U-BOATS...the Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic was the most drawn out campaign of the
whole war and lasted without pause or let up from 1939 to 1945.
During the course of that time, millions of tons of Allied shipping
and scores of thousands of Allied sailors were destroyed by the
`wolfpacks` of the German kreigsmarine - the U-Boats.

Opening hostilities on the very first day of the war, the battles
at sea raged throughout the so-called phony war on the land, and 
at first the German U-boats had it all their own way. This was the
so-called first `Happy Time` of the U-boats and lone Allied merchantmen
were easy prey for the submarines plying the trade routes of the North 
Atlantic and the West African coast. Ship after ship went down until
Britain was in crisis by March 1941.

In 1941, a number of developments helped to start to turn the tide
against the U-boat menace.One was the installation of night radar
on many ships which allowed the detection of surfacing U-boats.
Another was the cracking of the German `Home waters` code which also
allowed for allied shipping to be directed away from U-boat pack
concentrations.

With the arrival of Lend-Lease, Britain gained many old destroyers
from the US and although not in a brilliant condition,many were
refitted and took over escort duty. Canadians and American ships
also started to escort convoys through the north Atlantic, whilst
RAF and Canadian Air Force planes started to provide much better
air cover.

The convoy system too become much more sophisticated, and interlocking
convoys could thorugh up a massive defence against raiding U-boats.

With the advent of the US into the war in December 1941, the U-boats
entered the period of their second `Happy Time` with raids playing
havoc along the ES eastern coastline, the Gulf of Mexico and the
Caribbean. The arctic convoys taking badly needed supplies to
the port of Murmansk in north Russia also suffered badly.

In the closing stages of the war, new super U-boats were heading
for the production lines, though wether they would have made a
great deal of difference at that stage of the war is open to
debate.

In the end however, superior allied technology and allied tactics
won the day. Britain did come close in 1940/41 to suffering
economic strangulation at the hands of the German submarines, but
in May 1945, the surviviing U-boats sailed home to defeat and 
capture having fought a long and very lethal fight indeed.