Battle of the Atlantic

The problems troops faced, getting supplies, etc.

·       The Battle of the Atlantic- ran from 1939-1945, and was the longest continuous military campaign of WWII  
·         Hitler ordered submarine raids against American ships after the attack on Pearl Harbor 

·         Germans aimed to prevent food and war supplies from reaching Great Britain and the Soviet Union
·        Britian needed over a million tons of imported material
·         Hitler knew Britain depended on supplis from sea, so if he cut the 'lifeline', then Britain would be starved into submission

·        Germans saw uprotected American ships as an easy target

·        In the first 4 months of 1942, Germans sank 87 ships off Atlantic shore

·         681 allied ships in the Atlantic destroyed by German wolf packs 7 months into the next year
·          The Allies were in the lead for the battle, but 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships were sunk for the loss of 783 U-Boats

·        Allies responded by organizing cargo ships into convoys.* These convoys sailed with destroyer shops equipped with sonar.

·       U-Boats were also detected near the surface by the airplane radars. The allies were now able to be spotted and German U-Boats were destroyed faster than they could be made. 
·        The allies lost 30,248 merchant sailers and the Germans lost 28,000 sailors.

·         Spring of 1943, Admiral Karl Doenitz, the commander of the German U-Boats, said that his losses had "reached an unbearable height."

·       Early 1943, 140 Liberty ships were produced each month- launched by a crash shipbuilding program. The more produced, the more it outnumbered the sunk ships. 

·         The Battle of the Atlantic had turned by mid-1943. Churchill was happy to report to the House of Commons that June “was the best month (at sea) from every point of view we have ever known in the whole 46 months of the war.”
                         
                             *Convoys- groups of ships traveling together for mutual protection