The Battle of the Atlantic 1941-1945

[onejayhawk]

What was the key to the Allied victory?

Some possibilities:
Air cover
Advances in RADAR
Combined arms - Hunter/Killer tactics
German (lack of) adjustments to change

J

 

[Adler17]

That the enigma code was cracked. Otherwise also with the tactics you say the losses would be much higher until the very end.

Adler

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Convoy system.
Allied shipbuilding capacity.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

while not THE cause of the outcome of the Atlantic war, the bombing of refineries and thus inherent lack of oil would have severly hurt the operating capacity of the Kreigsmarine, it did the Luftwaffe

 

[7ronin]

I'm with Adler on this one. Cracking the German codes was critical to winning the Battle of the Atlantic. It could have been done without it, but it would have taken longer and would have been more costly. Stretching out the Battle of the Atlantic probably would have caused the war to last at least another year.

 

[History_Buff]

I'd say the convoy system coupled with direction finding radar detectors probably did the most damage to the German cause. And the lack of German submarines at the beginning of the war.

 

[onejayhawk]

I'd say the convoy system coupled with direction finding radar detectors probably did the most damage to the German cause. And the lack of German submarines at the beginning of the war.

RADAR stands for RAdio Direction And Range, for what that is worth.

Personally I am inclined to agree with the impact of the intelligence from Enigma. Of the other things I mentioned, I think combined arms was the biggest impact. The air/surface coordination was crucial in the latter stages of the war when 1/3 of all men going to sea in a U-boat, died there.

J

 

[Yeeek]

If anyone is interested, as i was born in Brest (western tip coast of France) wich harbored a U-boat base during the war (and is still up today). I could try to get some pictures of the base as of today. You'r not really allowed to take pictures of it because it is still used by the Marine National but if you'r not trying to cover it up its alright its in the town itself anyway.

 

[History_Buff]

RADAR stands for RAdio Direction And Range, for what that is worth.

Personally I am inclined to agree with the impact of the intelligence from Enigma. Of the other things I mentioned, I think combined arms was the biggest impact. The air/surface coordination was crucial in the latter stages of the war when 1/3 of all men going to sea in a U-boat, died there.

J

Should read radio. The Germans would transmit coordinates so they could wolfpack on Convoys, but since the British could pin-point the transmision source, they could then route the convoy's around these wolfpacks.

 

[YNCS]

Huffduff (High Frequency Direction Finder) should not be confused with radar. Huffduff was a radio receiver which, in the hands of a skilled operator, could give a line of bearing on a two second long radio transmission. Two or three ships or stations using Huffduff could often give a location within a mile for a U-Boat making a radio transmission.

 

[nonconformist]

I'd say Allied Air cover, which effectively destroyed the U-boat as a surface vessel during the day, and even night, thanks to RADAR, and the convoy system with ASDIC.

 

[History_Buff]

Although it probably didn't play that big of a role, I did find Hedgehogs, the British Antisubmarine Mortarish weapon rather interesting. Especiallly since in evey piece of media I've seen, you see Allied ships using depth charges.

Care to elaborate on the what you know of the system YNCS?

And did the Allies make any signifigant use of submarines in the Atlantic? I always hear of the role they played against Japan, but nothing in the Atlantic. I assumed it's because Sonar was not developed enough to allow efficient Sub vs. Sub warfare, though I have seen a movie or two with an American submarine in the Atlantic (Could just be Hollywood inventing stuff though).

 

[YNCS]

Prior to the Hedgehog, depth charges were launched from the sides of ASW ships and dropped over the stern. The problem with this was that using sonar (or ASDIC, if you prefer) required the ASW ship to move fairly slowly. I know that in the movies you see the destroyer charging around at high speed. That's just Hollywood. Sonar is degraded by water flow noises. The faster the transmitting ship is moving, the greater the water flow and the more serious the degradation. WW2 sonars were not effective at speeds above about ten knots. Also, sonar transmitters were steerable horizontally but not vertically, so if the angle between the ASW ship and the submarine was greater than about 45º, the ping would miss the sub. Combining the slow speed of the ASW ship and the loss of signal when the ASW ship neared the target meant that there was about a minute between loss of signal and when the ASW ship could drop a depth charge pattern. During that time, the sub would try to move away from the ASW ship to be outside the lethal range of the depth charge pattern. I haven't even touched on WW2 sonar being unable to determine the sub's depth, but that was another major complication to solving the ASW problem.

The Hedgehog (and later Squid) ASW mortars fired charges forward of the bow, while the sub was still being tracked by sonar. In 1946 the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ordnance determined that about 10% of Hedgehog attacks were successful. That doesn't sound like much, unless you know that about 3% of depth charge attacks were successful. Hedgehogs were more than three times more likely to kill a U-Boat than depth charge patterns.

Nowadays, the most successful ASW platform is another submarine. That's due to increased sophistication of both sonars and ASW weapons, primarily wire-guided smart torpedoes like the American MK 48 or the British Tigerfish. During WW2, there were no examples that I know of of a submerged submarine sinking another submerged submarine.

 

[YNCS]

There is a popular misconception that the most efficient WW2 ASW ships were destroyers. They were, in fact, quite outclassed by frigates (called destroyer escorts in the U.S. Navy). The destroyer was designed to defend the battle line from, and similarly attack the enemy's battle line with, torpedoes. Defensively the destroyer required guns and a limited ASW capability. Offensively it required torpedoes and speed, the latter most expensively obtained in regards to space and weight. Its torpedoes were of no use against submarines and its speed was in excess of requirements. On a smaller, cheaper displacement, the frigate provided better ASW capabilities which the destroyer could only match when its torpedo armament and boiler/turbine capacity had been mutilated out of all recognition.

On purely economic grounds, a greater number of smaller, but more ASW efficient, frigates could be built for a given number of destroyers. Using destroyers for ASW work was not optimal in several ways, although the need to do so, particularly in the early part of the war, should be unquestioned. The absence of destroyers denuded the main fleets of their ASW screen, without which they were unable to proceed to sea. On many occasions the battle line was reduced to impotence until sufficient destroyers returned to enable it to be employed.

 

[nonconformist]

I'd just like to chip in a bit to complement YCNS's info about hedgehogs-
Like he said, hedgehogs could be fired while moving fast, and advantages.
It fired a number of (relatively) small charges in an elliptical formation-so you got wide coverage, unlike the depth charge.
Also, it was a contact fuse, not a depth fuse like the depth charges.
The advantages?

1)Sometimes, depth-charges got lodged in the conning tower, or the flak guns and cannon.
Great, if the sub happens to then dive below the right depth, it's going to rip it apart.
If it didn't, though, nothing would happen.
The sub would surface, go full speed, and a brave guy would roll it off the sub.
2) Because it was contact fuse, it would only explode when it hit something, acting, in itself as a detector.
3) One of the problems depth charges had was that they would explode in any case, and throw water everywhere. This would completely destroy ASDIC operationg conditions for maybe 20 seconds. 20 seconds for the sub to go at flank speed, or do a critical turn, allowing the ASDIC the lose them.
With hedgehog, this didn't happen unless a hit was scored, letting ASDIC conditions remain favourable.

 

[dgfred]

If anyone is interested, as i was born in Brest (western tip coast of France) wich harbored a U-boat base during the war (and is still up today). I could try to get some pictures of the base as of today. You'r not really allowed to take pictures of it because it is still used by the Marine National but if you'r not trying to cover it up its alright its in the town itself anyway.

Please do, the more the merrier .