 300 ships, the first phase of the Battle of the Atlantic was inconclusive, the Germans did not have enough submarines to be truly effective and the British lacked escorts, but both sides were assets. German submarine production was increasing, although initially not fast enough to provide replacements for the lost UOTs, they were also working hard to improve the reliability of their torpedoes and the British were busy converting old warships and suitable merchant vessels into escorts. , as well as ordering new ones. Both sides claimed to have been successful, but in any case it was the British who won the first round by a very narrow margin. 17 OTS had been sunk and the convoys emerged almost unscathed.

This situation did not last long, the capture of the French ports after the fall of France was vital to the ubot campaign on 23 June In 1940, a convoy of trucks left Vilhelm Shavan loaded with spare parts, weapons and equipment for submarines. They headed to Lauron, in southern Brittany, where the first French ubo base was being established. Soon after, dnet seized a villa in nearby kival, which became his headquarters and from here he and his staff ran the war bases of ubo also established at breast saner and laal now the uots could sail directly to the Atlantic without the long journey from their bases in Germany, which meant that the submarines could remain on patrol longer and more submarines were available in At some point soon huge concrete pens were built to protect OTS from aerial bombardment while they were in maintenance in port.

The RAF's failure to bomb these bases while the pens were being built proved to be a costly mistake as they used their new geographical advantages during the return. to his idea of ​​using submarines in a group, six ships were placed under the command of G PR, the man who sank the Royal Oak and five ships were assigned to Hans Rosing, the concept was good, but there were still communications problems and both target convoys. They reached their destinations unharmed and then decided to attack independent ships and during June 1914 their uots sank 58 victims, only a fifth of them were in the convoy.

The British were worried in the summer of 1940, fear of invasion was diverting escorts to the areas around the English Channel. This meant that escort convoys were reduced in some cases to a single ship. The fall of France had also allowed German long-range bombers to attack British shipping in the southwestern approaches, where a combination of OTS and aircraft sank the liner Empress of Britain, so the British moved their troops. Convoy routes to the northwest, however, this made them vulnerable to short-range OTS operating from bases in Norway. The British had an advantage, although not that of their continuing rivalry between Dernitz and Guring, which meant that there were never enough German long-range aircraft available to provide reconnaissance patrols.

The L'vaffa was heavily involved in the Battle of Britain and thought she had little time for the Atlantic Campaign, which she dismissed as simply a sideshow. Most of the letters, however, were still in German hands. Ships based in France could now operate as far west as possible. 25° The western British escorts could only reach 17° and the Sunderland coastal commands could only provide cover up to 15° the British had to find an answer one solution was to increase the number of escorts that in the long term could be built, but in the short During his tenure, Churchill would have to persuade Roosevelt to lend to Britain. 40 The old destroyers, which were poorly equipped, possessed poor search-keeping qualities and needed to be adapted for anti-submarine operations, but arrived during the autumn of 1940, the uots gained the advantage by attacking the On the surface at night they began to cause losses that the British found difficult to sustain.

Escort tactics were poor and the Germans learned quickly. The convoys were attacked at night. The Uots would continue during the day and attack again the following night. Some very successful ubot commanders, like PR. and Otto Ketchman became household names in Germany and were granted Aces status. This was largely part of Dern's astute public relations campaign that convinced the public of the success of the ubot and that the Nazi leadership will have to give the force more resources on October 19, 1940 The sc7 convoy left Halifax for Liverpool , lost 17 ships out of 35 in the same month. Convoy HX 79 lost 14 ships and HX 79a lost seven in the space of less than a week.

The OTS had sunk 38 merchant ships, no wonder the Germans called this period the Happy Time. Britain responded in three ways: escorts were freed from their anti-submarine duties, given radar, and more aircraft were provided as older bombers replaced by newer models in bomber command were handed over to coastal command. Escorts were told not to leave convoys unescorted, as they chased often false contacts across the seas. The convoy was never to be left unprotected. Little by little, these measures began to take effect and there were successes for the escorts, but the reduction in losses from Ubot attacks in the late 1940s was due more to the disabled submarines and bad weather than to new tactics.

British to compensate for the bad weather. The uots moved south, where they found rich profits in shipping off the coast of West Africa, where escorts were non-existent during the winter of 1940. -41 the allies began to counterattack the major reorganization in the command structure and control that saw the creation of new partially unified commands and the better use of joint intelligence began to have an impact. Losses were still occurring but were proportionally smaller than in the In the desperate autumn of 1940, even the Aces began to find more resolute defenses when they attacked in March 1942. P himself was lost when he attacked convoy OB 293.

Kretchma later surrendered of being forced to the surface and Scuttle u99. A third Ace Yakim Sheepy was crushed between the bow of HMS. vanok and his own Periscope when his ubot was rammed and sunk, these losses were a heavy blow to durit, especially as they meant that five OTS had been lost in three weeks for the exchange rate of 15 Allied merchant ships, this loss rate was unsustainable and duret was Still suffering from the lack of available submarines, he decided to change tactics in April 1941. Dernitz decided to move his nine operational deep-water units further west to establish a patrol line at 30°.

This soon reaped dividends when Convoy sc26 lost 11 ships and the cost of the Germans was a submarine, forcing the British to further develop facilities in Iceland, particularly the airfields at Sunderland and Hudson, which were sent to the island and helped push the protective screen further west, but the problem remained: there were not enough escorts or long-range aircraft available. To provide the necessary cover, the capture of the Enigma machine offered the Allies some respite, but again it was some time before the full impact of the capture could be assessed and the information it published used this and other technical advances, required time for operators and evaluators. training and experience had to be gained, however, one advantage for the British was beginning to pay off: the increasingly obvious support for the British by the Americans had not only led to the leasing of the 40 old destroyers but also the own Americans.

Getting further involved, as early as October 1939, the Americans had declared a security zone around the coast of the United States, which meant that British shipping was safe from attack, while in the area on April 10 In 1941, President Roosevelt said that the security zone would be moved from 60° West to 20° 6° West while announcing that British warships could be repaired and refitted in American shipyards. This blatant abuse of neutrality rules meant that the security zone was now extended2,300 nautical miles across the Atlantic and included the In the Azores it was inevitable that the UOTs would become increasingly confused about where they could operate and who the enemy was, especially when American warships were seen escorting British convoys within the neutrality zone.

Errors occurred. American warships were attacked and one of them, the USS Ruben James, was attacked. sunk with heavy loss of life, more American merchant ships were also being attacked usually by accident, but in some cases deliberately Hitler had to issue a direct order to prevent the German OTS from attacking the Americans. He was still desperately worried about provoking the United States into war. Things were getting bad for the Germans and Dernitz was infuriated by what he saw as blatant interference by a neutral state in the summer of 1941. He was also concerned about mounting losses among the German supply ships that were maintaining and resupplying the Germans. submarines in the most distant waters.

The first tangible benefits of Bletchley Park's cracking of German codes in June made things even worse for the Germans when President Roosevelt ordered American forces to occupy Iceland. Within a few months, the island had become a very well-equipped and defended Allied base. Instead of simply being home to some RAF Coastal Command squadrons, Hitler still refused to react and in August 1941, a submarine was captured almost completely intact by a combination of surface escorts and RAF Coastal Command aircraft. RAF based in Iceland, unfortunately the crew of u570. They managed to destroy her equipment and secret documents before her ship was boarded after being thoroughly examined, the uba was taken to the Royal Navy and named HMS Graph in late 1941.

The situation was improving significantly, as the British dnets were still they had a chronic shortage of allied uots. anti-submarine equipment and experience were improving and increasing American involvement was taking effect at the same time Hitler ordered Durit to send his valuable submarines to support the campaigns against the Russians and in the Mediterranean some very visible successes were achieved. The legendary aircraft carrier Arc Royal was sunk and the old battleship Barum was spectacularly destroyed by u331, but Derit knew they would not win the war. The Japanese attacked the US Pacific Fleet base at Pearl Har in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941, but the United States had been in conflict with Germany for some time before Germany officially declared war on December 11.

December. The chief of naval operations, Admiral Harold Stark, admitted as much when he said we were at war in October 1941 after the sinking of the Reuben James. However, the official declaration the situation in the North Atlantic became much clearer and the dnets who knew the implications of US Century were at least able to recognize who the enemy was, but they realized that in the long term American war production would be crucial to your idea of ​​a tonnage. During the war he calculated that just over 800,000 tons would have to be sunk each month for his campaign to be successful.

The figures for the last six months of 1941 did not give him much reason for optimism, only 120,000 were sinking each month when boot production finally began to collect credits. There were 91 uots available in January 1942, by July this had increased to 138, which still meant that he did not have enough ships that would be in maintenance on training duties or still working to reach operational fitness, so on 1 January 1942 Dernitz was only able to deploy six ships against the United States this It didn't stop him. He began the campaign almost immediately. He called it operation pcon schlag or operation drum beat.

He told the six commanders to avoid convoys and operate independently. Attempts were made to track the submarines but bad weather and operational difficulties meant that the information available to the Allies was inconclusive on 12 January u123 found the first casualty in the entire operation it represented 41 merchant ships with no German losses it was the second moment happy for the Americans despite their already significant experience they were completely unprepared, many of their escorts had been sent to the Pacific, those that remained were poorly equipped and manned by inexperienced crews, ironically the best anti-submarine units available were seven coast guard The US, perhaps it was now a cause for regret that many of the ships the Americans could have used had already Admiral King would not introduce convoys until he had the ships to escort them.

This went against all advice from the British, who had experienced similar problems two years earlier, but King refused to accept British advice and neither did the American Eastern Sea Frontier Command had the aircraft it needed, these had been happened to the protection of the Fleet and, in any case, many of them were under the control of the Army Air Force, with whom the Navy did not work well in helping the British temporarily loaned to the Americans. corvettes and 24 trolls until US forces became available, the Americans quickly realized that things would have to improve and set about producing new command and control systems to allow all parties to work together more closely, they finally began to learn the lessons of the British experience.

They also began a huge construction program, but the UOTs continued their deadly work. They moved south, towards the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. They even surfaced and used their deck guns to attack Shell's oil facilities on land. The American reaction was poor even when the OTS was placed with an inexperienced escort. The crews lost them or failed to continue their attacks. On one occasion, a merchant ship opened fire on an American destroyer, believing it to be a Ubo. The destroyer's captain and two sailors were killed. The British tried and tried to convince Admiral King to introduce convoys but he still refused believing that a convoy not properly escorted would be a greater liability merchant ships sailed individually the British also tried to get the Americans to change priorities from the Pacific to the Atlantic While this was happening the Germans continued to take a heavy toll.

On the east coast of the United States, where ships often sank within visual distance of the shore, no blackout had been introduced, making it much easier for As UOTs detect merchant ships, as they were positioned against city lights in March, things were starting to improve. As new escorts began to arrive, but it was still May 1942 before the Americans began sending ships in convoys up the East Coast and into the Gulf. Once this happened, the number of easy targets for the UOTs began to decrease, so Duritz refocused his attention on North Atlantic convoys and reintroduced his wolf packs, he had yet to reach the required number of sinkings to maintain its tonnage war underway despite improvements in American anti-submarine capability the demands of the Pacific drew more and more resources to it leaving the battle of From the Atlantic to the British and Canadians, an escort force was formed in the middle of the ocean based at Newland which would take convoys directly from Newland to the coast of Ireland.

More new escorts were entering service, including the first of the new purpose-built super Corvettes that became known. As frigates, but as new ships entered service, their lack of experience became critical. This was especially true of the Royal Canadian Navy, which had expanded from almost nothing to providing 33% of escort vessels in a matter of 18 months. Not surprisingly, the Canadians were not as competent as they were expected to be. The Battle of the Convoy resumed with new fervor and the Atlantic War was about to reach its most critical phase. The climax of the Battle of the Atlantic was reached in early spring. 1943, but there were already signs that the campaign was entering its most crucial phase as soon as the German OTS rejoined the battle against the North Atlantic convoys in the summer of 1942.

Admiral Pound, the first Sea Lord, It was realized that Dernitz would have to put almost all of his effort into the North Atlantic if he wanted to win. At the beginning of this phase, the British were still suffering from a shortage of escorts not helped by sending two escort groups to United States waters. Joined. Admiral Pound's belief that this was abandoning the North. The Atlantic 2 exposure appeared to be confirmed in July, when convoy O113 encountered a large force of UOTs. In the battle that followed, one ship was sunk and the rest ejected thanks to a well-coordinated defense;

However, three merchant ships lost the determination and tactics of the The defending forces moved Derit to broadcast to the German people telling them to prepare for heavy losses. In early August he sent a package to attack Convoy SC 94. Two uots were sunk, but not before a third of the Convoy had been destroyed, the Allies realized that there had to be a change of tactics on the first of them was the creation of the escort support group a squadron of fast escorts that could come to the aid of a threatened convoy the first of them on the 20th was commanded by Commander EF Johnny Walker a name became synonymous with victory in the Atlantic, Like that of her flagship, the Sloop HMS Starling, like all good ideas, however, it took some time to come to fruition and the escort groups were ineffective for around 6 months.

The continuing problem of air coverage. The issue was also being addressed by increasing the number of very long-range aircraft available and providing ships that could carry short-range aircraft (the MAC and the escort carrier) a further change in Allied tactics made possible by the number of long range was taking the battle to The enemy attacking the submarines while they were in transit to or from their secure bases on the west coast of France. Air-mounted radars and Lee light made this possible even at night. The first successes at the Battle of the Bay were encouraging. There weren't many Uots.

They sank, but the submarine commanders realized that they were vulnerable at night and therefore had to transit Bisc Bay underwater, which increased their patrol times. This also had the KnockOn effect of the Germans assigning long-range Ju88 fighters to western France in hopes of shooting down the Allies. anti-submarine aircraft the British response of introducing the long-range bow fighter into the campaign proved more than a match for the Germans the war against convoys continued The convoy of n154 sailed with a force of 20 uots in December 1942 14 merchant ships were lost In one ubo tm1 a convoy of oil tankers left Trinidad bound for Gibraltar, it lost 77% of its ships without sinking a single ubo.

These losses forced Churchill and Roosevelt to make the Battle of the Atlantic their priority, although the torch landings in North Africa they had been a true success. For this to be successful, victory would imply a landing in Europe. Large numbers of men and munitions would need to be masked in Britain before the invasion, many of them would have to cross the Atlantic and if they did so successfully, disasters such as that of 1154 and tm1 would have to be avoided due to the terrible weather. January 1943 gave the convoys a respite from the attack but it was short-lived in February the sc118 lost 13 ships at the cost of the Germans with three uo sunk and four seriously damaged in the same month. n166 was attacked by 21 OTS 14 merchant ships two sunk ubots were lost but the Allies were learning the climax of The Battle of the Atlantic revolved around four convoys sc121 SC1 122 HX 228 and HX 229 sc121 was attacked by two packages with a total of 24 submarines the convoy The escort was weak and, as a result, 13 ships were lost.

HX 228, which set sail a few days later, was ordered to move south, although she was discovered she had a heavy escort which included an escort carrier USS Bog. The battle was chaotic, but only four merchant ships and one destroyer had been sunk, two UOTs were also lost, the other two convoys sc22 and HX 229 were attacked almost simultaneously and suffered serious losses, they were only saved from the catastrophe with the arrival of command planes. coastal but still 22 ships were sunk with the loss of one ubo dnit was jubilant and the allies desperate; For the first time it seemed that communications between North America and Great Britain could be cut off, but in reality the lessons of these fourconvoys on further analysis revealed that the Allies eventually struggled to provide more escorts and long-range aircraft. began to operate the number of uots used was enormous and proportionally the allied losses were not that high, it was difficult to understand this when the North Atlantic seemed full of sinking ships but the operational analysis teams were far from being pessimistic, they believed that the Allies were on the verge of success, between 4 and 7 April there was an attack on convoy HX 231, three ships were sunk but two uots were destroyed and another four seriously damaged on 29 April with on5 ran into the herd of wolves of the war. 40 OTS one ship was sunk that night of May 4 six ships were sunk the next day seven more but the uots were decimated eight were sunk and five dnets badly damaged they called off the attack the losses on this scale were unbearable 2 weeks later I tried again new on May 16.

Convoy HX 23 7 arrived at Liverpool having lost only three merchant ships. Three OTS had sunk. Convoy sc130 whose escort was commanded by Commander Peter Greton, who was due to get married at the end of the journey, ran into each other. 33 OTS in the ongoing battle no merchant ship was sunk but five OTS were destroyed one containing the leftist Peter durs the son of the commander in chief greton finally married all allied resources land sea air intelligence technology and training They had joined together. The result had been the destruction of 31 UB ships in just over a month, on May 24.

Dernitz ordered his ships to leave the North Atlantic. He assured them that it was a temporary setback, but, like most of his crews, he suspected that the battle was lost. In May 1943 the UOTs were defeated but the battle did not end nor would it end until the last day of the war but They would never threaten the North Atlantic in the same way again. From now on they would deploy individually and attack targets of opportunity as such, they were a constant threat to Allied operations and were sinking Allied ships until the end of the war, but the existing submarines had been surpassed by technology by mid-1943, the Type 7 and OTS nine were no match for the combination.

Of the ships, aircraft detection systems and weapons that the Allies were putting into service when new UOT technologies entered the conflict in late 1944, the war was almost over in 1944 and also many UOTs were being destroyed before that could enter service when Allied bombers attacked the shipyards, the Allies continued to hunt and destroy submarines wherever possible, but after the spring of 1943 it became a battle of aggression, not defense. New long-range aircraft protected by long-range fighters took the fight deep into Bisque Bay and on 20 June Captain Walker took his escort group into the bay to work on the aircraft.

Its main purpose was the supply of cash cow submarines that allowed OTS to operate in many remote areas of the North Atlantic. Together they sank two in a few months, almost all the dairy cows. had been unfortunately destroyed, Walker himself died shortly after of a heart attack. he seized the new technologies available to him. He was particularly impressed by the Gat guided torpedo which had some success against convoys as early as September 1943. They were particularly effective against escorts. Until the Allies developed deception and decoy techniques, the dnets continued to deploy submarines against convoys, but loss rates were high and the effect of declining intelligence relocated convoys and by October the OTS was struggling to find targets the November 16, the dnit withdrew the uots for a second.

From then until the end of the war, the German submarine became more of a nuisance than a threat. In November and December 1943, 72 convoys reached their destinations without losing a single ship to submarine attack. American shipyards were completing new cargo ships at a rate of one a day a 10,000 ton Liberty ship could be welded in 10 days one was even built in four the first were unreliable and could even break in half in bad weather the The latter brought the ammunition, fuel, food and weapons that the allies needed for the invasion of Europe today the shipyards of North America sound their response with the noise of hammers new ships to free the British merchant ships for service In the Atlantic and along the coasts and rivers of Canada the Corvettes take to the water to help the hard-pressed British destroyers keep that vital supply line already open, the tide of battle may be turning as the wide Atlantic is It is becoming a cemetery for the Invaders themselves and the final answer is not only in the ships.

Hitler himself has said that it is not the weapons that decide but the men behind them and Behind these men from Churchill Island are hiding a thousand years of sea in peace and war in calm and storm, thanks to them the convoys move forward and the British Lifeline controls the tonnage. The war had been lost within a year, the bases in France were being evacuated and the losses of OTS and its accompanying V vels in this operation were little better than those of Carnage in its last operations in the Baltic, the situation was even worse. 83 OTS were sunk in the last 5 weeks of the war, almost all by aircraft on 4 May.

The second rage of Nazi Germany, Grand Admiral Carl Dernitz, ordered all remaining OTS to cease operations 3 days later, the war against Germany formally ended. The surrender was signed by Carl Durs. Despite Dernitz's high hopes, the UOT did not win the war for the Germans there. There were never enough OTS for the Battle of Dernitz and Rita had agreed that the German Navy would need 300 submarines by the time they had that number, it was too late and the battle was lost. The success of the large packages, however, at the height of the campaign demonstrated what could have been achieved if the numbers had been there.

Escorts could have been completely sunk. The Allies' ability to build new escorts and merchant ships to replace The Germans could have been successful if the Americans had stayed out of the war, but as soon as the Liberty ships came rolling in and the tonnage war was doomed to failure, the Allies were also able to use technological advances. Much more quickly, they introduced radars, new detection devices, long-range aircraft, better weapons and better intelligence. The Third Reich built 1,162 uots. 830 participated in the operations. 784 of the 41,000 men who crewed them were lost. Almost 26,000 died. 5,000 lucky ones were captured. 2,000. 828 Allied and neutral merchant ships were sunk.

Almost 15 million tons. It will never be known how many died in them. 30,000 British merchant sailors died in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Royal Navy lost 175 warships trying to protect them. 5,880 airmen and 2,000 Canadians died in the same cause. It was vital for the Allies to win it, if they had not done so Britain may not have survived to continue the war against the aggressor, many of the victims of the battle have no known grave or headstones to commemorate their final resting place, but they cannot be forgotten.