Behind the Lines war in the atlantic Britain relied on supplies from overseas especially from the United States Keeping the sea lanes open was essential if Britain was to survive prime minister British British Winston Churchill once wrote The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril U-boats were German submarines Underseeboote or undersea-boats that preyed on transatlantic shipping If Germany gained control of the Atlantic it could starve Britain into surrender and gain control of all of Europe The Longest Battle Begins When Britain entered World War II in 1939 the Royal Navy was the largest navy in the world It had far more warships than the German navy the Kriegsmarine The Germans knew they could not take on the British fl eet in battle Two German U-boats undergo training exercises in the Baltic Sea 6
war in the atlantic Crewmen on a German cruiser watch an Allied merchant ship sink after they have attacked it Instead the Kriegsmarine commander Grand Admiral Erich Raeder decided to sink merchant vessels carrying supplies to Britain Many of the vessels came from North America Raeder deployed warships far out in the Atlantic to intercept them while U-boats patrolled the British coast The Germans also laid mines in Britain’s coastal waters and used long-range maritime aircraft to search for targets POCKET BATTLESHIPS Introduced into service by Germany in the 1930s pocket battleships were fast heavily armed commerce raiders that could overtake and sink merchant ships outgun enemy cruisers and outrun full-size battleships The three German pocket battleships were initially highly effective but the Allies then improved their tactics which removed the German advantage key weapons 7
Behind the Lines key weapons U-BOATS Early in the war U-boats usually hunted alone They only attacked on the surface using their deck guns As more U-boats were built they adopted a tactic of attacking a convoy in a wolf pack of 15 or 20 vessels They attacked together at night from all directions Later in the war faster Allied escort ships and increased naval air power ended the wolf pack threat The Convoy System Hours after Britain declared war on Germany on September 3 1939 the U-30 sank the British passenger liner Athenia with the loss of more than 110 civilians Britain’s response was to adopt a convoy system in which warships escorted groups of merchant ships to protect them from attack The system had fi rst been used in World War I 1914 1918 Aircraft carriers formed patrol groups to hunt for U-boats The British however did not have enough smaller ships which were more effective at hunting U-boats The German U-boats scored a number of victories including penetrating Scapa Flow the Royal Navy’s main base in the A U-boat close to the English coast in 1940 They spent time on the surface when travelling longer distances 8
war in the atlantic Orkney Islands north of Scotland Meanwhile in the South Atlantic and southern Indian Ocean German warships sank 11 merchant ships between September and December 1939 The British chased the German pocket battleship Graf Spee to the River Plate in neutral Uruguay Trapped its captain deliberately sank his ship and killed himself By the end of 1939 the British were holding their own in the North Atlantic Allied losses stood at 114 ships sunk by U-boats and around 80 by mines but these losses were manageable A year later however the British seemed to be losing the Battle of the Atlantic The Kriegsmarine Progresses Following the surrender of Norway and France in June 1940 Germany gained an advantage It now had bases on the Atlantic that increased the reach of its U-boats and made it easier for German long-range aircraft to locate targets The British had meanwhile diverted ships from the Atlantic to combat Adolf Hitler’s planned invasion of England Royal Navy ships now accompanied convoys only up to 200 miles 320 km west of Ireland The U-boats however could hunt up to 700 miles 1,120 km out in the Atlantic This meant they could attack virtually unopposed The German battleship Bismarck fi res shells during the Battle of the Denmark Strait in May 1941 You could see the torpedo’s trail as it knifed through the water toward the helpless Patroclus A massive explosion rocked the ship when the torpedo struck and knocked us off our feet The Patroclus began to list but the U-boat continued to fi re more torpedoes into the doomed ship George Clarke Sailor on HMS Patroclus sunk in November 1940 eyewitness account 9
