St. Johns and the Battle of the Atlantic

Initially, the Royal Navy RN escorted convoys to 22 degrees West, but as sinkings increased in the mid-Atlantic, Britain pushed this to 35 degrees West and occupied Iceland — both to deny it to the Germans and to use it as a refuelling point. On the Canadian side, the RCN, based out of Halifax, could only provide convoy escort as far as the Grand Banks, leaving approximately 2, kilometres for the convoys to travel unescorted, before being picked up by the RN in the Eastern Atlantic.

By establishing a forward base at St. John's, as the British had done in Iceland, the RCN could extend coverage more than kilometres further into the Atlantic. It was comprised of six RCN destroyers and 17 corvettes, alongside seven RN destroyers and four corvettes. The NEF ships would then proceed to St. John's was more than just a base for trans-Atlantic escorts.

Newfoundland required a fairly large mercantile fleet to service the many towns and communities spread out along its considerable shoreline, and steamers sailed regularly to ports in eastern Canada. Before the days of regular air travel to Newfoundland, passenger traffic between Newfoundland and Canada also went by sea. One of the greatest sea disasters in Newfoundland's history occurred on October 14, , when a German submarine sank the North Sydney to Port aux Basques ferry SS Caribou with the loss of lives.

As the main port on the island, St. John's became the assembly point for both local convoys as well as those traveling to and from mainland Canada. The first coastal convoy sailed on January 16, and over the next four months, ships were escorted between St. John's and various ports. Protecting these convoys along their routes was the St. John's-based Newfoundland Defence Force. John's was also the location of the only dry dock and haul-out facilities in Newfoundland until the Bay Bulls naval repair base was completed in We had moved from Fortune Bay to St.

It was a provocative street with a tavern near one It was a provocative street with a tavern near one end — the Cottage Gardens, a well-known watering hole — and a hostel for seniors near the other — the Anchorage, run by the Salvation Army. I remember my father taking me by the hand to that spot, where we stood just outside Dr.

My father, who had been turned down for active service, was a member of the Air Raid Patrol ARP , and in our front porch were his bucket of sand, his stirrup pump for fighting fires they must have been small ones , his arm band, his knapsack, and his brown army helmet. His job, and that of many other men, was to patrol the city checking on suspicious circumstances or events, seeing that lights were properly dimmed in the buildings, and generally helping in civil defence as required.

If there was even a sliver of light coming from under your window blinds there would be a rap on your door and an order from the local air raid warden to douse your lights. My brother, Ron, was born during those war years, perhaps, he suggests presciently, as a result of a blackout. Our own house lights would be dimmed regularly.

I remember the wail of sirens announcing a drill, a chilling sound for a young boy. Immediately, wallboard would be put up to the windows and fastened in place with wooden buttons and the lights doused until the all-clear was sounded. Was it just an exercise or was it the real thing? Was there a submarine in the harbour?

Were there planes overhead? We never knew for sure until we heard the welcome wail at the end of the exercise. Outside in the streets, the lights of the automobiles, still driven on the left, were hooded, their fenders edged with a white band. In fact, the telephone poles had white bands as well in an attempt to prevent pedestrians from knocking their heads during the blackout. Although the Brazilian Navy was small, it had modern minelayers suitable for coastal convoy escort and aircraft which needed only small modifications to become suitable for maritime patrol.

One example was the sinking of U in July , by a coordinated action of Brazilian and American aircraft. By fall , the decreasing number of Allied shipping losses in the South Atlantic coincided with the increasing elimination of Axis submarines operating there. Germany made several attempts to upgrade the U-boat force, while awaiting the next generation of U-boats, the Walter and Elektroboot types.

Among these upgrades were improved anti-aircraft defences, radar detectors, better torpedoes, decoys, and Schnorchel snorkels , which allowed U-boats to run underwater off their diesel engines. A series of battles resulted in fewer victories and more losses for UbW. The Luftwaffe also introduced the long-range He bomber and Henschel Hs guided glider bomb, which claimed a number of victims, but Allied air superiority prevented them from being a major threat.

To counter Allied air power, UbW increased the anti-aircraft armament of U-boats, and introduced specially-equipped " flak boats" , which were to stay surfaced and engage in combat with attacking planes, rather than diving and evading. These developments initially caught RAF pilots by surprise. However, a U-boat that remained surfaced increased the risk of its pressure hull being punctured, making it unable to submerge, while attacking pilots often called in surface ships if they met too much resistance, orbiting out of range of the U-boat's guns to maintain contact. Should the U-boat dive, the aircraft would attack.

Immediate diving remained a U-boat's best survival tactic when encountering aircraft. According to German sources, only six aircraft were shot down by U-flak s in six missions three by U , one each by U , U and U The Germans also introduced improved radar warning units, such as Wanze. To fool Allied sonar, the Germans deployed Bold canisters which the British called Submarine Bubble Target to generate false echoes, as well as Sieglinde self-propelled decoys.

This was initially very effective, but the Allies quickly developed counter-measures, both tactical "Step-Aside" and technical " Foxer ". None of the German measures were truly effective, and by Allied air power was so strong U-boats were being attacked in the Bay of Biscay shortly after leaving port. The Germans had lost the technological race. Their actions were restricted to lone-wolf attacks in British coastal waters and preparation to resist the expected Operation Neptune , the invasion of France.

Over the next two years many U-boats were sunk, usually with all hands. With the battle won by the Allies, supplies poured into Britain and North Africa for the eventual liberation of Europe. The U-boats were further critically hampered after D-Day by the loss of their bases in France to the advancing Allied armies.

Late in the war, the Germans introduced the Elektroboot: Designs were finalised in January but mass-production of the new types did not start until In the first week of May, twenty-three boats were sunk in the Baltic while attempting this journey. The last actions in American waters took place on May 5—6, , which saw the sinking of the steamer Black Point and the destruction of U and U in separate incidents. The last actions of the Battle of the Atlantic were on May 7—8. The remaining U-boats, at sea or in port, were surrendered to the Allies, in total.

Most were destroyed in Operation Deadlight after the war. The Germans failed to stop the flow of strategic supplies to Britain. This failure resulted in the build-up of troops and supplies needed for the D-Day landings. The defeat of the U-boat was a necessary precursor for accumulation of Allied troops and supplies to ensure Germany's defeat. Victory was achieved at a huge cost: During the Second World War nearly one third of the world's merchant shipping was British.

Over 30, men from the British Merchant Navy lost their lives between and More than 2, British ships were sunk. The British officers wore uniforms very similar to those of the Royal Navy. The ordinary sailors, however, had no uniform and when on leave in Britain they sometimes suffered taunts and abuse from civilians who mistakenly thought the crewmen were shirking their patriotic duty to enlist in the armed forces.

To counter this, the crewmen were issued with an 'MN' lapel badge to indicate they were serving in the Merchant Navy. The British merchant fleet was made up of vessels from the many and varied private shipping lines, examples being the tankers of the British Tanker Company and the freighters of Ellerman and Silver Lines. The British government, via the Ministry of War Transport MoWT , also had new ships built during the course of the war, these being known as Empire ships.

In addition to its existing merchant fleet, United States shipyards built 2, Liberty ships totalling More than 70 Canadian merchant vessels were lost. Information obtained by British agents regarding German shipping movements led Canada to conscript all its merchant vessels two weeks before actually declaring war, with the Royal Canadian Navy taking control of all shipping August 26, At the outbreak of the war, Canada possessed 38 ocean-going merchant vessels.

By the end of hostilities, in excess of cargo ships had been built in Canada. U-boats disrupted coastal shipping from the Caribbean to Halifax, during the summer of , and even entered into battle in the Gulf of St.

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Canadian officers wore uniforms which were virtually identical in style to those of the British. Before the war, Norway's Merchant Navy was the fourth largest in the world and its ships were the most modern. The Germans and the Allies both recognised the great importance of Norway's merchant fleet, and following Germany's invasion of Norway in April , both sides sought control of the ships. All Norwegian ships decided to serve at the disposal of the Allies. The vessels of the Norwegian Merchant Navy were placed under the control of the government-run Nortraship , with headquarters in London and New York.

Nortraship's modern ships, especially its tankers, were extremely important to the Allies.

Norwegian tankers carried nearly one-third of the oil transported to Britain during the war. More than 3, Norwegian merchant seamen lost their lives. It is maintained by some historians [ who? Others, including Blair [80] and Alan Levin, disagree; Levin states this is "a misperception", and that "it is doubtful they ever came close" to achieving this. The focus on U-boat successes, the "aces" and their scores, the convoys attacked, and the ships sunk, serves to camouflage the Kriegsmarine 's manifold failures.

In particular, this was because most of the ships sunk by U-boat were not in convoys, but sailing alone, or having become separated from convoys. At no time during the campaign were supply lines to Britain interrupted; even during the Bismarck crisis , convoys sailed as usual although with heavier escorts. Despite their efforts, the Axis powers were unable to prevent the build-up of Allied invasion forces for the liberation of Europe.

This may be the ultimate example of the Allied practise of evasive routing. In and the Allies transported some 3 million American and Allied servicemen across the Atlantic without significant loss. By the USN was able to wipe out in mid-Atlantic with little real difficulty a wolf-pack suspected of carrying V-weapons. Third, and unlike the Allies , the Germans were never able to mount a comprehensive blockade of Britain.

Nor were they able to focus their effort by targeting the most valuable cargoes, the eastbound traffic carrying war materiel. Instead they were reduced to the slow attrition of a tonnage war. In only four out of the first 27 months of the war did Germany achieve this target, while after December , when Britain was joined by the US merchant marine and ship yards the target effectively doubled.

The , ton target was achieved in only one month, November , while after May average sinkings dropped to less than one tenth of that figure. By the end of the war, although the U-boat arm had sunk 6, ships totalling 21 million GRT, the Allies had built over 38 million tons of new shipping. The reason for the misperception that the German blockade came close to success may be found in post-war writings by both German and British authors.

Blair attributes the distortion to "propagandists" who "glorified and exaggerated the successes of German submariners", while he believes Allied writers "had their own reasons for exaggerating the peril". Dan van der Vat suggests that, unlike the US, or Canada and Britain's other dominions, which were protected by oceanic distances, Britain was at the end of the transatlantic supply route closest to German bases; for Britain it was a lifeline. It is this which led to Churchill's concerns.

Other Roles

These were "over-pessimistic threat assessments ", Blair concludes: Historians disagree about the relative importance of the anti-U-boat measures. Max Hastings states that "In alone, Ultra [breaking the German code] saved between 1. Obviously this subdivision of the data ignores many other defensive measures the Allies developed during the war, so interpretation must be constrained. Codebreaking by itself did not decrease the losses, which continued to rise ominously. More U-boats were sunk, but the number operational had more than tripled.

St. John's and the Battle of the Atlantic

The development of the improved radar by the Allies began in , before the United States entered the war, when Henry Tizard and A. Hill won permission to share British secret research with the Americans, including bringing them a cavity magnetron , which generates the needed high-frequency radio waves. Western Approaches , British colour film dramatising the experience of merchant sailors in a lifeboat.

The Enemy Below , film about the captain of an American destroyer escort who matches wits with a German U-boat captain. Das Boot , German film about a German U-boat and its crew. U , film about a U-boat boarded by disguised United States Navy submariners. The battle of the Atlantic also resulted in civilian deaths. Hundreds died at sea as they tried to escape the bombs in England and evacuate to safer countries like Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and India.

Aboard the Cunard passenger liner Athenia were passengers, evacuating from Liverpool to Canada. Despite this, many more ships were torpedoed by German U-boats over the war years, many killing civilians. One of the most famous tragedies was the sinking of SS City of Benares , a ship carrying passengers, of whom were children evacuees.

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The ship was sailing from Liverpool to Canada, but was torpedoed on the 17th September , [93] killing 87 children and adults miles off the coast of Ireland. Not all attacks were as deadly, such as the sinking of the City of Simla , which sunk off the coast of Glasgow en route from London to Bombay, but left only 3 dead and survivors.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. July Learn how and when to remove this template message. German Navy 3-rotor Enigma.

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. The Battle of the Atlantic, — New York, United States: The Last Best Hope, Volume 2: From a World at War to the Triumph of Freedom — National Museum of the Royal Navy.

Admiral Carney was assistant chief of staff and operations officer to Admiral Arthur L. Bristol , commander of the support force of United States ships and planes providing North Atlantic trade convoy escort services. The Battle of the Atlantic The Ever Widening War, Volume 3: Joseph News-Press , Sept 30, Execute Against Japan Ph.

Crowell, ; Milner, Marc. Navy's Mark 14 torpedo. Silent Victory Bantam, , p. Navy's Bureau of Ordnance made identical claims.

War at Sea - Newfoundland's Role

Seekrieg , cit. A World at Total War: Archived from the original on October 1, Retrieved September 1, Battleships of the Scharnhorst Class English language ed. Hitler's Gateway to the Atlantic. German naval bases in France Kindle, English Translation ed. Kindle location — of Retrieved 13 February Retrieved 16 February The Bletchley Park Codebreakers. Eisenhower in War and Peace. Retrieved 4 July Phoebus, , Volume 24, p.

Counting the "Atlantic Ocean" and "Europe [bar Mediterranean]" categories. All hell let loose: The U-Boat war in the Atlantic, — Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Gneisenau was hit by a torpedo on 6 April then bombed again whilst in dry dock, necessitating lengthy repairs, then received minor bomb damage on 18 December. Prinz Eugen was seriously damaged by a bomb on 1 July and was under repair for the rest of the year.

The resulting demands on the dockyard at Brest caused delays in the servicing of U-boats as there was a shortage of workers with the right skills. Retrieved 8 November O Brasil e sua guerra quase desconhecida [ Brazil and its almost Forgotten War ] in Portuguese. Air Power in the Age of Total War. Submarine War against Japan 2nd ed. Still the Only Way. United States Naval Institute Proceedings. Coastal Command at War.

The U-Boat War in the Atlantic: Galloping Ghosts of the Brazilian Coast. Costello, John; Hughes, Terry The Battle of the Atlantic. RAF Coastal Command — Battle of the Atlantic. Kohnen, David Winter The Journal of America's Military Past. Commanders Winn and Knowles: Winning the U-boat War with Intelligence, — A Fresh Look into the Secret Room". In Bolano, Randy C. New Sources in Naval History: In Lee, Loyd E. Lund, Paul; Ludlam, Harry Trawlers Go To War. The Battle of the Atlantic; September — May The organization and order of battle of militaries in WWII. The War at Sea — The War at Sea.