The Battle of the Atlantic How It Was Nearly Lost and Ultimately Won at Frightful Cost "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril," said Winston Churchill, wartime leader of Great Britain. He was not an easy person to frighten. As newly elected Prime Minister he confronted a victorious Germany which had conquered and overrun Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, and knocked France out of the war. England then stood alone against Germany and Italy, which had joined Germany to share the spoils. The British saved their army from the French beaches at Dunkirk in May 1940, and in the ensuing months won the Battle of Britain, rebuffing the German Luftwaffe ' s attempt to control the skies over England, a necessary prelude to invasion. Without that air cover, no invading army could get across the English Channel in the face of Britain's Royal Navy. So Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of England , was called off in the fall of 1940, and the German planners turned their attention to the invasion of Russia the following spring. As it became clear that there would be no immediate invasion of England by Germany, the combatants turned their attention to the broad waters of the North Atlantic, across which England was supplied with grain for its people and oil for its ships and aircraft. Here, in World War I, a quarter century earlier, the Germans had
by Peter Stanford very nearly succeeded in sinking enough ships to starve the British Isles, and as 1940 faded into 1941 , the attacks of German submarines against the English Atlantic convoys intensified. America's sudden entry into the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in late 1941 dramatically changed the war's balance. As Churchill, who almost alone among the leaders on the European side of the Atlantic understood the full potential of America 's warmaking ability, remarked, he never doubted from that moment the
"The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril." -Winston Churchill victory of Allied arms. But through a stunning lack of preparedness, a lack rooted in complete failure to coordinate military policy with America 's aggressively pro-British foreign policy, the opening months of 1942 brought the most disastrous shipping losses of the entire war. With almost complete impunity, a relatively small fleet of U-boats, no more than a dozen at any time, ranged the US East Coast sinking ships at more than twice the rate the shipyards could build new ones. Already stretched thin in the Atlantic war and in
its efforts to reinforce Russia in its deathstruggle with the invading German army, Britain furnished escort vessels it could ill spare to help bolster US defenses against the German onslaught by sea. But Admiral King , the American Chief of Naval Operations, did not even institute convoys until almost half a year had passed. Then , spurred by President Roosevelt 's personal intervention, and by Anglo-American conferences in which the true magnitude of the disaster taking shape in the battle against the Uboat in the Atlantic became all too clear, the US put its full weight into the battle. After frightful losses which delayed Allied victory, the Battle of the Atlantic was won. The turning point came in May 1943, a year and a half after American entry into the war. After another year had passed, on 6 June 1944, British, Americans, Canadians and others from overseas, invaded France in their turn. This brought the war to an end just short of a year later. Everything, at each step along this difficult path to victory , depended on the ships crossing the Atlantic and delivering their cargoes. In future issues of Sea History we shall follow that effort, without which World War II would have been lost with utter certainty, and with disastrous consequences for humankind. J:,
Behind the fast new destroyer Eugene A. Greene, Liberty ships ride at anchor waiting to load cargo in New York to sustain Allied soldiers fig hting to roll back German conquests in Africa, Europe and Russia. Th e low-slung, high speed warrior is needed f or the most important ballle of World War //. The Libertys with their civilian crews will suffer higher casualties than the Navy in this battle-hut they are undoubtedly happy to see this classy Navy support with them as they fa ce the dangerous reaches of the North Atlantic.