Read Online Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War by Paul Kennedy - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paul Kennedy
Tags: General, History, World War II, Military, Political Science, International Relations, Technology & Engineering, Marine & Naval
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recovery ship.
By March 19 the great plot map of the North Atlantic that covered an entire wall of the Admiralty’s control room presented an extraordinary scene. Signals from enemy U-boats were being picked up from virtually every quadrant of the ocean. The Gibraltar convoys were coming under heavy attack from submarines and aircraft as they passed the northwest corner of Spain. To the far north HX 229A had avoided the U-boats but crashed into a sea of icebergs. One extremely large Danish whaling ship (the
Svend Foyn
), carrying numerous civilian passengers, was settling in the icy seas, not too far from where the
Titanic
had gone down. The only consolation was that HX 229/SC 122 had at last reached the 600-mile range limit from Allied air bases in Northern Ireland and Iceland, and the battered crews of the merchantmen and their surface escorts could watch Liberators, Fortresses, Sunderlands, and Catalinas guiding the warships to the U-boats and joining in the attack. Some of the U-boat captains still persisted, however, including Kinzel, whose vessel set course for home only after it had been badly damaged by aerial depth charges. Two hundred miles to his rear, the captain of the less experienced U 384 was caught on the surface by a low-flying Sunderland and blown to pieces early on March 20. This was the only submarine lost in the entire, prolonged battle. By evening Doenitz had recalled his patrols.
By the following day the convoy commanders were starting to send some of the escort vessels ahead to safe harbor. The first ones, properlyenough, were warships such as the
Anemone, Pennywort,
and
Volunteer,
carrying their hundreds of civilian survivors. All on board had been pushed to the extremes of human endurance. Forty-two of the sixty ships in SC 122 reached their destinations, as did twenty-seven of the forty ships of HX 122. The commodore (i.e., chief of the merchantmen) of the slower convoy laconically reported that it had been a normal Atlantic voyage “apart from” the U-boats.
Nevertheless, though the heroism and fortitude displayed by the Allied crews had been of the highest order throughout, the fact remained that their navies had taken a tremendous beating. The Battle of the Atlantic was being lost.
The Allies’ Many Weaknesses
Why did the battle of the convoys and escorts versus the U-boats go so badly for the Allies in these critical weeks? It will be clear to the reader that this field of war was so complex that no single factor was decisive. Indeed, some historians of this great campaign, including such a central participant in the convoy battles as Sir Peter Gretton, feel uneasy at suggesting that any single factor could be described as the major reason for its eventual outcome. 16 To this author, however, some causes clearly justify a greater emphasis than others.
To begin with, there was the sheer imbalance in numbers in early 1943. No doubt the British, Canadian, and American navies had many other very pressing calls upon their stretched naval resources in these weeks, but if this really was the critical theater for the Western Allies in 1943, then to allocate to a North Atlantic convoy of fifty slow merchantmen an escort of only four or five warships, and at a time when it was known that more and more U-boats were becoming operational, was taking a great risk. As one examines the charts of the ships’ dispositions during the hours and days of attacks upon the convoys, it is clear that an escort commander such as Lieutenant Commander Luther faced a totally impossible task—how on earth could his ship possibly try to drive away submarines bunching together on one flank of the convoy, pick up survivors from sunk or sinking merchantmen in the receding waters, and protect the rest of his flock? In the rock-paper-scissors game, all three sides are equally strong and weak. This was simplynot true of the battle between U-boat, convoy, and escort that was played with HX 229 and SC 122. Numbers were
By March 19 the great plot map of the North Atlantic that covered an entire wall of the Admiralty’s control room presented an extraordinary scene. Signals from enemy U-boats were being picked up from virtually every quadrant of the ocean. The Gibraltar convoys were coming under heavy attack from submarines and aircraft as they passed the northwest corner of Spain. To the far north HX 229A had avoided the U-boats but crashed into a sea of icebergs. One extremely large Danish whaling ship (the
Svend Foyn
), carrying numerous civilian passengers, was settling in the icy seas, not too far from where the
Titanic
had gone down. The only consolation was that HX 229/SC 122 had at last reached the 600-mile range limit from Allied air bases in Northern Ireland and Iceland, and the battered crews of the merchantmen and their surface escorts could watch Liberators, Fortresses, Sunderlands, and Catalinas guiding the warships to the U-boats and joining in the attack. Some of the U-boat captains still persisted, however, including Kinzel, whose vessel set course for home only after it had been badly damaged by aerial depth charges. Two hundred miles to his rear, the captain of the less experienced U 384 was caught on the surface by a low-flying Sunderland and blown to pieces early on March 20. This was the only submarine lost in the entire, prolonged battle. By evening Doenitz had recalled his patrols.
By the following day the convoy commanders were starting to send some of the escort vessels ahead to safe harbor. The first ones, properlyenough, were warships such as the
Anemone, Pennywort,
and
Volunteer,
carrying their hundreds of civilian survivors. All on board had been pushed to the extremes of human endurance. Forty-two of the sixty ships in SC 122 reached their destinations, as did twenty-seven of the forty ships of HX 122. The commodore (i.e., chief of the merchantmen) of the slower convoy laconically reported that it had been a normal Atlantic voyage “apart from” the U-boats.
Nevertheless, though the heroism and fortitude displayed by the Allied crews had been of the highest order throughout, the fact remained that their navies had taken a tremendous beating. The Battle of the Atlantic was being lost.
The Allies’ Many Weaknesses
Why did the battle of the convoys and escorts versus the U-boats go so badly for the Allies in these critical weeks? It will be clear to the reader that this field of war was so complex that no single factor was decisive. Indeed, some historians of this great campaign, including such a central participant in the convoy battles as Sir Peter Gretton, feel uneasy at suggesting that any single factor could be described as the major reason for its eventual outcome. 16 To this author, however, some causes clearly justify a greater emphasis than others.
To begin with, there was the sheer imbalance in numbers in early 1943. No doubt the British, Canadian, and American navies had many other very pressing calls upon their stretched naval resources in these weeks, but if this really was the critical theater for the Western Allies in 1943, then to allocate to a North Atlantic convoy of fifty slow merchantmen an escort of only four or five warships, and at a time when it was known that more and more U-boats were becoming operational, was taking a great risk. As one examines the charts of the ships’ dispositions during the hours and days of attacks upon the convoys, it is clear that an escort commander such as Lieutenant Commander Luther faced a totally impossible task—how on earth could his ship possibly try to drive away submarines bunching together on one flank of the convoy, pick up survivors from sunk or sinking merchantmen in the receding waters, and protect the rest of his flock? In the rock-paper-scissors game, all three sides are equally strong and weak. This was simplynot true of the battle between U-boat, convoy, and escort that was played with HX 229 and SC 122. Numbers were
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