Battle of the Atlantic PDF

Battle of the Atlantic Wolfpack vs Convoy Empire and Supplies The British government was in desperate need of food, fuel and men to continue the war effort. The British Empire responded with mass fleets of supplies moving to Britain across the Atlantic. Most of these shipments came from Canada and...

Battle of the Atlantic Wolfpack vs Convoy Empire and Supplies The British government was in desperate need of food, fuel and men to continue the war effort. The British Empire responded with mass fleets of supplies moving to Britain across the Atlantic. Most of these shipments came from Canada and Newfoundland until the U.S joined them in 1942. The Canadian Navy Canada actually had very few ships for war in this time period and so they embarked on a massive building campaign. The ship they focused on was the Corvette a destroyer type ship. By 1940 Canada had over 70 ships patrolling the Atlantic, not including merchant ships. By the End of the War Canada would have the world’s third largest Navy. By 1943 Canada was running ½ of the escort duty across the Atlantic and by 1944 it was running all of it. The Convoy system The British defaulted to a convoy system of supplies, similar to what happened in WWI. Large flotilla’s of ships would collect together, protected on the exterior by Battleships and Destroyers. It was the hope that a collected mass of shipping would be safer to transverse the Atlantic than lone ships vulnerable to attack. Bismarck The Germans had little in the way of surface ships that could challenge the might of the British fleet, this was the weakest part of German war preparations. They had very few ships or subs to start the war. Learning their lessons from WWI the Germans built very few Battleships and focused their efforts on Submarines. The only notable Battleship to be created was the Bismarck, which was named after the man who unified Germany. During the War the British hunted this ship down and sunk it for revenge against some of their own ships. Wolfpack German Sub captains were often alone. They went out into the Atlantic and searched for convoys. If they found one they had 2 options. Rise and attack either from the exterior or interior of the convoy, or they could signal other U-Boats to come together and form a Wolfpack. This stronger collection of U-Boats was usually very devastating on Allied Convoys. Air Gap U-boats were particularly susceptible to aerial attack but the planes of the time period did not have long enough range to make a great impact until 1944, when they could finally fly half way out into the ocean and make it back safely. Major launching points left a great aerial void in the Atlantic that ended up being the most dangerous area to cross. Aircraft Carrier Aerial attacks became more important with the integration of the aircraft carrier in 1944. These ships quickly overshadowed Battleships as the most important offensive naval unit. They could carry multiple planes that could be launched from the decks and retrieved for reuse, unlike their WWI counterparts that used catapults to launch planes but not retrieve them. Mines A great deal of the world’s Oceans were mined in this time period. Floating bombs were placed just under the water by both sides hoping to have a ship stray into the danger. The Allied mines often were sunk low enough that their ships can pass over head but a submarine would be sunk. A great many ships were sunk on both sides around the British Isles and Denmark by these mines. The ULTRA program to crack ENIGMA The German Navy relied on Enigma just like the German Air force and every other branch of government or military service. They truly believed the code was unbreakable. Thanks to Polish refugees who had been working on the code in the 1930’s, Britain by 1940 Britain was well on their way to fully cracking the Diplomatic and Air force Enigma Code but they had had little success with the German Naval code. During the Battle of Britain the ULTRA program out of Bletchley Park managed to crack the Lufftwaffa code and informed Dowding (Stuffy) on the location of many raids. It is believed that Churchill sacrificed the city of Coventry to bombing in order to protect the secret that they had cracked this code. Britain believed that the key to winning the battle of the Atlantic was to break the Kriegsmarine Enigma cipher in order to know at all times where the U-Boats were and what were their orders. Operation PRIMROSE In May of 1941 British intelligence Operation PRIMROSE captured the Enigma code book off of U-110. This allowed the code breakers at Bletchley park to see some of the German communications and learn how they encode their system. The naval code was reset multiple times from 1939-1943 and each time the code breakers needed to re-crack the code. One of the biggest challenges was when a 4th wheel was added to the machine. Each time the code was reset the code breakers became faster at breaking it. In 1943 the German navy never reset Enigma and the shipping losses shifted from more British ships sunk to more U-Boats sunk. This also came at a time when a new radar was developed that was better at tracking down submarines. Despite this fact the German naval command never suspected that their codes had been broken.