U Boats And Ships example essay topic

The Battle of the Atlantic In the fall of 1931, the Atlantic Ocean was the boiling point of a criminal battle between the British and Germans. Most people think that the Battle of the Atlantic may have decided World War II's outcome. This battle was the dominating factor throughout the war. The Battle of the Atlantic was a violent and destructive battle.

Many people lost their lives fighting in this battle. New technology was one of the major factors in the Allies winning the long and crucial Battle of the Atlantic. Just the Beginning Immediately, the Battle of the Atlantic began when "the British announced a naval blockage of Germany" on September 3, 1939 ("World War II" 391). Eight days later the Germans ordered a "counter-blockage" of the Allies ("World War II" 391). The Germans hoped to stop the shipments of war supplies and food to the countries of France and Britain. After only four months into the war, German U-boats, mines, airplanes, and surface raiders had destroyed more than 215 merchant ships and two of Britain's largest warships.

Over 1,500 people had been killed in this short time. "It was clear that despite the lull on land, a long war lay ahead on the world's water" (Pitt 8). U-Boats Indeed, Hitler's plan to defeat the Allies with U-boats was looking very good. For some unknown reason the Allied ships could not defend against the U-boats. With Hitler in control it looked like the Axis powers were going to drive the Allies out of the Atlantic and win the Battle of the Atlantic. With Hitler taking over most of England, and Great Britain trying to hold the Germans off, the United States decides to send war aid to Britain.

The United States gave the British fifty old American destroyers (Von Der Porten 171). The Happy Time More important, the Allies needed to come up with an effective strategy. Organizing their cargo ships into convoys, or groups for mutual protection was the Allies plan of action. Air patrols helped protect convoys by covering much of their routes (Pitt 129). This strategy caused problems because with all the ships in a convoy, the U-boats could sink them much easier and more at a time. "Wolf Packs", a group of U-boats which was the new strategy that Hitler developed to help in the attack of the Allies convoy.

With this tactic the Germans would attack the Allied ships in different directions using several U-boats (Humble 4). This tactic worked for awhile. "Between July and October, 1940, the U-boats sank 217 ships. Each U-boat sank on the average of eight ships per month" (Sulzberger 191). The Germans would call this "the Happy Time" (Sulzberger 191).

The Bismarck Meanwhile, the Germans launched the Bismarck, which was Germany's most powerful battleship, in 1939. "The Bismarck was the most nearly unsinkable ship of the Battle of the Atlantic. A British fleet with its planes pouring ton after ton of shells and torpedoes into her, could not even send her down" (Sulzberger 195). In May of 1941 the cruiser Dorsetshire hit the Bismarck with three torpedoes. Finally, the Bismarck slowly turned over and sank ("World War II" 195). The Bismarck attack was the turning point for the German forces in the Atlantic.

After her loss the major German warships were inactive. The First One Furthermore, "on October 31, 1941 the Reuben James, a United States destroyer, was torpedoed by a German U-boat" (Bailey and Ryan 205). Reuben James was one of a group of five United States destroyers who was escorting a convoy of forty-four ships. Reuben James was the first American naval vessel to be lost by enemy action in this battle. Only forty-five of the one hundred and sixty men on board survived the battle (Bailey and Ryan 205).

New Weapons and Strategies In addition to all the ships being produced the Americans were also coming up with newer weapons to use against the U-boats. These weapons would be used by both planes and battleships. Some of the aircraft's "were fitted with powerful searchlights, Leigh lights, to spot U-boats on the surface at night" (Humble 12). When World War II started the only weapon available was the depth-charge. During the Battle of the Atlantic warships were fitted with mortars, known as Hedgehog and Squid. "These fired a number of bombs which hit the water in a wide cluster, each exploding on contact with a U-boat" (Humble 13).

"A later aid in hunting for U-boats was narrow beam radar, which could find even the small target of a submarine on the surface" (Humble 13). "There was also a high frequency direction finder which could determine a U-boat's position from the radio signals it sent" (Humble 13). With these new weapons it was looking good for the Allies. Air Attack Equally important, in 1941 the Allies recognized the importance of air attack. They painted the bottom side of planes white making it more difficult for the enemy to see when the planes were flying in the sky. Many planes were also equipped with radar.

"Three of Britain's most effective aerial weapons were the Sunderland amphibian, which carried bombs and depth chargers and bristled with machine guns; the Swordfish biplane, which laid mines, dropped flares, and attacked submarines and surface raiders with torpedoes; and the catapult-equipped merchant ship, which carried a Hurricane fighter that strafed U-boats and ships and attacked German aircraft" (Pitt 129). In fact, the number of sunken ships by U-boats in the Atlantic in 1942 had risen alarmingly. German submarines sank a total of six hundred and eighty-one Allied ships in the first seven months of 1942 (Sulzberger 184). American radar and American planes came to the rescue. Sonar radar was installed in the battleships to improve tracking of the U-boats. "It worked by emitting an underwater ping which sends back an echo if a submarine is detected" (Humble 31).

This new improvement could detect the U-boats in bad weather, underwater, and at night. Planes with radar and homing torpedoes became the deadliest foe to the U-boats. Finally It Has Ended Consequently, "the Battle of the Atlantic reached its climax in the spring of 1943" (Humble 28). For the past 18 months the Germans had been rapidly producing U-boats.

There were more U-boats at sea than at any time since the war began. In October of 1940 the Germans only had 27 U-boats ready for sea. By March 1943 there were 240 U-boats fit for sea (Humble 28). What Germany did lack were trained submariners. With that many U-boats the Germans thought for sure they would win the Battle of the Atlantic. All in all, March of 1943 was the most difficult month of U-boat war for the Allies.

U-boats sank 82 merchant ships (476,349 tons) in this month (Humble 28). British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stated, "Our escorts are everywhere too thin, and the strain upon the British Navy is becoming intolerable" (Humble 28). "The American Navy its hands full with the Japanese war in the Pacific, had few ships to spare for the Battle of the Atlantic" (Humble 28). Finally, the Allies brought together all their methods of fighting U-boats. "They now had hunting groups of new escort warship, trained to work as a team in hunting down and sinking U-boats and they now had long range aircraft to cover the passage of convoys across the Atlantic" (Humble 28). In the first five months of 1943 ninety-six U-boats were lost (Humble 29).

The Germans ordered their surviving U-boats to withdraw from the Atlantic in May 1943 (Von Der Porten 193). Germany lost 28,542 of its 41,300 submarines and 753 of its 863 U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic (Pitt 86). The Allies had won the Battle of the Atlantic. The battle was finally over. The Atlantic Charter After the battle, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met aboard a ship in Argentina Bay, Newfoundland, and drew up the Atlantic Charter (Atlantic Charter 672). The charter stated that (1) neither nation sought any aggrandizement; (2) they desired no territorial changes without the free assent of the peoples concerned; (3) they respected every people's right to choose its own form of government and wanted sovereign rights and self-government restored to those forcibly deprived of them; (4) they would try to promote equal access for all states to trade and to raw materials; (5) they hoped to promote world-wide collaboration so as to improve labor standards, economic progress, and social security; (6) they would look for a peace under which all nations could live safely within their boundaries, without fear or want; (7) under such a peace the seas should be free; and (8) pending a general security through renunciation of force, potential aggressors must be disarmed.

(Atlantic Charter 672) With the help of new technology the Allies were able to come away victorious against Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Battle of the Atlantic was one of the most important fights ever fought in all the annals of war. The Atlantic battle was fought for three years in an ocean over 3,000 miles wide and stretched from the Artic Sea in the north to the south of the Equator. This battle proved the most prolonged and complex battle in the history of naval warfare. The Battle of the Atlantic was also a death battle, because of all the people that died.

Bibliography

Atlantic Charter". The New Encyclopedia Britannica. 1994 ed.
Bailey, Thomas A. and Paul B. Ryan. Hitler vs. Roosevelt. New York: A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979.
Humble, Richard. U-boat. New York: Franklin Watts, 1990.
Pitt, Barrie. The Battle of the Atlantic. Morristown, New Jersey: Time-Life Books Inc., 1966.
Von Der Porten, Edward P. The German Navy in World War II. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969".
World War II". The World Book Encyclopedia. 1964 ed.