The Battle of the Atlantic.

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The Battle of the Atlantic

During WWII, the Germans attempted to force Britain into surrender by preventing vital supplies from reaching her across the Atlantic Ocean. Explain why by mid 1943, the British had gained the upper hand in the Atlantic.

The Battle of the Atlantic was a key event in deciding the outcome of WWII. The Atlantic was Britain’s lifeline, the only route to the great ‘factory’ that was the USA with it’s vast production capabilities.  British control of the Atlantic was essential in order to sustain supplies. German superiority in the Atlantic would have deprived Britain of commodities, starving her into almost certain surrender and prevented American access to mainland Europe in 1944.

Germany’s main weapon here was the U-boat, a craft capable of travelling above or below water. It was treated mainly as a surface craft as below water it operated at greatly reduced speed and relied on battery power. It dived only to infiltrate and attack convoys or to evade enemies and was a formidable weapon armed with torpedoes capable of sinking a ship with a single hit. It was virtually invisible to the naked eye when surfaced, as the deck only just broke the waterline and was grey in colour. U-boats mainly targeted merchant as opposed to battleships with the objectives of destroying vital British imports and reducing the cargo capacity of the British merchant navy.

In the early war years the U-boat fleet was very successful, sinking 36% of the British merchant fleet between June 1940 and December 1941. As the number of U-boats grew, sinkings increased, peaking in 1942 when 1159 merchant ships were lost, halving the pre-war level of British imports and bringing Britain to the brink of defeat. However, Britain began to retaliate and by mid 1943 had gained the upper hand in the Atlantic. There were several reasons allowing the British to reduce the U-boat peril, each of varying significance, and these are outlined below.  

In the early years of the war, escort ships were unable to give adequate warnings of a U-boat’s presence. The only means of detecting a U-boat, other than the human eye, that the escorts possessed was ASDIC, which located the U-boat by bouncing sound waves off its hull. This was only useful when the U-boat was under the water and as generally, U-boats only submerged to attack, by the time ASDIC detected a U-boat the convoy was already in danger. ASDIC gave no advance warning of a U-boat and thus there was no opportunity to reroute a convoy away from the danger. However, advances in technology meant that by 1942 the escorts would have several more means of detection.

One such method was radar. By May 1942, 236 ships carried centimetric radar, an accurate radar using a wavelength of 10cm and able to detect a U-boat at a distance of several miles. This was important because it allowed convoys to make a course away the U-boat but more significantly it enabled escorts to home in and attack. Another ‘ace’ that the British had up their sleeve was HF/DF (High Frequency Direction Finder or ‘Huff-Duff). This detected U-boat radio transmissions thereby estimating their position and could often detect U-boats out of the range of radar. As U-boats generally operated in packs there was usually considerable radio ‘chatter’ between them. HF/DF could detect this and allow convoys to move away from the danger areas and escorts to find their targets. The British also used aircraft in the search for U-boats, fitting them with radar and another new piece of equipment, the Leigh light. This was a powerful searchlight used for operations at night. It was very useful because it allowed the U-boat, virtually invisible to the naked eye at night, to be seen clearly.

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All the advances in technology made by the British ensured that U-boats could be detected much earlier than was possible at the start of the war. This allowed appropriate offensive or evasive action to be taken efficiently. Also, the measures to track U-boats allowed the British command to plot their positions throughout the Atlantic. The new technology helped to swing the Battle of the Atlantic in Britain’s favour by making the previously invisible U-boats visible and can be considered as a very significant reason for Britain’s success in the Atlantic.

In addition, new weapons were developed to attack U-boats. One ...

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