by Clay Blair
The nearly seven hundred aircraft of the frontline units listed here include about 275 capable of long-range and/or very-long-range missions:
138 Catalinas/Cansos
48 Sunderlands
42 B-24 Liberators
36 B-17 Flying Fortresses
12 Halifaxes
U.S. East Coast/Bermuda2
VP31 USN 12PBY-5ACatalinas3
VP74 USN 12 PBM-1 Mariners4
VP82 USN 12PBO-lHudsons5
VP92 USN 12PBY-5ACataIinas6
VP93 USN 12PBY-5ACatalinas7
VP94 USN 12PBY-5ACatalinas8
PZ11 USN 8 Blimps
PZ12 USN 8 Blimps
PZ14 USN 8 Blimps
PZ21 USN 15 Blimps9
28 USAAF10 B-25s Westover, Massachusetts
7 USAAF B-18s Long Island, New York
11 USAAF B-25s. Dover, Delaware
12 USAAF B-17s Langley, Virginia
2 USAAF B-18s Langley, Virginia
15 USAAF B-34sn Langley, Virginia
10 USAAF A-29s Cherry Point, North Carolina
14 USAAF DB-7Bs Jacksonville, Florida
Newfoundland/Nova Scotia
5 RCAF 12 Cansos12
10 RCAF 12 Digbys13
11 RCAF 12 Hudsons
113 RCAF 12 Hudsons
116 RCAF 12 Catalinas
117 RCAF 12 Cansos
119 RCAF 12 Hudsons
145 RCAF 12 Hudsons
162 RCAF 12 Cansos
VP 84 USN 12 PBY-5A Catalinas14
Iceland
330 RAF 6 Catalinas and 6 Northrop float planes (Norwegian-manned)
269 RAF 20 Hudsons
120 USN 6 B-24 Liberators
VP 73 USN 12 Catalinas 15
Hebrides
58 RAF 20 Whitleys (reequipping with Hlalifaxes)
206 RAP 12 B-17s
228 RAF 12 Sunderlands
Northern Ireland
120 RAF 3 B-24s
201 RAF 12 Sunderlands
220 RAF 12 B-17s
Faeroes
210 RAF 12 Catalinas
Northwest Scotiand
48 RAF 20 Hudsons
179 RAF 6 Wenlingtons
162 RAF 8 Whitleys
Southern England
51 RAF 20 WhitHeys
77 RAF 20 Whitleys
172 RAF 10 Wellingtons
304 RAF 16 Wellingtons (Polish-manned)
311 RAF 16 Wellingtons (Czech-manned)
461 RAAF 12 Sunderlands
500 RAF 20 Hudsons
502 RAF 12 Halifaxes
1016 OTU 8 Whitleys
Gibraltar
224 RAF 12 B-24s179
202 RAF 12 Catalinas
233 RAF 12 Hudsons
48 RAF 12 Hudsons
EQUIPPINIGN SOUTHER ENGLAND:
PREPARING TO LEAVE THE U.S. FOR MOROCCO(TORCH)BUT DIVERTED TO ENGLAND:
USAAF 9 B-24s
ASW 2 USAAF 22 16-24s
_______________
1. Sources: War Diary, USN, ESF, September-December 1942; War Diary, USN Fleet Air Wing 7; War Diary, USN Fleet Air Wing 15; USN Administrative Histories No. 44 and No. 142; British Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports, September and October 1942; Craven and Cate, vols. 1 and 2; Douglas, vol. 2 (1986); Morison, vol. 1,
2. American ASW air units assigned to operational control of the Eastern Sea Frontier (ESF) completed training and/or reequipping with new aircraft and were held in place or transferred. Generally speaking, in September 1942, the ESF controlled about three hundred combat-ready ASW aircraft (186 Navy, 112 USAAF) and twenty-four blimps. The naval aircraft included twenty-four PBY-5A Catalinas or PBM-1 Mariners; the Army aircraft included about twenty-four B-17s and B-18s.
3. Activated 10/15/42; based in Rhode Island and North Carolina.
4. Reequipping with PBM-3C Mariners, a new but much-delayed and unsatisfactory aircraft. In spring 1943, the squadron was transferred to Brazil,
5. These Hudsons 3 had been diverted from an allotment for the RAF. Squadron reequipped with Catalinas, then PV-1 Venturas. Returned to Argentia with Catalinas when reequipped with PV-3s, redesignated VB 125 on 11/16/42.
6. Transferred to Morocco on 11/13/42 for Torch.
7. Reequipped with PV-1 Venturas and redesignated VB 126.
8. Based in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.
9. Activated 11/1/42 in Florida.
10. The designation of Army Air Forces ASW groups and squadrons changed too frequently in the fall of 1942 to identify here. Generally speaking, the ESF exercised operational control of about one dozen squadrons of USAAF Bombardment Groups 2 and 13. The locations, numbers, and types of ASW aircraft units shown remained fairly constant.
11. The B-34 was the USAAF version of the USN PV-1 Ventura, an upgraded Hudson. However, it was not a satisfactory aircraft. The USAAF also based at Langley the ASW R&D Sea-Search Attack Development Unit (SADU), comprising the 1st Attack Group, 2nd Attack Squadron, and 3rd Attack Squadron.
12. Canadian version of the USN Catalina.
13. Canadian version of the USAAF B-18.
14. At Argentia. Transferred to Iceland 10/29/42. Replaced in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia by Catalina Squadrons VP 82 and VP 93.
15. Transferred to Northern Ireland 10/29/42, thence to Morocco on 11/13/42 for Torch. Replaced in Iceland by VP 84.
16. RAF Operational Training Unit, Bomber Command, at St. Eval.
APPENDIX 11
THE LONG- AND VERY-LONG-RANGE ALLIED ASW AIRCRAFT SITUATION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
(BY TYPES AND SQUADRONS, MARCH 1943)1
Generally, historians and authors of the Battle of the Atlantic substantially understate the numbers of Allied ready or near ready long- and very-long-range ASW aircraft in the North Atlantic area. Assuming an aircraft with a combat radius of at least five hundred nautical miles to be “long range” for ASW purposes, a reliable figure is sixty-one squadrons comprised of 732 aircraft. Although many units were in transfer, working up, or otherwise in flux, the following is a reasonable snapshot of the situation for March 1943 by aircraft type, squadron, and location.
APPENDIX 12
ATLANTIC FORCE U-BOATS THAT ABORTED PATROLS
JANUARY I-JUNE 30, 19431
The horrendous loss of U-boats sailing to the North Atlantic in the first half of 1943 (eighty-six)2 has been documented in this volume (see Appendix 2) and in other publications. Although seldom mentioned, in this same period, eighty-three other U-boats were forced to abort patrols and return to French bases. Seven of these patrolled for fifty days or more, a normal outing for a Type VII, so patrol days lost was not a significant factor. However, the patrol days lost by the other seventy-six aborting boats was another noteworthy setback for the Atlantic U-boat force. Quite a few of these U-boats incurred heavy battle damage and were in repair for extended periods, a further loss of patrol days. Almost every abort shown here was a nerve-racking experience for the crew. In a few instances, crewmen were killed or wounded. The aborting boats were:
APPENDIX 13
ALLIED HEAVY-BOMBER RAIDS ON U-BOAT FACILITIES1
1943-1944
In January 1943, RAF Bomber Command and the newly established American Eighth Air Force commenced an intense, two-year bombing campaign against the U-boat bases in France and the U-boat building yards in Germany. As shown in the figures below, in the first three months of 1943 on about 5,000 sorties Allied bombers dropped about 12,000 tons of bombs. These aircraft leveled French seaports and damaged German cities but had no notable success against the U-boat pens and building yards. In this same three months, RAF Bomber Command in about 550 sorties also planted about 900 mines off the French bases and assisted the RAF Coastal Command offshore antisubmarine patrols in about 600 sorties. The mines probably sank one U-boat, U-526; the Bomber Command antisubmarine patrols produced no kills.
APPENDIX 14
AMERICAN DESTROYER ESCORT (DE) PRODUCTION1
JANUARY I-JULY I, 1943
Designed
specifically for open-ocean convoy escort, the urgently needed American destroyer escort (or DE) building program was postponed or delayed time and time again in 1942 by President Roosevelt, who assigned higher priorities to the merchant-ship and landing-craft building programs. As a result, the first two American-built DEs were not commissioned until January 20, 1943. As shown below, in the first half of 1943, January to June inclusive, fifty-five DEs were commissioned in U.S. shipyards in six different states. Of the first fifty-five ships, twenty-one were sent directly to the Pacific, five were assigned to ASW schools, and seven were transferred to the Royal Navy, leaving only twenty-two of the American DEs in the Atlantic, of which six were converted to fast transports (APDEs). By war’s end, American yards had completed 565 DEs in six classes, of which seventy-eight were transferred to the Royal Navy and twelve to other navies. The preferred version was a 306-foot vessel of 1,400 tons with a top speed of twenty-one knots and sufficient fuel capacity to cross the Atlantic nonstop.2
APPENDIX 15
SPECIAL OIL AND TROOPSHIP CONVOYS FOR TORCH AND THE BRITISH ISLES
1943-1944
To supply Torch operations with oil, gasoline, and other petroleum products, in early 1943 the Allies established a special tanker-convoy system running between the Americas and North Africa. The first two of these convoys, which sailed from Trinidad in January 1943, were British: the 8.5-knot “slow” TM 1 (nine tankers), escorted by a British destroyer and three corvettes, and the twelve-knot “fast” TMF 2 (five tankers), escorted by three British destroyers. U-boats found and devastated TM 1, sinking seven of nine tankers; TMF 2 was not attacked. Thus the casualty rate in these British operations was seven of fourteen tankers, or 50 percent.
In February 1943, the U.S. Navy assumed full responsibility for these convoys, which were redesignated superfast (14.5-knot) OT (Oil for Torch). OT 1 (four tankers) and OT 2 (five tankers) sailed from Aruba on 2/5 and 2/20, respectively, each with an escort group of three American destroyers. Commencing in May 1943, when these tankers and escorts returned to Aruba, they reloaded, sailed in a “shuttle” to New York, unloaded cargoes into an “oil pool,” and returned to Aruba to reload for another transatlantic voyage to Africa. Subsequently the oil in the New York pool was transshipped to the British Isles in tankers sailing on the North Atlantic run.
The OT convoys increased in size to an average of about seven tankers and sailed about once a month. In all of 1943, seventy-six fast tankers in eleven OT convoys reached Gibraltar, made the return voyage, and the round-trip shuttle to New York, with no losses inflicted by the enemy. In June 1944, the Allies terminated this system with OT 15, and thereafter these fast tankers sailed in the Middle Atlantic UGF convoys. The four OT convoys that sailed in 1944 consisted of an aggregate of thirty-six ships. Again, there were no losses. Altogether, between February 1943 and June 1944, 112 fast tankers in fifteen U.S. Navy OT convoys sailed to Gibraltar and returned without a loss.
In response to pleas from London for a great increase in oil shipments in order to rebuild shrinking stocks, to sustain the swelling strategic bombing campaign against Germany, and to prepare for Overlord, in March 1943 the Allies established a special convoy system, CU, running between Curacao and the United Kingdom. Composed initially of twelve fast (“Greyhound”) tankers per convoy, escorted by six or seven American destroyers, these special 14.5-knot oil convoys sailed about once a month for Liverpool and returned to Curacao. Like the OT convoys, these tankers also reloaded for a shuttle run to the “oil pool” in New York and then returned to Curacao to reload for another transatlantic voyage to Liverpool.
The first convoy of the new CU UC system, designated UC 1, left the British Isles in mid-February 1943. Composed of thirty-two westbound vessels (seventeen tankers in ballast, fifteen freighters), it was commanded by a British commodore and was escorted by a mix of nine British and American destroyers. U-boats attacked UC 1 west of the Canary Islands on February 22-23, sinking three tankers and damaging two. Thereafter the U.S. Navy assumed full responsibility for CU UC convoys. CU 1 (nine tankers) departed Curacao on March 20 with an escort of American destroyers and reached the British Isles without any losses, as did CU 2, 3,4, and 6. Commencing with CU 7, the intervening round-trip New York shuttle was discontinued. CU 5, 7, 8, and 9 sailed Curacao-New York-Liverpool separately from Slow and Halifax convoys on the North Atlantic run. Altogether, nine CU UC convoys, comprised of 163 tankers, sailed from the Caribbean and New York to the British Isles in 1943 with the loss of three tankers. In 1944, forty-three CU convoys, comprised of 2,842 ships, sailed from Curacao to New York to Liverpool and the reverse. Two tankers and one destroyer escort (Leopold) were lost in that year.
Beginning on August 21, 1943, the Allies, building up for Overlord, inaugurated a new fast troopship-convoy system running between New York and the British Isles, designated UT. To April 6, 1944, eleven 15-knot UT convoys, comprised of a total of 271 troopships (an average eighteen ships and ten escorts each in 1943 and about twenty-five ships and thirteen escorts each in 1944) transported 592,041 troops across the ocean with ho losses.1
As D day for Overlord, June 6, 1944, approached, the CU (oil) and UT (troop) convoys from New York were temporarily merged: CU 23 absorbed UT 12 to become TCU 23; CU 24 absorbed UT 13 to become the two-section TCU 24A and TCU 24B; CU 28 absorbed UT 14 to become TCU 28; CU 30 absorbed UT 17 to become TCU 30; CU 33 absorbed UT 19 to become TCU 33; and CU 35 absorbed UT 21 to become TCU 35. After July 1944, the merging of these convoys was terminated and each system reacquired its independence.
From April 1944 to May 1945 (V-E Day) UT and TCU convoys delivered 945,261 troops to Europe.
To recap the numbers of loaded ships and losses in these sailings, eastbound only:
APPENDIX 16
THE TOP TWENTY U-BOAT SKIPPERS1
1939-1945
German U-boat skippers sank about 2,900 Allied ships of about 14.6 million gross tons in World War II. Twenty skippers accounted for about 20 percent of all sinkings and about 23 percent of the tonnage. In detail:
1 Sources: Tarrant (1989); Rohwer, Successes (1983).
APPENDIX 17
THE TOP TWENTY U-BOATS1
1939-1945
APPENDIX 18
APPENDIX 19
APPENDIX 20
ALLIED AND NEUTRAL SHIPS AND TONNAGE SUNK BY GERMAN AND ITALIAN SUBMARINES IN WORLD WAR II
SEPTEMBER 1, 1942-MAY 8, 19451
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND SOURCES
This history is based on eleven years of continuous research in archives and published works. For the German side, it relies heavily on the daily war diaries of German naval headquarters in Berlin and U-boat headquarters at various locations, and on the war diaries (or patrol reports) of individual U-boats. For the Allied side, it relies heavily on after-action reports from convoys and from warships and aircraft that tangled with U-boats, on interrogation reports of captured German and Italian submariners, and on codebreaking documents in London and Washington.
The war diaries of the various U-boat commands, amounting to thousands of pages (most translated into English) are immensely detailed. They include sailing and return dates and daily positions (known and assumed) of all U-boats on patrol, names, composition and action of groups (“wolf packs”), sightings, chases and sinkings of Allied ships, battle damage or mechanical breakdowns incurred, information regarding offensive and defensive weapons, and assessments of strategy and tactics by Karl Dönitz and others. Using these diaries and confirmed Allied ship losses to U-boats as compiled by others, a mass of newly released intelligence documents derived from the German naval Enigma decrypts, and data from other sources, including individual U-boat war diaries and interviews with captains and crewmen, it has been possible to re-create almost all significant features of the patrols of virtually all the U-boats.
Although this study is based for the most part on primary documents—war diaries, after-action reports, unit histories, and the like—I have, of course, consulte
d published sources. These vary quite widely in authenticity, reliability, and literary quality. Those I found of greatest merit include the official and semiofficial Allied war histories; all the writings of the esteemed German scholars Professor Jürgen Rohwer, Eberhard Rössler, Jak Mallmann Showell, and Axel Niestlé as well as the works of Günther Hessler and Karl Dönitz. Also of special notice are the works of the British authors Geoffrey P. Jones and Norman L. R. Franks, who have diligently probed official British archives to record specific U-boat kills by British and other Commonwealth air and naval forces. For equally competent and reliable research of this type, the American authors Philip K. Lundeberg, William T. Y’Blood, and Max Schoenfeld and the Canadian authors W.A.B. Douglas, Michael L. Hadley, and Marc Milner must be mentioned.
Herr Horst Bredow, director of the impressive Stiftung Traditionsarchive Unterseeboote in Cuxhaven, Germany, provided much general help as well as background and specific documents of great value. One is a list (in booklet form) of all German U-boats built in World War II. The data for each boat include type, place of construction, dates of launching and commissioning and assignment to battle-front flotilla (or schools, and so on), skippers and dates they commanded, and final fate of boat and crew. Another document is a compilation of Allied warships and merchant ships that were sunk by each U-boat, broken down by skippers of those individual U-boats. Herr Bredow also helped arrange our interviews with German U-boat veterans.
The most tedious and exacting challenge in this work was the compilation of accurate lists of Allied ships sunk by U-boats and, conversely, U-boats sunk by the Allies. Many such lists published in earlier years, including official government lists, are not accurate. In more recent times, British, German, and other scholars have vetted and published these lists and continue to vet them as new information comes to light. For ships sunk by U-boats, we have, of course, relied on the 1983 edition of Professor Rohwer’s indispensable Axis Submarine Successes 1939-1945. Regrettably, a new (1998) edition was not available in time for us to consult, but it definitely should be used by others who study this period of history. For U-boats sunk by the Allies, we have relied on the first (1998) edition of German U-boat Losses During World War II, by Axel Niestlé, a work of awesome detail and accuracy and therefore also indispensable.