THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

THE U-BOAT WAR

Once more, this book must step back a little in time, to March 1941. You may remember from Chapter 9 that, following the fall of France, Admiral Doenitz had established the headquarters of the U-Boat fleet at Lorient, and had prepared for the mighty offensive against the Atlantic sea routes that were so crucial to supplies of both food and war materials from the USA and Canada. The British success in countering the effectiveness of the magnetic mine had pinned German hopes for an Atlantic victory firmly upon the submarine fleet, to which was now added the strength of the Luftwaffe's latest acquisition, the four-engined long range Focke-Wulf Fw200 Condor bomber, which proved very effective against merchant ships at sea.

In March 1941, Churchill established in London a Committee to meet daily and marshal the resources required to `defeat the attempt to strangle our food supplies and our connection with the United States'. This group recognised the fact that Luftwaffe attacks on the British ports were every bit as serious a threat to the convoys across the Atlantic as the U-Boat attacks themselves, and set about strengthening the anti-aircraft defences of the principal docks and ship repair facilities around the British coast. They did not have long to wait.

As soon as March 13th and 14th, the Luftwaffe attacked the docks along the River Clyde in Scotland with great force, putting some of them out of action until the summer and even into the autumn. At the beginning of May, the attack hit the docks of Liverpool and the Mersey, which were pounded remorselessly for seven consecutive nights. Sixty-nine of the 144 available mooring bays were eliminated, and some 3,000 people were killed or injured. Then, just as it seemed that a pattern of airborne offensive against the docks was becoming established, the Luftwaffe raids ceased as suddenly as they had begun. Churchill was of the opinion that, had the assault on the ports continued, the war might well have been lost.

Now RAF Coastal Command, whose aircraft searched the seas, reported enemy shipping movements, attacked enemy ships, laid mines and hunted surface raiders was placed under the command of the Admiralty from April 1941. The fitting of better anti-aircraft defences to merchant ships was given a high priority. Britain had, in the summer of 1941, a total of 695 vessels deployed for the defence of the Western Approaches, but of these only 248 were destroyers, of which 59 were being refitted and were out of action. There were 99 of the little corvettes that were to prove so effective against the U-Boats, and 48 sloops. The biggest trump card that Admiral Sir Percy Noble, C-in-C Western Approaches, had was the presence on most of the escort vessels of radar, which effectively prevented the U-Boat fleet attacking on the surface after dark. Radar was also gradually added to the armament of RAF Coastal Command aircraft.

Strangely, the British did not take the opportunity of destroying the U-Boat pens as they were built along the French Atlantic coast at Brest, Lorient, and Bordeaux. Had they done so, the course of the Battle of the Atlantic might have been different. Once the pens were completed, their 12 feet thick concrete walls proved capable of withstanding all the bombs then available, and many fine pilots lost their lives attempting to rescue the strategists from their earlier mistakes.

The course of the Battle of the Atlantic in 1941 can best be viewed in the light of a comparison between shipping sunk and new shipping built - which in turn highlights one of the principal reasons why the battle swung in the Allies favour in 1942. British official records show that in 1941, shipping losses were some 340,000 tons (240 ships) higher than in 1940, with a total tonnage sunk of 4,328,558 tons, a total of 1,299 ships. Losses of Allied ships to submarines were down in 1941; losses to air attack were up. Total Allied shipbuilding in 1941 came to just over 1.5 million tons. Thus, in the year, the available shipping tonnage to bring arms and food across the Atlantic was reduced by around 2.8 million tons. By the end of 1941, the USA was officially in the war - and that brought American shipbuilding capacity of some five million tons per annum into the equation, which redressed the balance in the Allies' favour.

The Battle did not go entirely Germany's way in the early stages, despite the fact that her strategic objectives were being achieved. Although 41 British and Allied ships totalling 243,000 tons were sunk by U-Boats in March 1941, five U-Boats were lost by the Germans, three of them commanded by "ace" captains whom Doenitz could ill afford to lose. On March 7th, Gunther Prien, famed for his attack on the Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, was located by the destroyer HMS Wolverine using radar, and was blown up while attacking convoy OB.293. Nine days later on March 16th 1941, Captain Donald Macintyre, commanding the escort to HX.112, scored heavily after the U-Boats had claimed five ships from his convoy, with considerable loss of life. The destroyer Vanoc rammed and destroyed U-100, crushing to death her famous commander Joachim Schepke in the collision, and Captain Macintyre's own HMS Walker depth-charged U-99, capturing the far more famous Otto Kretschmer, darling of the U-Boat fleet, who had sunk a total of 44 ships.

The worst month of the campaign for the Allies was May 1941, when 58 ships were lost to the German attacks. Totalling 325,492 tons, the lost ships took to the bottom many fine sailors and thousands of tons of supplies and arms that were vital to the Allied war effort. At the same time, the adventures in the Balkans and Greece were costing many more ships, and putting the two together one sees a pattern emerging that must have been very satisfying to the German strategic planners - total Allied losses in April and May 1941 of over 1.1 million tons.

The second half of 1941 was far less damaging to the Allies. The part of the Atlantic between Iceland and Eastern Newfoundland was now in the US Security Zone announced by President Roosevelt, and this and the posting of US naval forces near Greenland and Iceland released Royal Navy vessels for escort duties in the main battle zone. Moreover, from September 11th, US ships in the Atlantic were authorised to shoot on sight. But German policy was also working against continued success in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler had ordered the detachment of four U-Boats to the Arctic Ocean as soon as the attack on the USSR began, and, although they were recalled, they were deployed next to defend the Norwegian coast against British attack. Six more U-Boats were detached from the Atlantic fleet in the summer of 1941 to the Mediterranean, where they did a great deal of damage, but that was small consolation to Doenitz, who believed (probably correctly) that to win the Battle of the Atlantic before the USA entered the conflict was to win the War.

By the turn of the year, there were no less than 23 U-Boats in the Mediterranean, where they were virtually trapped, since currents through the Straits of Gibraltar prevented them leaving through the Straits underwater, and Royal Navy defences effectively prevented their leaving on the surface. Doenitz now had 55 U-boats under his command for the continuation of the Battle of the Atlantic into 1942. Had Goering recognised the full potential of co-operation between the new Condor bombers and the U-Boats, and had the servicing of the Condors been more effective and capable of keeping more than two airworthy at a time, the utilisation of the U-Boat fleet might have been far more damaging to the Allies.

Perhaps more to the point, 60 per cent of the German Atlantic U-Boat fleet was unserviceable at the end of 1941 because the vital maintenance resources had been diverted during the year to the prestige projects of repairing the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen , all of which had been damaged by air attack during the middle four months of the year.

However, it would be wrong to underestimate the extent to which the Royal Navy was improving in its counter-submarine measures. Larger escort forces, better radar, improved use of ASDIC and the benefit of hard-won experience were making the Navy escorts tough opponents for the U-Boat crews. A much-quoted example of this is the experience of Convoy HG.76, which conducted a running battle with a pack of U-Boats from Gibraltar to Ushant in December 1941. The escort force consisted of an escort carrier, three destroyers, four sloops and ten corvettes, which between them protected 32 merchant ships. After one of the toughest nine days of the Atlantic battle, the Royal Navy had lost the escort carrier Audacity and the destroyer Stanley plus two merchantmen. Against that, the Kriegsmarine had lost five of the ten submarines that took part in the battle, including U-567 commanded by Leutenant Endrass, another of Germany's U-Boat aces. These sinkings brought total U-Boat losses in 1941 to 35, of which 27 had gone in the Battle of the Atlantic. Nonetheless, Doenitz ended the year with more submarines than he had had at the beginning - no less than 198 new U-Boats had been built during 1941.

The Battleships - and the Hunt for the Bismarck

The preoccupation with the U-Boats, both then and now, has a way of obscuring the very important events that took place in the declining arena of surface sea power. Germany was heavily committed to major surface ships, as has been mentioned briefly in an earlier chapter, and during 1941 had also developed the concept of the armed offensive merchantman. These surface vessels between them destroyed the considerable total of 427,000 tons of Allied merchant shipping in 1941. The warships also performed the less obvious but tactically vital task of tying down Allied surface vessels that might otherwise have been used for convoy escort duties.

The sister ship of the Admiral Graf Spee , the 12,000 ton pocket battleship Admiral Scheer , sank some 99,000 tons in the first three months of 1941 before evading the watching British warships to dock at Kiel. The 14,000 ton cruiser Admiral Hipper had had remarkable success in February, sinking no less than seven merchant ships in 90 minutes with her torpedoes and 8-inch guns, and returning to Kiel in triumph ahead of the Admiral Scheer . Meanwhile, the heavily armed battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , at 32,000 tons apiece, had managed to slip out of Kiel in January with orders from Admiral Raeder not to engage any ship with 15-inch guns. After failing to engage Convoy HX.106 because the venerable 29,000 ton battleship Ramillies , completed in 1917, was leading the escort, they sank three merchant ships and two tankers off Newfoundland, then headed South-East across the Atlantic towards the North African coast.

Off the Canary Islands they again failed to attack a convoy, this time because the even older (1916) battleship Malaya , again with 15-inch guns, was leading the escort, following which they headed back North-West and played havoc with a convoy from Halifax, Nova Scotia. By the time the two ships reached Brest, successfully evading the Royal Navy, they had sunk 22 ships, but had run their turbines into the ground. Repairs were scheduled to take weeks, and neither ship was ready to accompany the Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen on their marauding foray into the Atlantic, which began on May 20th 1941.

Bismarck was not hampered by the restriction on attacking capital ships that had prevented the previous squadron doing more damage. At 41,700 tons, with eight 15-inch guns in four turrets plus a new range-finding radar, the Bismarck was one of the finest ships afloat. Her captain and crew were similarly out of the top drawer. She was a formidable opponent. The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen , although much smaller at 13,900 tons, was also brand new (1940) with eight 8-inch guns and a top speed of 32 knots.

The day after the squadron put out from Kiel, they were photographed by aerial reconnaissance in Korsfjord, south of Bergen. Vice-Admiral Holland of the Royal Navy was ordered from Scapa Flow towards Norway with his squadron - the battle-cruiser Hood , the battleship Prince of Wales and six destroyers - and the squadron sailed taking with them some civilian workmen who were still working on the newly installed 14-inch gun turrets of Prince of Wales . By the next day, it was apparent that the two German raiders had eluded reconnaissance and had vanished from their fjord. So Admiral Tovey sailed with the main fleet to intercept.

During the evening of May 23rd, the Bismarck was spotted on radar by the Kent class cruiser HMS Suffolk , who called up the cruiser Norfolk . Jointly they stalked Bismarck , reporting her position so that Holland's squadron was able to intercept early the next morning. Although Admiral Holland's initial position was ideal, and enabled him to bring virtually all his squadron's guns to bear, he turned to a less favourable position before attacking, a manoeuvre that has been the subject of debate ever since. The likely explanation is that he did it to get as close as possible as rapidly as possible, so as to get the lightly armoured and ageing 41,000 ton Hood , which first entered service in 1920, inside the range at which enemy shells would plunge down on the battle-cruiser's relatively thin deck, and gain the benefit of a flatter trajectory, which presented armour almost four times as thick to the enemy.

After half an hour, Holland opened fire, believing he was aimed at Bismarck when he was actually attacking Prinz Eugen. Prince of Wales rectified the error in part by attacking Bismarck . Ten minutes later, the British squadron turned, and the Hood prepared to fire on the Bismarck . A 15-inch salvo from the German flagship got to Hood first, and in what must have been one of the mightiest non-nuclear explosions of the war, the Hood blew up, killing all but three of her total crew of 95 officers and 1,324 men. Without pausing, the German ships bore down on Prince of Wales , landing seven shells on the ship, and killing all on the bridge except Captain Leach and a signaller. Several of Prince of Wales turrets were now out of action, and she broke off the battle.

Although Bismarck had clearly achieved major success, one of Prince of Wales shells had damaged a fuel bunker and her fuel was becoming contaminated with sea water. An oil slick behind the ship was also a clear hazard to its security. So Admiral Lutjens advised his High Command that he was making for St Nazaire. There followed a remarkable chase across a broad stretch of the Atlantic by Vice-Admiral Wake-Walker, who took under his command Prince of Wales and the rest of Holland's battle-cruiser squadron, and Admiral Sir John Tovey with King George V and the Home Fleet. An epic attack by Swordfish biplanes from HMS Victorious succeeded in hitting the Bismarck with a torpedo but did little actual damage. Gradually, all Tovey's ships had to break off for refuelling until only Prince of Wales was left on the trail of the German ship - Prinz Eugen having been ordered to break away and continue her mission independently of Bismarck . Contact with the damaged German ship had been lost, but, on May 26th, a Coastal Command Catalina (PBY) spotted the ship and reported her position.

Now Force H, which had been diverted to the hunt from near Gibraltar, took a hand, and launched an attack with Swordfish biplanes from Ark Royal< . The first attempt almost sank HMS Sheffield - a rather nasty case of mistaken identity - but the second attack took 15 aircraft through a wall of fire to score two hits, the second of which disabled Bismarck's steering gear. Admiral Lutjens knew he could not now make port, and sent a signal saying he would fight to the last shell. Shortly after, the Bismarck ran into a force of five destroyers commanded by Captain Vian, who decided to attack, but achieved only two inconclusive hits because of the devastating accuracy of Bismarck's fire and the need for constant evasive action. Next morning, King George V, Rodney and Norfolk arrived, and sent a hail of 16-inch and 14-inch shells crashing on to the German ship. Although the Bismarck's superstructure was almost destroyed, none of these shells pierced the ship's armour, and she remained afloat. At 10.36am, two torpedoes from the Dorsetshire holed and sank her. Sir John Tovey concluded in his report.

"Bismarck fought an extremely courageous battle against greatly superior forces; in the best tradition of the old Imperial Navy, she went down with her colours flying."