The Navy's Atlantic War Learning Curve

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The Navy's Atlantic War Learning Curve Jeffrey G. Barlow 26-33 minutes

By Jeffrey G. Barlow The Battle of the Atlantic—the World War II struggle for control of Atlantic Ocean convoy routes—was actually a series of naval campaigns of varying lengths that began in September 1939 and lasted until Germany's surrender in May 1945. While the Atlantic was the crucial naval theater of the war for Great Britain and its Commonwealth partner, Canada, the Pacific was America's chief naval theater.

Nevertheless, the U.S. Navy's material, technological, and operational contributions were vital in defeating the U-boat onslaught against shipping. In the end, Allied victory in the Atlantic required the combined efforts of Britain, Canada, and the United States.

America did not officially enter the war until December 1941, but its evolving role in the Battle of the Atlantic began soon after the conflict began with Germany's 1 September 1939 invasion of Poland and declarations of war by Britain and France two days later. On 5 September, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued proclamations stating the United States' neutrality and prohibiting the export of arms and munitions to the belligerent powers. The following morning, White House Press Secretary Stephen Early told reporters that the Navy would set up a patrol to operate 200 to 300 miles off the East Coast to warn U.S. merchant ships of the presence of German, British, and French submarines and surface ships. The announcement, however, caught the Department of the Navy off guard, since the Atlantic Squadron at that time consisted of only a battleship division, one cruiser division, a single destroyer squadron, a patrol wing, and the aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CV-4).

From Patrolling to Escorting Convoys Doing his best with the few ships he had, Rear Admiral Alfred W. Johnson distributed his force along the Atlantic coast from the Grand Banks, southeast of Newfoundland, to the Caribbean. Given the limited number of surface ships the Atlantic Squadron had available for patrolling in the first months, the Neutrality Patrol quickly became primarily an air patrol. The British Admiralty was very opposed to the patrol, but on 4 November Congress headed off friction when it amended the 1937 Neutrality Act by repealing the arms embargo, thereby making it possible for Britain to purchase U.S. military supplies on a "cash-and-carry" basis.

By the close of 1940, however, Britain was in dire financial straits because of war costs. This fact was brought home to Roosevelt personally by a lengthy message he received from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in which he wrote, "The moment approaches when we shall no longer be able to pay cash for shipping and other supplies." The solution Roosevelt proposed was to lend Britain the war supplies it needed until the fighting was over and they could be returned. The President explained the idea to Congress in January 1941 and signed the Lend-Lease Act into law on 11 March.

During the first weeks of April, a cautious FDR reviewed courses of action designed to help Britain's position in the Atlantic. Finally, on the 21st, he directed the Navy to begin executing Navy Western Hemisphere Defense Plan No. 2. Under the plan, Navy ships and aircraft would patrol the "Western Atlantic Area" out to Longitude 26 degrees West to observe and broadcast the movements of Axis ships and planes they encountered. Just over a month later, on 27 May, President Roosevelt proclaimed a state of unlimited national emergency. This virtually placed the Navy in the Atlantic on a full war footing.

The United States took the next step in September 1941, when Roosevelt directed that Atlantic Fleet ships begin escorting Allied convoys. HX 150, the first convoy to be covered by escorts of the fleet's Support Force, sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 16 September. The next day, five U.S. Navy destroyers—the Ericsson (DD-440), Eberle (DD-430), Upshur (DD-144), Ellis (DD-154), and Dallas (DD199)—replaced the convoy's Canadian coastal escort. Encountering no U-boats on the voyage, the convoy arrived safely at the mid-ocean meeting point, where British warships picked up the escort duties on the 25th. Its only loss was the freighter SS Nigaristan, which had been abandoned after catching fire. chrome-extension://ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh/data/reader/index.html?id=680&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usni.org%2Fmagazines%2Fnav…

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Thereafter, U.S.-escorted fast convoys regularly traveled between the East Coast and the waters off Iceland. On 31 October during one of the runs, however, the USS Reuben James (DD-245) was torpedoed by U-552. The first Navy ship sunk during the war, the destroyer went down with the loss of 115 men.

The move to active escorting required substantial adjustments. The first step was taken on 1 November, when an executive order placed the U.S. Coast Guard under the jurisdiction of the Navy for the duration of the period of national emergency. The Support Force nevertheless remained short of the number of escorts needed for the new assignment, and many of the ships in use were not up to the demands of the escort cycle. The "short-leg" 1,200-ton destroyers in the Support Force, for example, lacked the oil capacity to provide a decent margin of safety in winter operations.

East Coast Slaughter On 2 January 1942, less than a month after Germany declared war on the United States, Admiral Karl Dönitz, the commander of the U-boat service, ordered five Type IX boats to commence Operation Paukenschlag (literally, Roll on the Kettledrums), which targeted shipping along America's Atlantic coast.

The boats' transits to their hunting grounds were carefully directed by U-boat Command, which instructed them to begin attacks on coastal shipping on 13 January.

What the German submariners then found was an abundance of easy targets. The Americans were making no effort to convoy their coastal shipping. U-123 was operating off Cape Hatteras on 19 January when she sank what her captain, Lieutenant Commander Reinhard Hardegen, estimated to be eight ships within a 12-hour period. In all during January, the U-boats attacked 29 ships in the Eastern Sea Frontier—which stretched from the waters off Maine down to north Florida—16 of which they sank.

Before this first group of Type IX U-boats had to head for home toward the end of the month, three additional Type IXs arrived in the vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay and were joined by two medium Type VIIC boats. Consequently, four or five U-boats were constantly operating off the American coast during February. They took an even higher toll of shipping that month, attacking 37 merchant ships and sinking 19.

From the perspective of its British and Canadian allies, the U.S. Navy needed to institute escorted coastal convoying as soon as possible to reduce substantially the number of sinkings. While Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, understood the importance of coastal convoying as a means of reducing sinkings, he was convinced that the Navy lacked the additional escorts needed to begin such an effort. Aircraft for flying antisubmarine warfare (ASW) patrols were also in short supply.

On 7 December 1941, the Eastern Sea Frontier had just four squadrons of aircraft—three PBY Catalina seaplane squadrons and one squadron of PBOs, modified Lockheed Hudson two-engined bombers—all designed for flying longer-range patrols. For in-shore patrolling the Coast Guard was operating a few Grumman Widgeons and OS2U Kingfishers.

In those first months of 1942 the Navy also lacked personnel who were adequately trained for antisubmarine work. The organizational aspects of the ASW problem were among the first to be tackled.

On 16 February Atlantic Fleet commander Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll assigned Captain Wilder D. Baker as his staff ASW officer and as commanding officer of the Atlantic Fleet Anti-Submarine Warfare Unit.

One of the new unit's immediate duties was to draft a manual on ASW procedures. At that time, the Atlantic Fleet had only four antisubmarine attack teachers, one of whom was installed at the Sound School at Key West, Florida. The ASW Unit was assigned supervisory responsibility over the attack instructors and for reviewing the curriculum and operation of the Sound School.

The supervisory efforts quickly showed positive results. As a postwar command history noted: "In 1942 [American sonar] operators were still using a dozen different techniques, they were trying to report ranges as well as bearings, they were untrained in Doppler effect. Nowhere along the line had the procedure been analyzed, systematized, or promulgated throughout the Fleet." The Anti-Submarine Warfare Unit issued a proposed procedure for sonar operation at the end of February 1942. That summer a revised version was adopted for use throughout the Atlantic Fleet.

During March 1942, Operation Paukenschlag continued taking a deadly shipping toll off the East Coast.

In all that month, 47 merchant ships were attacked, 29 of which were sunk. Also in March, however, Rear Admiral M. K. Metcalf, the director of convoy and routing in the office of the Chief of Naval Operations, submitted the first concrete proposal for a coastal convoy system. On 27 March a panel convened to examine the issue submitted detailed arrangements for instituting coastal convoys from a point just north of Key West up to Halifax.

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By early May, sufficient escorts had finally been assembled within the Eastern Sea Frontier to provide six escort groups of seven ships each for coastal convoying. The vessels consisted of a mixture of old 1,200-ton destroyers, yachts, British-loaned corvettes, World War I-era Eagle boats, and other craft. The first escorted convoy sailed from Norfolk bound for Key West on 14 May, and the first northbound convoy set out the following day.

The key to effective convoying, however, was relying on the integrated use of escorts and patrolling aircraft, as the Royal Navy had earlier demonstrated. By July the Eastern Sea Frontier's aircraft complement had increased to three squadrons of PBY-5A amphibians, one squadron of the new PBM seaplanes, and six squadrons of OS2U observation planes for coastal patrolling.

The Battle Moves Farther South The beginning of coastal convoying resulted in an immediate drop in the number of American ships sailing independently. Although U-boat Command initially did not realize that convoying was the reason for this change, on 5 May it ordered six of the 16 U-boats then operating off the East Coast to head for the Caribbean. This considerably increased the boats' operating radius and thus the strain on their fuel supplies. Fortunately for the Germans, however, U-459—the first of a new class of 1,700-ton Type XIV sub tankers known as Milch (milk) cows—had been operating some 500 miles northeast of Bermuda since 20 April.

The U-boats' principal operating area was soon shifted from the Eastern Sea Frontier to areas farther south, where there were as yet no coastal convoys. In April only six merchant ships had been attacked and three sunk in the Gulf Sea Frontier, which included the Gulf of Mexico and the waters off Florida's east and west coasts, but in June 32 were attacked there, 23 of which sank.

As additional escorts were added to the sea frontiers' forces, however, the Navy instituted new convoys.

On 1 July one began steaming between Key West and Trinidad. At midmonth, escorts began convoying ships between Guantanamo, Cuba, and Panama. In both areas the number of ship sinkings dropped noticeably. On 27 August, the northern terminal of the coastal convoys was shifted from Norfolk to New York City and a new, interlocking system of convoys between the Gulf, Caribbean, New York, and Great Britain was initiated. Within a month, the U-boat depredations against shipping off the Gulf coast had ended.

New Weapons and Intelligence Come into Play As the U-boats withdrew from the U.S. coast that summer, new groups were repositioned once more against the North Atlantic convoy routes, and the toll on merchant shipping in the mid-Atlantic again rose. Meanwhile, the race between the Allies and Germany to bring new weapons and sensors into the battle continued.

The United States' immense industrial capacity and vast pools of scientific and engineering talent were being quickly brought into play in the hunt for new ASW technologies. In March 1942, the first practical test of a radio sonobuoy, designed to detect the sounds of a submerged submarine's propellers, occurred in the waters off New London, Connecticut. Just seven months later, the U.S. Navy ordered the procurement of 1,000 sonobuoys and 100 associated receivers for use by its ASW squadrons. Similarly, in June 1942 the Navy established an organization, designated Project Sail, to test the effectiveness of the new Magnetic Anomaly Detector (MAD), which was designed to spot submerged submarines by the changes they induced in the earth's magnetic field. Two hundred sets of MAD gear were quickly ordered following promising early tests. Also in 1942, American engineers developed a highly secret, air-dropped acoustic homing torpedo. Designated for security purposes the Mark 24 mine but commonly called Fido, the weapon homed in on the cavitation created by a submarine's whirling propellers.

On the German side, in August 1942 the first U-boats were fitted with Metox radar search receivers, which could pick up signals from the 1??-meter radar sets then used by Allied bombers to spot surfaced U-boats. The warning of approaching aircraft provided by the Metox receivers enabled the submarines to dive before the planes arrived overhead.

The struggle by each side to break into the naval codes and ciphers of the other had been ongoing since the war began. During most of 1942, the German cryptographic organization B-Dienst held the upper hand. The Germans were reading the Allies' Combined Naval Cypher No. 3 at a time when Britain's Government Code & Cypher School at Bletchley Park had been unable to break into U-boat communications (designated "Shark" by the British) enciphered by the four-wheel German naval Enigma machine. And even though Bletchley Park at last broke into the Shark Enigma messages in midchrome-extension://ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh/data/reader/index.html?id=680&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usni.org%2Fmagazines%2Fnav…

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December 1942, decrypting the U-boat transmissions was a slow, laborious, hit-and-miss process.

Some days the messages could not be read at all.

Merchant vessel sinkings in the entire North Atlantic had risen to 75 ships in November 1942 before falling to 46 in December because of bad weather. Although only two sinkings occurred in the North Atlantic Convoy Area in January 1943, merchant ship losses there increased to 34 in February. That month, the estimated number of U-boats operating against North Atlantic convoys increased to 39.

During March, however, a series of events changed the Allied antisubmarine picture for the better. Early that month, the escort carrier USS Bogue (CVE-9), the centerpiece of the first U.S. convoy support group, joined Task Group 24.4 at Argentia, Newfoundland. During the Atlantic Convoy Conference held in March, Admiral King agreed to turn over to the British and Canadians responsibility for protection of the North Atlantic convoys, while the U.S. Navy covered those operating between the American East Coast and Africa and escorted the special tanker convoys running between Aruba and Britain and Aruba and Africa. The month also saw increasing numbers of American-built B-24 Liberator bombers modified for very long range (VLR) flying enter service with operational squadrons. U-boats could not detect the signals broadcast by the planes' 10-cm radar sets.

As April drew to a close, it was evident that a major fight between the U-boats and the North Atlantic convoys was again looming. The initial engagement was a continuous battle from 29 April through 6 May between Convoy ONS 5 and the U-boats of Groups Star, Fink, and Amsel in which 13 merchant ships and eight submarines were sunk—a rate of return favorable to the Allies. U-boats proved no more successful against the next two convoys. After additional failures, U-boat Command decided on 24 May to withdraw the submarine groups from the North Atlantic convoy routes for the time being. The Allies had beaten back the U-boat offensive in the decisive area of the conflict. Those boats with adequate fuel were sent to the area southwest of the Azores, where they could operate against the U.S.-Gibraltar convoys.

The Navy Takes the Offensive The U.S. Navy's ASW forces came into their own during the subsequent months. A period of sustained convoying, as well as major increases in the number of American surface escorts and patrol aircraft, had been required before the tactical and operational aspects of antisubmarine warfare became ingrained in the U.S. Navy. Yet once this learning curve had been overcome, the sea service went from strength to strength.

In mid-May 1943, Admiral King established the Tenth Fleet in his Washington headquarters to exercise unity of control over U.S. antisubmarine operations. With Rear Admiral Francis S. Low as its chief of staff, the organization maintained oversight of the Navy's ASW efforts until war's end.

In June, the first American-made "Bombe"—a high-speed analytical machine used for matching assumed plain-text German messages with Enigma-enciphered texts—came online at Dayton, Ohio.

With a similar British-made Bombe becoming operational at about the same time in the United Kingdom, the time delay in reading Enigma Shark messages was cut from an average of 600 hours to about 450 hours. When a full series of Bombes began operating in Washington in September, the time lag dropped to an average of just 72 hours. This had a major effect on the Allied responses to German operations at sea.

In July, Admiral King and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall agreed that the Army would withdraw its air forces from antisubmarine operations as quickly as the Navy could take over those duties. The Army Air Forces agreed to turn its B-24s modified for ASW patrolling over to the Navy if that service, in turn, gave the Army its existing non-modified B-24s. They completed the changeover during the following few months.

In the summer of 1943, Admiral King shifted the Navy's support groups—formed around individual escort carriers—from close support of convoys to hunter-killer operations against the Milch cows that refueled U-boats in the central Atlantic and off the Azores. King and Low were convinced that since refueling was the key to high-speed, long-range U-boat operations, sinking the tankers would decrease the effectiveness and operating radius of the entire U-boat deployment.

Vectored to the precise refueling locations by deciphered Enigma communications, the hunter-killer groups based around the USS Card (CVE-11), Santee (CVE-29), Core (CVE-13), and Bogue began sinking the Milch cows, as well as some of the boats waiting to refuel, with great regularity. Moreover, the escort carriers' Avenger torpedo-bombers were using the Navy's newly operational Fido homing torpedoes to great effect against the hastily submerging U-boats. In June and July, the Germans lost eight boats, including two U-tankers, in the waters southwest of the Azores. And by the end of August chrome-extension://ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh/data/reader/index.html?id=680&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usni.org%2Fmagazines%2Fnav…

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1943, another seven subs used for refueling were sunk, most by carrier aircraft operating from the CVE hunter-killer groups. The continuing losses severely curtailed U-boat operations in distant waters.

Dönitz and U-boat Command went to great lengths in the war's final years to regain the initiative in the Battle of the Atlantic. U-boats were equipped with Schnorkels (breathing tubes) to allow them to run their diesel engines and recharge their batteries while submerged, as well as heavy antiaircraft armament to better enable them to fight it out with attacking planes. Germany also designed new breeds of U-boats, such as the Type XXI and Type XXIII, that were faster and deeper diving and boasted greater endurance than earlier models.

Fortunately for the Allies, those cutting-edge submarines never became operational in any great numbers and Germany's U-boat forces were never able to regain the upper hand. Instead, the U.S. Navy—relying on its hard-won tactical skill in antisubmarine warfare and a sound understanding of Uboat operations—worked in tandem with its British and Canadian naval allies to win the long and bloody Battle of the Atlantic.

Primary sources: "Administrative History of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in World War II," vol. I, Parts 1 and 2, "Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet" (1946), Navy Department Library (hereinafter NDL), Naval Historical Center (NHC).

"Administrative History of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in World War II," vol. I, Parts 3 and 4, "Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet" (1946), NDL, NHC. "Administrative History of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in World War II," vol. VIII, Part 2, "Commander Fleet Operational Training Command" (1946), NDL, NHC. "Administrative History of the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Commander, Tenth Fleet," "Convoy and Routing" (1945), NDL, NHC. Correspondence & Reports RE: Edward L. Bowles [?] Anti-Sub Warfare, Record Group 107, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland.

German Naval Records, Operational Archives, NHC. Captain Tracy B. Kittredge Papers, Operational Archives, NHC. Samuel Eliot Morison Office Files, Operational Archives, NHC. 1941—1946 Double Zero Files, Record Group 38, NARA, College Park, Maryland.

SRH Histories, World War II Command File, Operational Archives, NHC. Admiral Harold R. Stark Papers, Operational Archives, NHC. Tenth Fleet Files, Record Group 38, NARA, College Park, Maryland.

Secondary sources: Patrick Abbazia, Mr. Roosevelt's Navy: The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939—1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1975).

W. A. B. Douglas, Roger Sarty, and Michael Whitby, with Robert H. Caldwell, William Johnson, and William G. P. Rawling, The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War, 1939—1943, vol. II, pt. 1, No Higher Purpose (St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell Publishing Limited, 2002).

Roy A. Grossnick, with Contributions by William J. Armstrong, W. Todd Baker, John M. Elliott, Gwendolyn J. Rich, and Judith A. Walters, United States Naval Aviation 1910—1995, 4th ed.

(Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 1997).

Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

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F. H. Hinsley, with E. E. Thomas, C. F. G. Ransom, and R. C. Knight, British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, vol. II (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1981).

Robert W. Love, Jr., "The U.S. Navy and Operation Roll of Drums, 1942," in To Die Gallantly: The Battle of the Atlantic, ed. Timothy J. Runyan and Jan M. Copes, pp. 95-120 (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, 1994).

Ministry of Defence (Navy), German Naval History, The U-boat War in the Atlantic 1939?1945, Facsimile Edition with Introduction by Lieutenant Commander Andrew J. Withers MA, Royal Navy (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1989).

Marc Milner, "The Battle of the Atlantic," in Decisive Campaigns of the Second World War, ed. John Gooch, pp. 45-66 (London: Frank Cass, 1990).

Marc Milner, Battle of the Atlantic (St. Catharines, Ontario: Vanwell Publishing Limited, 2003).

Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. I, The Battle of the Atlantic September 1939?May 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1954).

Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. X, The Atlantic Battle Won May 1943?May 1945 (Boston: Little. Brown and Company, 1956).

Axel Niestl, "German Technical and Electronic Development," in The Battle of the Atlantic 1939—1945: The 50th Anniversary International Naval Conference, ed. Stephen Howarth and Derek Law, pp. 430451 (London and Annapolis, MD: Greenhill Books and Naval Institute Press, 1994).

Henry Probert, "Allied Land-Based Anti-Submarine Warfare," in Howarth and Law, The Battle of the Atlantic 1939—1945, pp. 371-387.

Jurgen Rohwer, "The Wireless War," in Howarth and Law, The Battle of the Atlantic 1939—1945, pp.

408-417.

Jorgen Rohwer, with special assistance from Gerhard Hummelchen and Thomas Weis, Chronology of the War at Sea 1939—1945: The Naval History of World War Two, 3rd rev. ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005).

Captain S. W. Roskill, D.S.C., RN, The War at Sea 1939—1945, vol. II, The Period of Balance (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1956).

Vice Admiral Friedrich Ruge, Navy of the Federal German Republic, Der Seekrieg: The German Navy's Story 1939-1945 (Annapolis, MD: United States Naval Institute, 1957).

Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948).

Jean Edward Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2007).

The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 Volume: War—and Aid to Democracies (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1941).

Dr. Barlow has been a historian with the Naval Historical Center's Contemporary History Branch since 1987. In addition to the award-winning history Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945-1950 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1994), he has authored more than a dozen chapters in books dealing with World War II and the Cold War. <table style="background-color: rgb(214,222,226)" summary=" border=" 0"="" width="100%" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4" align="left"> Night Attack on a U-boat In late December 1942, Lieutenant Charles S. Minter Jr. was executive officer of Trinidad-based VP-53, whose PBYs had recently received new antisubmarine weapons in addition to their depth charges. In his U.S. Naval Institute oral history, then-retired Vice Admiral Minter called them "hedgehog bombs"—the same 7.2-inch, contact-fused projectiles used by ship-based Hedgehog and Mousetrap systems. (Later, PBYs were armed with a modified version of the projectiles, retrobombs.) In this excerpt adapted from the former Naval Academy superintendent's oral history, he describes scoring a hit with the weapon on the night of 28 December. chrome-extension://ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh/data/reader/index.html?id=680&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.usni.org%2Fmagazines%2Fnav…

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I was covering a tanker convoy headed for the Mediterranean and flying a standard patrol search. On one leg, coming up toward the convoy, I saw a surfaced vessel—I could see the wake below me, and I knew it couldn't be one of the convoy ships. It wasn't until I got directly on top and looked down that I realized it was a submarine, surfaced, and heading straight for the convoy.

From 1,000 feet in a PBY you can't get right down on a submarine, you have to take your time, and by the time I got in attack position the submarine had already submerged. I felt he had been down long enough it would be pointless to drop any depth charges, so I pulled up and contacted the convoy commodore and told him there was a submarine astern, trailing the convoy.

I went back parallel to the course that I had just flown to the ship and twice made two sweeps at a much lower altitude, and the second time I spotted my friend again on the surface. He'd come back up and was heading in. He spotted me about the same time I spotted him, at least I think he did because he immediately made a sharp turn and a crash dive.

I was leading as best I could in the somewhat restricted visibility, and I dropped my depth charges. I think I dropped them long—I was too close to him. But then I circled around—and this was exactly why we'd loaded the airplanes the way we did—because now he was going down, at least I saw the swirl of the conning tower and I knew he was making a right turn, and I dropped a string of hedgehogs across the submerged submarine.

One of the waist gunners reported seeing one of the hedgehogs go off. That meant it hit the submarine.

I've never been satisfied that that was actually case. I think it was wishful thinking on all our parts, hoping we'd killed the submarine.

But I stayed in the area, and by daylight there was, not debris, but a fair amount of oil in the area. It turns out we did not kill the submarine (U-214), but we damaged him.

—Eds.

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