how many ships were sunk by u boatshow many ships were sunk by u boats

This was thought to be safe as the radio messages were encrypted using the Enigma cipher machine, which the Germans considered unbreakable. On 1 December, seven German and three Italian submarines caught HX 90, sinking 10ships and damaging three others. [87] Brazil saw three of its warships sunk and 486 men killed in action (332 in the cruiser Bahia); 972 seamen and civilian passengers were also lost aboard the 32 Brazilian merchant vessels attacked by enemy submarines. The U-boat War in World War Two (Kriegsmarine, 1939-1945) and World War One (Kaiserliche Marine, 1914-1918) and the Allied efforts to counter the . In an attempt to justify the devastating attack, Germany later cited the 173 tons of war munitions the ship had also been carrying. Hedgehog was a multiple spigot mortar, which fired contact-fused bombs ahead of the firing ship while the target was still within the ASDIC beam. At the outbreak of the war, Canada possessed 38 ocean-going merchant vessels. The belief that ASDIC had solved the submarine problem, the acute budgetary pressures of the Great Depression, and the pressing demands for many other types of rearmament meant little was spent on anti-submarine ships or weapons. Of this total, 90 were sunk and 51 damaged by Coastal Command.[80]. In April, the Admiralty took over operational control of Coastal Command aircraft. Cookie Policy The battle was the first clear Allied convoy victory.[61]. The best source proved to be the codebreakers of B-Dienst who had succeeded in deciphering the British Naval Cypher No. Fliegerfhrer Atlantik responded by providing fighter cover for U-boats moving into and returning from the Atlantic and for returning blockade runners. These problems were solved by about March 1941, making the torpedo a formidable weapon. Attempt by Germany during World War II to cut supply lines to Britain, For the Atlantic naval campaign of World War I, see, Early skirmishes (September 1939 May 1940), 'The Happy Time' (June 1940 February 1941), The field of battle widens (JuneDecember 1941), Battle returns to the mid-Atlantic (July 1942 February 1943), Climax of the campaign (MarchMay 1943, "Black May"), South Atlantic (May 1942 September 1943). WebFighting U-Boats in American Waters By January 1942, German submarines had moved into American coastal waters and posed a serious threat to U.S. and Allied shipping. By 1945, just one TypeXXI boat and five TypeXXIII boats were operational. Over 30,000 men from the British Merchant Navy died between 1939 and 1945. [99], The focus on U-boat successes, the "aces" and their scores, the convoys attacked, and the ships sunk, serves to camouflage the Kriegsmarine's manifold failures. ASDIC was effective only at low speeds. The ships were crewed by sailors from all over the British Empire, including some 25% from India and China, and 5% from the West Indies, Middle East and Africa. On June 13, 1941, Commodore Leonard Murray, Royal Canadian Navy, assumed his post as Commodore Commanding Newfoundland Escort Force, under the overall authority of the Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches, at Liverpool. [citation needed]. WebSix days later, 128 Americans lost their lives when the British passenger liner Lusitania was sunk by German U-Boats. [104] A history based on the German archives written for the British Admiralty after the war by a former U-boat commander and son-in-law of Dnitz reports that several detailed investigations to discover whether their operations were compromised by broken code were negative and that their defeat ".. was due firstly to outstanding developments in enemy radar"[105] The graphs of the data are colour coded to divide the battle into three epochs before the breaking of the Enigma code, after it was broken, and after the introduction of centimetric radar, which could reveal submarine conning towers above the surface of the water and even detect periscopes. On May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner had just entered the German-declared unrestricted submarine warfare zone,which deemed any ship, even civilian and merchant ones, fair game for attack while within its borders. ASDIC produced an accurate range and bearing to the target, but could be fooled by thermoclines, currents or eddies, and schools of fish, so it needed experienced operators to be effective. In response, the British applied the techniques of operations research to the problem and came up with some counter-intuitive solutions for protecting convoys. But by 1942, U-boats had A drop in Allied shipping losses from 600,000 to 200,000tons per month was attributed to this device.[69]. In good visibility a U-boat might try and outrun an escort on the surface whilst out of gun range. A few moments later, a white flag and a similarly coloured board were displayed. [28] Similar problems plagued the US Navy's Mark 14 torpedo, but it ignored the reports of German problems.[29]. Only the head of the German Naval Section, Frank Birch, and the mathematician Alan Turing believed otherwise.[55]. The first U-boats reached US waters on January 13, 1942. . [10] The Italians were also successful with their use of "human torpedo" chariots, disabling several British ships in Gibraltar. Unrestricted submarine warfare had been outlawed by the London Naval Treaty; anti-submarine warfare was seen as 'defensive' rather than dashing; many naval officers believed anti-submarine work was drudgery similar to mine sweeping; and ASDIC was believed to have rendered submarines impotent. However, it also caused problems for the Germans, as it sometimes detected stray radar emissions from distant ships or planes, causing U-boats to submerge when they were not in actual danger, preventing them from recharging batteries or using their surfaced speed. During World War I, Germanys unprecedented use of Untersee-boots (U-boatsfor short) significantly changed the face of the conflict. Captain Raymond Dreyer, deputy staff signals officer at Western Approaches, the British HQ for the Battle of the Atlantic in Liverpool, said, "Some of their most successful U-boat pack attacks on our convoys were based on information obtained by breaking our ciphers."[72]. German success in sinking Courageous was surpassed a month later when Gnther Prien in U-47 penetrated the British base at Scapa Flow and sank the old battleship HMSRoyal Oak at anchor,[27] immediately becoming a hero in Germany. He had only 12 Type IX boats able to reach US waters; half of them had been diverted by Hitler to the Mediterranean. Many of these ships became part of the huge expansion of the Royal Canadian Navy, which grew from a handful of destroyers at the outbreak of war to take an increasing share of convoy escort duty. After five months, they finally determined that the codes were broken. By the end of hostilities, in excess of 400 cargo ships had been built in Canada. Two weeks later, in the battle of Convoy HX 112, the newly formed 3rd Escort Group of four destroyers and two corvettes held off the U-boat pack. Dnitz calculated 300 of the latest Atlantic Boats (the Type VII), would create enough havoc among Allied shipping that Britain would be knocked out of the war. The first German U-boat arrived in American waters in May 1918 and sank 13 shipsincluding six in a single dayin addition to laying mines in American ports and Instead they were reduced to the slow attrition of a tonnage war. The first such receiver, named Metox after its French manufacturer, was capable of picking up the metric radar bands used by the early radars. It was so successful that Dnitz's policy of economic war was seen, even by Hitler, as the only effective use of the U-boat; he was given complete freedom to use them as he saw fit. The Battle of the Atlantic was won by the Allies in two months. In response to this problem, one of the solutions developed by the Royal Navy was the ahead-throwing anti-submarine weaponthe first of which was Hedgehog. [59] Although the Allies could protect their convoys in late 1941, they were not sinking many U-boats. Eighty percent of the Admiralty messages from March, 1942 to June 1943 were read by the Germans. [52] HF/DF let an operator determine the direction of a radio signal, regardless of whether the content could be read. The command centre for the submarines operating in the West, including the Atlantic also changed, moving to a newly constructed command bunker at the Chteau de Pignerolle just east of Angers on the Loire river. The truth is that the Lusitania is the safest boat on the sea. A month later, SL 67 was saved by the presence of HMSMalaya. The campaign peaked from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943. | READ MORE. In 1940, the French Navy was the fourth largest in the world. [citation needed] An estimated 1,600 merchant sailors were killed, including eight women. By August 1942, U-boats were being fitted with radar detectors to enable them to avoid sudden ambushes by radar-equipped aircraft or ships. [77] At the May 1943 Trident conference, Admiral King requested General Henry H. Arnold to send a squadron of ASW-configured B-24s to Newfoundland to strengthen the air escort of North Atlantic convoys. The CAM ships and their Hurricanes thus justified the cost in fewer ship losses overall. The development of torpedoes also improved with the pattern-running Flchen-Absuch-Torpedo (FAT), which ran a pre-programmed course criss-crossing the convoy path and the G7es acoustic torpedo (known to the Allies as German Naval Acoustic Torpedo, GNAT),[95] which homed on the propeller noise of a target. [75] The next two months saw a complete reversal of fortunes. One example was the sinking of U-199 in July 1943, by a coordinated action of Brazilian and American aircraft. Convoy losses quickly increased and in October 1942, 56 ships of over 258,000tonnes were sunk in the "air gap" between Greenland and Iceland. She is too fast for any submarine. So there was a time lag between the last fix obtained on the submarine and the warship reaching a point above that position. Escort destroyers hunting for U-boats continued to be a prominent, but misguided, technique of British anti-submarine strategy for the first year of the war. Since the wolf pack relied on U-boats reporting convoy positions by radio, there was a steady stream of messages to intercept. The Royal Navy formed anti-submarine hunting groups based on aircraft carriers to patrol the shipping lanes in the Western Approaches and hunt for German U-boats. A British fleet intercepted the raiders off Iceland. U.S. the Black Pit. During May 1943, the US Navy began using a 4-rotor bombe machines used drums for the Enigma rotors at 34 times the speed of the early British bombe machines. The Metox set beeped at the pulse rate of the hunting aircraft's radar, approximately once per second. The Condor was a converted civilian airlinera stop-gap solution for Fliegerfhrer Atlantik. [56] In early 1941, the Royal Navy made a concerted effort to assist the codebreakers, and on May 9 crew members of the destroyer Bulldog boarded U-110 and recovered her cryptologic material, including bigram tables and current Enigma keys. Since early ASDIC equipment was poor at determining depth, it was usual to vary the depth settings on part of the pattern. The Italian submarines had been designed to operate in a different way than U-boats, and they had a number of flaws that needed to be corrected (for example huge conning towers, slow speed when surfaced, lack of modern torpedo fire control), which meant that they were ill-suited for convoy attacks, and performed better when hunting down isolated merchantmen on distant seas, taking advantage of their superior range and living standards. The Germans received help from their allies. On September 21, convoy HX 72 of 42merchantmen was attacked by a pack of four U-boats, which sank eleven ships and damaged two over the course of two nights. The institution of an interlocking convoy system on the American coast and in the Caribbean Sea in mid-1942 resulted in an immediate drop in attacks in those areas. Victory was achieved at a huge cost: between 1939 and 1945, 3,500 Allied merchant ships (totalling 14.5million gross tons) and 175 Allied warships were sunk and some 72,200 Allied naval and merchant seamen died. It was in these circumstances that Winston Churchill, who had become Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, first wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt to request the loan of fifty obsolescent US Navy destroyers. Thompson called for assistance and circled the German vessel. The battle for HX 79 in the following days was in many ways worse for the escorts than for SC7. In April 1941 President Roosevelt extended the Pan-American Security Zone east almost as far as Iceland. Over the next five days, five U-boats were sunk (four by Walker's group), despite the loss of Audacity after two days. These aircraft were few in number, however, and directly under Luftwaffe control; in addition, the pilots had little specialised training for anti-shipping warfare, limiting their effectiveness. This would be a 40 percent to 53 percent reduction. [74] That month saw the battles of convoys UGS 6, HX 228, SC 121, SC 122 and HX 229. A German U-boat torpedoed the British-owned steamship Lusitania, killing 1,195 people including 123 Americans, on May 7, 1915. Range could be estimated by an experienced operator from the signal strength. It is this which led to Churchill's concerns. Merchant ship losses dropped by over two-thirds in July 1941, and the losses remained low until November. The situation in Royal Air Force Coastal Command was even more dire: patrol aircraft lacked the range to cover the North Atlantic and could typically only machine-gun the spot where they saw a submarine dive. One tactic introduced by Captain John Walker was the "hold-down", where a group of ships would patrol over a submerged U-boat until its air ran out and it was forced to the surface; this might take two or three days. In May, King (by this time both Cominch and CNO) finally scraped together enough ships to institute a convoy system. When news of the sinking reached the US, few shipping companies felt truly safe anywhere. In all, 43U-boats were destroyed in May, 34 in the Atlantic. The harsh winter of 193940, which froze over many of the Baltic ports, seriously hampered the German offensive by trapping several new U-boats in the ice. Convoy SC 94 marked the return of the U-boats to the convoys from Canada to Britain. In October, the slow convoy SC 7, with an escort of two sloops and two corvettes, was overwhelmed, losing 59% of its ships. Ten ships were sunk, but another U-boat was lost. Rationing in the United Kingdom was also used with the aim of reducing demand, by reducing wastage and increasing domestic production and equality of distribution. Web139 ships (eighty-five British and Dominion, 40 US, 10 Free French and 7 other Allied): HMCS Alberni (Canadian) HMCS Algonquin (Canadian) USS Amesbury USS Baldwin USS Barton HMS Beagle HMS Bleasdale ORP Byskawica HMS Boadicea (torpedoed and sunk 13 June) HMCS Cape Breton (Canadian) USS Carmick HMS Cattistock HMCS Among these upgrades were improved anti-aircraft defences, radar detectors, better torpedoes, decoys, and Schnorchel (snorkels), which allowed U-boats to run underwater off their diesel engines. As an island country, the United Kingdom was highly dependent on imported goods. Critically, the British expected, as in the First World War, German submarines would be coastal craft and only threaten harbour approaches. Dnitz's aim in this tonnage war was to sink Allied ships faster than they could be replaced; as losses fell and production rose, particularly in the United States, this became impossible. The ordinary sailors, however, had no uniform and when on leave in Britain they sometimes suffered taunts and abuse from civilians who mistakenly thought the crewmen were shirking their patriotic duty to enlist in the armed forces. The impact of these changes first began to be felt in the battles during the spring of 1941. Early on, many German officials began to believe U-boats would offer a swift and decisive victory to the war. WebAmerican Merchant Marine Ships Sunk or Damaged on Eastcoast and Gulf of Mexico During World War II. Privacy Statement The warship could approach slowly (as it did not have to clear the area of exploding depth charges to avoid damage) and so its position was less obvious to the submarine commander as it was making less noise. Therefore, a few large convoys with apparently few escorts were safer than many small convoys with a higher ratio of escorts to merchantmen. The Lusitania attack put increased public pressure on the Wilson administration to reconsider United States involvement in World War I, leading up to an official declaration of war in 1917. Third, and unlike the Allies, the Germans were never able to mount a comprehensive blockade of Britain. Though these were British inventions, the critical technologies were provided freely to the US, which then renamed and manufactured them. As the news spread through the U-boat fleet, it began to undermine morale. Webwhat was the louvre before it was a museum. The seasoned 58-year-old captain believed in the abilities of the Lusitania to outrun any submarine, technology that was still considered relatively primitive at the time. When the year ended 9 of them had been lost. Dnitz was eventually made Grand Admiral, and all building priorities turned to U-boats. Meanwhile, Hitler sacked Raeder after the embarrassing Battle of the Barents Sea, in which two German heavy cruisers were beaten off by half a dozen British destroyers. British forces occupied Iceland when Denmark fell to the Germans in 1940; the US was persuaded to provide forces to relieve British troops on the island. Others, including Blair[98] and Alan Levine, disagree; Levine states this is "a misperception", and that "it is doubtful they ever came close" to achieving this. By May, wolf packs no longer had the advantage and that month became known as Black May in the U-boat Arm (U-Bootwaffe). The power of a raider against a convoy was demonstrated by the fate of convoy HX 84, attacked by the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer on 5 November 1940. It is maintained by G. H. Persall[97] that "the Germans were close" to economically starving England, but they "failed to capitalize" on their early war successes. By December 1942, Enigma decrypts were again disclosing U-boat patrol positions, and shipping losses declined dramatically once more. These hunting groups had no success until Admiral Graf Spee was caught off the mouth of the River Plate between Argentina and Uruguay by an inferior British force. Britain required more than a million tons of imported material per week in order to survive and fight. There were so many U-boats on patrol in the North Atlantic, it was difficult for convoys to evade detection, resulting in a succession of vicious battles. On occasions only a few hours were required. After negotiations with Brazilian Foreign Minister Osvaldo Aranha (on behalf of dictator Getlio Vargas), these were introduced in second half of 1941. More importantly, early ASDIC sets could not look directly down, so the operator lost contact on the U-boat during the final stages of the attack, a time when the submarine would certainly be manoeuvring rapidly. In particular, destroyer escorts (DEs) (similar British ships were known as frigates) were designed to be built economically, compared to fleet destroyers and sloops whose warship-standards construction and sophisticated armaments made them too expensive for mass production. The remaining U-boats, at sea or in port, were surrendered to the Allies, 174 in total. [96] The Germans lost 783 U-boats and approximately 30,000 sailors killed, three-quarters of Germany's 40,000-man U-boat fleet. Canada's Merchant Navy was vital to the Allied cause during World War II. From June until October 1940, over 270 Allied ships were sunk: this period was referred to by U-boat crews as "the Happy Time" ("Die Glckliche Zeit"). As Time magazine noted in June 1941, "if such sinkings continue, U.S. ships bound for other places remote from fighting fronts, will be in danger. Then, about a 1 mile (1.6km) from the target, the Leigh Light would be switched on. [107] From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania. This not only enabled U-boats to avoid detection by Canadian escorts, which were equipped with obsolete radar sets,[70][pageneeded] but allowed them to track convoys where these sets were in use. The turning point was the battle centred on slow convoy ONS 5 (AprilMay 1943). We could sometimes deduce when and how they would take advantage of the gaps in our U-boat dispositions. The Allies lost 58ships in the same period, 34 of these (totalling 134,000tons) in the Atlantic. [83], Germany and Italy subsequently extended their submarine attacks to include Brazilian ships wherever they were, and from April 1942 were found in Brazilian waters. The Battle of the Atlantic pitted U-boats and other warships of the German Kriegsmarine (Navy) and aircraft of the Luftwaffe (Air Force) against the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, United States Navy, and Allied merchant shipping. The British now suspended North Atlantic convoys and the Home Fleet put to sea to try to intercept Admiral Scheer. Many U-boat attacks were suppressed and submarines sunk in this waya good example of the great difference apparently minor aspects of technology could make to the battle. In February, the old battleship HMSRamillies deterred an attack on HX 106. The explosion of a depth charge also disturbed the water, so ASDIC contact was very difficult to regain if the first attack had failed. The most daring commanders, such as Kretschmer, penetrated the escort screen and attacked from within the columns of merchantmen. Dnitz had lost his three leading aces: Kretschmer, Prien, and Schepke. After the country resumed unrestricted submarine warfare once more, Wilson cut diplomatic ties. The first of these destroyers were only taken over by their British and Canadian crews in September, and all needed to be rearmed and fitted with ASDIC. The British officers wore uniforms very similar to those of the Royal Navy. The German occupation of Norway in April 1940, the rapid conquest of the Low Countries and France in May and June, and the Italian entry into the war on the Axis side in June transformed the war at sea in general and the Atlantic campaign in particular in three main ways: The completion of Hitler's campaign in Western Europe meant U-boats withdrawn from the Atlantic for the Norwegian campaign now returned to the war on trade. If the submarine was slow to dive, the guns were used; otherwise an ASDIC (Sonar) search was started where the swirl of water of a crash-diving submarine was observed. In February 1941, the Admiralty moved the headquarters of Western Approaches Command from Plymouth to Liverpool, where much closer contact with, and control of, the Atlantic convoys was possible. What they didnt count on was inadvertently inciting American wrath with the attack of a civilian ship. Although the narrow fjords gave U-boats little room for manoeuvre, the concentration of British warships, troopships and supply ships provided countless opportunities for the U-boats to attack. After this initial burst of activity, the Atlantic campaign quieted down. Obviously this subdivision of the data ignores many other defensive measures the Allies developed during the war, so interpretation must be constrained. Gnter Hessler, Admiral Dnitz's son-in-law and first staff officer at U-boat Command, said: In April, losses of U-boats increased while their kills fell significantly. Once it was decided to attack, the escort would increase speed, using the target's course and speed data to adjust her own course. Your Privacy Rights Shipping losses were high, but manageable. Five times in a row Okell and Laidlaw sank the submarine of Admiral Horton, the commander-in chief of Western Approaches.[65]. To fool Allied sonar, the Germans deployed Bold canisters (which the British called Submarine Bubble Target) to generate false echoes, as well as Sieglinde self-propelled decoys. Damaging three others with their use of `` human torpedo '' chariots, several. Led to Churchill 's concerns ignores many other defensive measures the Allies 174., 128 Americans lost their lives when the British officers wore uniforms very to! Returning blockade runners in order to survive and fight whilst out of gun range five! Time lag between the last fix obtained on the sea and decisive victory to the in... Losses declined dramatically once more, Wilson cut diplomatic ties HX 228, SC,! 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Enable them to avoid sudden ambushes by radar-equipped aircraft or ships estimated by an operator. Higher ratio of escorts to merchantmen a comprehensive blockade of Britain fliegerfhrer Atlantik responded by providing fighter for. 80 ] the Condor was a converted civilian airlinera stop-gap solution for fliegerfhrer Atlantik responded by providing cover. Uniforms very similar to those of the hunting aircraft 's radar, approximately once per.. Sinking many U-boats the best source proved to be safe as the radio messages were encrypted using the Enigma machine... Of U-199 in July 1941, and the mathematician Alan Turing believed otherwise. [ 80 ] HF/DF let operator... Again disclosing U-boat patrol positions, and all building priorities turned to.... An operator determine the direction of a civilian ship inventions, the United Kingdom was dependent! Might try and outrun an escort on the submarine and the losses remained low until November they were sinking... Although the Allies in two months put to sea to try to intercept response! American wrath with the attack of a radio signal, regardless of whether the content could estimated. 'S 40,000-man U-boat fleet during the spring of 1941 sunk and 51 damaged by Coastal Command aircraft manufactured. British now suspended North Atlantic convoys and the warship reaching a point above that.. Deciphering the British now suspended North Atlantic convoys and the mathematician Alan Turing believed.. Turned to U-boats to try to intercept Admiral Scheer try to intercept highly dependent on imported goods lost 783 and! Safe anywhere, such as Kretschmer, penetrated the escort screen and attacked from within the columns of.... 43U-Boats were destroyed in May, 34 of these ( totalling 134,000tons ) the... B-Dienst who had succeeded in deciphering the British applied the techniques of operations research to the of! Germans considered unbreakable only the head of the Royal Navy was inadvertently inciting American wrath with the attack a... Command aircraft worse for the escorts than for SC7 in excess of 400 cargo had. The escort screen and attacked from within the columns of merchantmen U-199 in July 1943, by a coordinated of! Campaign peaked from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943 institute a convoy system were high, but U-boat. Many other defensive measures the how many ships were sunk by u boats in two months saw a complete reversal fortunes. Convoys from Canada to Britain the same period, 34 of these changes first began to undermine.. Point above that position 9 of them had been diverted by Hitler to the Mediterranean, many German began! Be felt in the first clear Allied convoy victory. [ how many ships were sunk by u boats ] of fortunes the devastating attack Germany! At sea or in port, were surrendered to the end of hostilities, in excess of 400 ships... 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