CHAPTER XIV

THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

The Triumph of the Escorts
1st January - 31st May, 1943

 


FOOTNOTES

1. See Chapter VIII.
2. See Vol. I, pp. 459 and 468.
3. See Vol. I, p. 459.
4. The roof of one of the U-boat assembly yards at Hamburg was penetrated by a bomb right at the end of the war.
5. See pp. 291-299.
6. See for example Raeder's evidence at his trial. (The Trial of German Major War Criminals. Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg. Part 14 H.M.S.O. 1947)
p. 164  'Further warnings therefore . . . were completely without purpose, as one knew from experience'.
'Once the Fuhrer had issued a directive . . . it was, in general, useless to produce objections against it'.
p. 210  'But what one could not do was to throw up the job and give the impression of being insubordinate . . . I would never have done that'.
7. See Vol. I, p. 53.
8. See Map 20 (opp. p. 205).
9. See Vol. I, pp. 358-360.
10. See pp. 212-213.
11. See Appendix O for details of these losses.
12. See Map 10 (opp. P. 97). J. Schull, The Far Distant Ships (Dept. of National Defence, Ottawa, 1950), pp. 166-168 gives a full account of this conference from the point of view of the Royal Canadian Navy.
13. This group, formed around the U.S.S. Bogue, the first escort carrier to work with the North Atlantic convoys started work in March 1943, when she escorted Convoy SC 123. See p. 366.
14. The first Commander-in-Chief was Rear-Admiral L. W. Murray of the Royal Canadian Navy, whose headquarters were at Halifax.
15. See Vol. I, pp. 49-50 and 451-453 and J. Schull, The Far Distant Ships (Dept. of National Defence, Ottawa, 1950) pp. 166-168.
16. See pp. 313-314 and Map 31 (opp. p. 313).
17. The original members of this Board were Rear-Admiral J. C. Kauffman, U.S.N. and Rear-Admiral J. M. Mansfield, R.N. (lately Chief of Staff to C.-in-C., Western Approaches). In March 1942 U.S. Naval Aviation and British Coastal Command representatives were added. The Board travelled round various theatres and made its recommendations to the Combined Chiefs of Staff; but it had no executive authority. It was disbanded in September 1943, and so ended the only attempt to achieve a measure of combined strategy and a standard operational procedure in the Atlantic.
18. It should be recorded that the American historian's view on this intricate problem is that 'we refused to give exclusive control of the Straits of Gibraltar to Coastal Command because there were too many U.S. convoys going through' and that this was done for the same reasons that 'Britain could never have given up control of the Western Approaches to us' (Professor S. E. Morison to the author, June 1955). But to this writer the analogy suggested above does not seem valid; for the Moroccan Sea Frontier and the approaches to Gibraltar from the west were never within the U.S.A.'s area of strategic responsibility (see Map 10 opp. P. 97). It would therefore have been just as logical for the Americans to have claimed control in the Western Approaches to the British Isles as in the Moroccan Sea Frontier, especially when a steady stream of transports carrying American troops, and of supply ships with their stores and equipment, was coming to Britain. As the Americans were apparently satisfied to leave the protection of their ships crossing the North Atlantic to the Admiralty and Coastal Command, why should it have been deemed necessary to make special arrangements for those approaching Africa from the west?
19. See Morison, Vol. I, pp. 240-246.
20. The full text of Mr. Churchill's letter from which this extract is taken is given in Appendix P.
21. See W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II, (University of Chicago Press, 1948) p. 551 f.n.
22. By 19th March 1943, 112 Liberators had been delivered to the U.S. Navy, and more than 70 of them were operating in the Pacific.
23. See Map 37 (opp. p. 363).
24. See Vol. I, pp. 35-36. In September 1939 the total strength of Coastal Command had been 298 aircraft of all types, of which about 170 were available for operations on any one day.
25. See Map 38.
26. See Vol. I, pp. 478-479.
27. See Rear-Admiral W. S. Chalmers. Max Horton and the Western Approaches, p. 186 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1954)
28. It seems unlikely that British and American opinions regarding the cause of the loss of this ship will ever be wholly reconciled. The Admiralty, commenting on the Board of Enquiry's report, remarked that 'safeguards against accidents of this nature are, by our standards, practically non-existent in the petrol arrangements and hangars of these American-built escort carriers', and decided to take steps to rectify the matter. The Americans seem to have attributed the disaster to inexperience on the part of British officers in handling bulk petrol, and it is true that after the loss of the Dasher a warning was issued by the Admiralty describing the sources of danger in her class of ship. It is however, a fact that the later escort carriers had their petrol systems modified in America for greater safety before they entered service.
29. See p. 206.
30. See p. 205.
31. See Map 39.
32. See pp. 333-334.
33. See pp. 351-352.
34. See Chapter III.
35. See Vol. I, pp. 351-353, 463 and 470.
36. The numbering of the ONS series was restarted in March 1943 at ONS 1. This was the first of the series to be sailed to Halifax instead of New York (see p. 204 fn (2) above). It left Britain on 15th March.
37. See Vol. I, pp. 23 and 134 regarding the work of the Admiralty's U-boat Assessment Committee.
38. Compare Vol. I, Map 38.
39. See Appendix K regarding particulars of U-boats.
40. 'A' groups were American, 'B' groups British and 'C' groups Canadian.
41. Rear-Admiral W. S. Chalmers Max Norton and the Western Approaches, p. 300
42. Lecture at the Royal United Service Institution, 1947.
43. See Map 40 (opp. p. 373). Though full particulars of the sinking of U-boats are given in Appendix J it may be worth recording here the various forces which destroyed the fifty-six lost to the Germans during the decisive months of April and May 1943, and their employment. They were as follows:
      Surface Escort Vessels 16
      Surface Escort Vessels and Carrier air escorts (shared) 2
      Surface Escort Vessels and Shore-based air escorts (shared) 4
      Shore-based air escorts 10
      Shore-based aircraft (air support) 3
      Shore-based air patrols (Bay of Biscay and northern transit area) 9
      Other Shore-based air patrols 3
      Carrier air escorts 2
      Submarine Patrols 2
      Other causes-Mine (1), Accident (2), Unknown (2) 5
  TOTAL 56
44. See British War Production by M. M. Postan (H.M.S.O. 1952) and Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War by C. B. A. Behrens (H.M.S.O. and Longmans, 1955)
45. See Map 41 (p. 379).


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