Despite ultimate success in the battle, the questions remain: could King have acted sooner-a,nd should he have? million tons short of the shipping they had had at the beginning of that deadly year 1942. 3 Ultimately the Battle of the Atlantic was won, and the invasion of Europe, the knockout blow which the American war leaders had been striving to deliver, could be delivered at Normandy in June 1944. But before this happened, further costly losses were incurred by a failure to concentrate attention and resources on the Battle of the Atlantic. It may be suggested that what went wrong here was a failure to understand the ultimate priority of the Atlantic supply line-a priority clearer to General Marshall throughout the war than it was to Admiral King. Marshall always knew that the punch he was building up could not be delivered if the sea arm couldn't get the troops, weapons and supplies across the ocean in good time and adequate quantity. Beyond that was the over-arching priority of keeping the ex isting contestants, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, in the war. Neither could survive if the Battle of the Atlantic were lost. Still, the focus of Adm. King and his staff was on the Pacific war. The giant and dramatic air-sea battles with the Japanese navy obscured the scattered encounters in the Atlantic between tiny U-boats and plodding merchant ships-a war of small craft and incidents involving a few hundred men on each side. But the Battle of the Atlantic was one upon which the fate of nations and millions of people ultimately depended. ,t Notes: I The Second World War, Vol . rv, by Winston
s. Churchill (Boston, 1950), p. 200. 2 History of United States Naval Operations in World War II , Vol. I, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Boston, 1957), pp. 308309. 3 By Morison 's figures, the Allies had some 29. 7 mi Ilion gross tons available in in January 1942, 28.4 million tons in January 1943.
Each black dot represents a merchant ship loss .
Was This the Battle the Allies Could Not Afford to Lose? In a word, yes. With few exceptions, people writing to Sea History on this question have made it clear that they agree with basic US strategy, which was to support England, and then , after the German invasion ofRussia in June 1941 , Russia, with what was termed "all aid short of war." Ed Hayden, who has studied and written widely on the question of the failure of the United States to be ready for this attempt to cut the Allied nations' jugular, the North Atlantic, points to Max Hastings' observation: "Victory depended on the Allies ' fielding overwhelming resources." To this Hayden adds: "The Allies obtained those overwhelming resources and, in fact, the Russian army was fed through the efforts of those who sailed the convoys, fought U-boats, air attacks, pocket battleships and the cruelest North Atlantic weather in 50 years. To get thi s massive armor and firepower to the Allies and enough food through Murmansk to feed every soldier in the Russian army for the entire war, the Allies lost 2,603 merSEA HISTORY 68, WINTER 1993- 1994
chant ships and 30,248 merchant seamen in The Battle of the Atlantic." Mr. Hayden, in his writings on this subject, has on occasion dealt harshly with Admiral King, as have others who saw the immense resources of the US being turned to other purposes while our people were being slaughtered on the undefended sea lanes on which the agreed strategy of World War II depended. John R. Norris of North Carolina, who served on King's staff, and later in the Pacific, wrote to Sea History to say: "There can be no denying that we were not prepared to provide adequate escorts for shipping as well as troop movements and our carriers. This was partly because we are a democracy and just don't spend enough in peacetime to meet sudden requirements, partly because the General Board was composed of Admirals who lusted for bigger and better capital ships and just didn't give logistics and supply very high priority. In this case Admiral King, when a member of the General Board, did make an urgent request for Hamilton Class Coast Guard
cutters in 1940, but presidential approval could not be obtained. The President felt that smal l patrol boats could be obtained after the start of a war and insisted that construction of anti-submarine vessels be kept on the back burner so as not to delay the capital ship building effort." He also notes: "There was another serious problem that King was faced with-a secret' ABC-1 Staff Agreement' which was adopted on 27 March 1941. It provided that if the United States and Japan enterthe war, the military strategy in the Pacific would be defensive and the United States would not add to its existing fleet. Although I was on King's staff at the time, I knew ofno such agreement at the time. "On 7 July 1942 the President sent King a memo to accelerate the provision ofescorts for convoys. King was upset but replied that it was his goal to get every ship under escort and the US and Great Britain would need about 1000 sea-going escort vessels such as DEs or corvettes. He said he would continue to do his best." We' II look at more of Admiral King's strategy in our next issue, and wi ll cite more readers' views.
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