In early 1941, the difficulties and complexities of the Battle of the Atlantic began to really make themselves felt. The heavy losses experienced by merchant ships in 1940, of which 2,186,158 tons had been sunk by submarines, were partly compensated by the use of many merchant navy vessels for war. From 1941, there was no hope of compensating future losses in this way. At that time, the merchant navy had been used to its maximum. Further losses could only be compensated by the construction of new ships.
Several factors were to make 1941 and 1942 the most dangerous years of this hesitant battle against the U-boats. The most urgent thing was therefore to quickly build the greatest number of submarines, because at the beginning of 1941 the program undertaken by Germany at the start of the hostilities was beginning to give results. From then until the middle of 1943, the number of new builds was to far exceed the number of losses, so that with each passing month saw more and more U-boats in the Atlantic. br class='autobr' />Other factors would favor the German submarines. One of these important factors was the time it took for the convoys to cross the Atlantic. Due to weather, route changes and other delays, the average duration was about 15 days; convoys to or from Freetown took 4 days longer.
These long journeys offered submarines more targets.
Another important factor was the poor endurance of the British escort ships at sea. At the beginning of the war, escorts could only be provided up to the distance of about 500 miles from the English coast; beyond this distance, the convoys were left to fend for themselves. The occupation of Iceland, after the disastrous campaign of 1940, gave the possibility of increasing the range of escorts who could resupply on the island, but this could not be done until April 1941. at the same time, Canada was creating bases in Newfoundland and on its eastern coasts, which would allow escorts to go even further into the Atlantic. In April 1941, they could reach 35° West, which represented a little more than half of the route, then, two months later, the first convoy equipped with an anti-submarine escort could finally cross the Atlantic. end to end. But because of the lack of escort ships, in 1941 only 2 ships could be provided for each convoy. It was not until the new escort ships, started just before the war, joined the fleet, that this number could be increased in 1942 and 1943.
Air escorts were as important as sea escorts, for of all the enemies of submarines, the most feared were aircraft. Their field of vision and attack speed were significantly superior to those of surface escorts and an aircraft circling above a convoy forced each submarine to submerge, thus condemning it to use its diving speed and to reduce his field of vision. But, again, as with surface escorts, the issue was range and endurance. At that time, Coastal Defense HQ did not yet have aircraft powerful enough to protect convoys over long distances, even using bases in Newfoundland and Iceland. Trying to overcome this inconvenience with aircraft transported by ships was out of the question, because all the aircraft carriers of the fleet were retained for other operations. Also, airborne radars, effective in locating submarines on the surface, still belonged to the future, in this year 1941, as was the effective airborne weapon that could have liquidated a submarine.
The advantage therefore remained with the U-boats. This continued throughout 1941 and 1942 as the Allies built up their anti-submarine escort forces, both surface and air, increasing their numbers, training them, and studying their tactics and scientific possibilities. adequate for spotting U-boats — a long and arduous road to travel, tougher and longer due to the rapid increase in German U-boats and the development of their pack-attack tactics.
At the beginning of 1941, the first step taken was the withdrawal of headquarters from the west coast of England, between Plymouth and Liverpool, and the appointment of a commander-in-chief whose sole responsibility would be to direct the campaign against German submarines. In these new headquarters were integrated those of Group 15 of the Coastal Air Defense, so that surface and air escorts could be coordinated by a single service. Models and traffic charts of the submarines were consolidated at Maritime Command and linked by telephone and teleprinter between Whitehall and Liverpool.
Admiral Sir Percy Noble was appointed Commander-in-Chief Maritime Command in February 1941. He was perhaps the first to believe that the key to victory lay as much in the training of officers and men as in the number of escorts available. Anti-submarine training bases were organized at Dunoon and Campbeltown, experimental work was carried out at Fairlie, and a sea-based training center was founded at Tober Mory. It was in this center that new escorts met after completing their trial period. For a month they were subjected to difficult exercises, intended to harden the crews, generally new recruits, to accustom them to the atmospheric conditions of the Atlantic and to give them a thorough knowledge of their ship and its capabilities. /P>
Specialized training followed training at sea, so that when the vessel became fully operational, her complement had not only been hardened by Tobermory's training, but had also acquired professional skill as well. although technological. All this, however, took time and it was not until the middle of 1943 that total training could be deemed sufficient. Until then, priority is being given to all operational requirements of escort vessels in the Atlantic. Another initiative of Admiral Noble was to organize the escorts into groups. By assigning 8 ships to a group, the commander-in-chief could count on an effective force of 5 or 6 escorts; this left enough margin to repair damaged ships, periods of leave, training and other contingencies. The great virtue of this group system was that each escort captain quickly familiarized himself with the other escorts in the group and with the methods of his leader.
It was with this reorganization of the escort fleet and this intensive training that the seeds of victory in the Atlantic were sown. However, if it was important to distinguish the right road to travel to achieve victory, the journey to be made was still very difficult. In 1940 and 1941, there was reluctance to give priority to the construction of new ships for the operational fleet:aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and landing craft of various shapes and sizes, rather than to the anti-submarine fleet :frigates, sloops and corvettes intended to serve as escorts. There was obviously no question of absolute priority for the escorts, and then there was no possibility of maintaining a balance with the number of U-boats built in Germany, let alone dominating this number. More than two dark years were to pass before the escort groups could finally show their superiority.
The tribulations of 1941, when England was still in the throes of the reorganization of its anti-submarine forces were to be augmented by the installation on the coasts of France and Norway of squadrons of long-range German bombers. These were mainly Focke-Wulf Condors capable of operating more than 800 miles offshore. Their mission was twofold. It consisted first of locating the English convoys in order to direct the U-boats on them. Next, they were to sink merchant ships that were traveling outside the convoys or trailing behind them. In this role, they seconded the U-boats very closely. While in 1941 the latter had sunk 21 ships for a total of 126,782 tons, the bombers sank 20 for a total of 78,517 tons. February figures were similar:39 ships (196,738 tons) by U-boats, 27 ships (83,305 tons) by bombers.
The response to the Focke-Wulfse bombers resulted in several manners. One was to have independent ships take the high northern route that bombers based in France or Norway could not reach, and convoys to follow a narrow route patrolled by long-range fighters. Another was to equip ships with anti-aircraft guns, served by gunners or even simple sailors. A third was to attach catapults to the old Pegasus seaplane carrier and use it as an anti-aircraft escort.
As an extension of this idea, catapults were attached to certain merchant ships on which carried a Hurricane which could be catapulted anywhere when an enemy plane was reported. After completing its mission, the Hurricane made a makeshift landing alongside an allied ship and the pilot was rescued. It was thanks to such means and also to the reluctance of the Luftwaffe to cooperate with the Kriegsmarine (German navy) that the offensive of these bombers was finally defeated.
With the gradual extension of convoys across the Atlantic, the reign of the “aces” of German submarines came to an end. These aces were the men who had distinguished themselves in the Atlantic by the effective tonnage of merchant ships they had personally sunk. During the first 18 months of the war, when the convoy system was still being organized and the ocean still carried a large number of independent ships, several skilful captains took the opportunity to seize for their own credit these easy preys which represented a considerable tonnage.
The U-boat command called this period "the good times". In February 1941, the three biggest of these aces were Gunther Prien, who had sunk the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow and claimed more than 150,000 tons of ships, and Joachim Schepke and Otto Kretschmer who both claimed more than 200,000 tons . All three had been decorated by Hitler with the Knight's Cross for their astonishing successes and all three were to serve as role models for other submarine captains. In March, however, all three were eliminated from the battle. On March 7, Prien sank with her U-47 torpedoed by the corvettes Arbustus and Camellia and the destroyer Wolverine. On the 17th, it was Schepke's turn in the U-100 torpedoed by Walker and Vanoc; and that same night those same destroyers sank U-99, taking Kretschmer prisoner, as he escaped from his sinking submarine. It was a heavy blow for the Germans, because these three men had been recognized throughout Germany as the cream of submarine captains.
In fact, March 1941 saw the end of the single U-boat attacks. As there were more and more merchant ships in the convoy organization and the protection of these convoys was extended further and further into the Atlantic, the reign of the lone submarine was over. The Germans had to adopt new tactics. It was from this situation that the group and night attacks began.
Basically, there was nothing new in this. During the last year of the First World War, this rudimentary form of attack had already been experimented with, without much success, because the radio signals necessary to control the groups were then in an embryonic state. New attempts had been made in the Atlantic in 1940 but they had not been followed up, because a lone submarine, operating in a fixed area, still found enough targets to justify its presence. Those times were now over for good, although early in 1942 the U-boats experienced a new but brief "good time". This happened when the United States entered the war. A few submarines had concentrated on the American coastline and had sunk a large number of unescorted vessels there. Six months later, when the U.S. Navy was in turn organized into convoys, these submarines abruptly disappeared.
In organizing pack attacks, the U-boat command relied one of the submarines to watch a convoy during the day and direct the rest of the pack with signals after dark. All 1-
attacks were then made on the surface, in the dark, when the small submarine superstructure was almost invisible to the defenders. With their high surface speed and the possibility of not being spotted, the advantages of the night attack were considerable.
However, this system had a flaw. The spy submarine was forced to make a series of signals over the radio, reporting I position, speed and changes. convoy route. These signals were invariably picked up by Allied listening stations, which transmitted them to the Admiralty, whose tracking services could then detect the position of the spy ship.
Despite this, much remained to be done. do before victory. In 1941 and 1942 the shortfall in all areas was great, not enough escort ships, not enough time for training, not enough weapons, nor advances in technology to compete with modern German U-boat tactics. But of all these shortcomings, the most chronic was that of long-range, long-endurance gunships. It had long been evident that a convoy, protected by sea as well as air escort, was virtually immune to attack. The problem was to find a way to provide each convoy with an air escort along the entire length of the Atlantic route.
For this purpose, in 1941 the Admiralty ordered from America a number of small escort carriers (Hulls of Liberty chips equipped with launching decks and hangars for parking aircraft). These orders could not be delivered until a year later. In the meantime, the Coastal Defense could only count on a simple squadron of Liberator aircraft consisting of about twenty aircraft, whose range was great. This number was quickly reduced to 10 due to poor distribution and the fact that several aircraft were transferred to Ferry Command and BOAC. All attempts to increase this number and to obtain Lancaster bombers failed. The convoys and their maritime escorts were left in the battle without air escorts, support which would have been the most important guarantee of success. As it existed, air escorts could fly 700 miles off Northern Ireland and western Scotland, 400 miles off Iceland and 700 from Canadian bases. But they left a big void in the middle of the Atlantic and could only operate irregularly during the day.