Their opponents, on the other hand, learned quickly, and invented tactics and weapons that countered the U-boats, most of which were little different to those in service in 1939. High-frequency direction-finding sets were made small enough to go into ships, and these gave a more exact position for immediate tactical response. Radar improved and it was used more skilfully from ships and from aircraft. Land-based aircraft flew from Newfoundland, Iceland and Britain to provide better and more effective air cover. Escort carriers – their decks built upon merchant ship hulls – brought aircraft to eliminate any last ‘gaps’ in the ocean.
Technical developments contributed to the Allied success but (senior officers on both sides say) the German U-boat arm liked to declare that Enigma intercepts, radar or HF/DF decided the war because these allowed them an excuse for losing. For many postwar years the British over-emphasized the role that HF/DF had played. This was a way of keeping their Enigma work secret. Once the Enigma secret was out, the contribution of Bletchley Park was in turn exaggerated.
In the final year of war, the U-boat arm became worn out and demoralized. These men, more than any other Germans, were provided with evidence that Germany could never win. On every operational mission they encountered bigger and better convoys of new ships stacked high with shiny new tanks and planes. They faced tired but highly motivated and ever more expert Allied seamen who knew they were winning. The German sailors, at sea for many weeks, became concerned about what was happening to their friends and families in the cities under Allied air attack by night, and later by day too. As the Russians started their remorseless advance the U-boat men had new worries about what was happening to their families in cities overrun by the vengeful Red Army.
It was German policy to send conscripts (draftees) into the submarines. This was a mistake. The policy in most other navies was to use only tested volunteers in this specialized warfare. And while RN training improved and became more practical as time went on, the U-boat training schools in the Baltic remained out of touch with the latest anti-submarine techniques, and even the sea conditions of the Atlantic. Shortages of men caused U-boat trainees to be posted to operational duties even when instructors had doubts about their ability. Half-trained men made less expert and less resolute adversaries; they also were crippled and killed by the remorseless ocean. Some fell down companionways, others lost their fingers in machinery and still more were swept overboard and never seen again. Towards the end U-boat crews were no longer singing old songs like ‘Denn wir fahren gegen Engeland’ but cynical ditties about the failings of the mechanisms they operated and about the radar that hunted them. A German historian acknowledges: ‘The men knew that they were beaten and that their end was inevitable …’17
Yet the U-boat as a weapon was certainly not defeated. The schnorchel (anglicized as snorkel) enabled the diesel engines to breathe air while the submarine remained just below the surface. Postwar trials showed that 94 per cent of U-boats using the snorkel went undetected by airborne radar. The German Type XXI U-boats could go 300 miles on electric motors while remaining totally submerged. Added to this there were some remarkable target-seeking torpedoes: ones that homed on engine noise and others that turned and (programmed for the forward speed of the target) made run after run until they hit something or exhausted their propellant. But such devices were gimmicks rather than innovations.
The Allied sea lanes were kept open because in the long run there were enough ships built, and enough brave men to man them. Britain’s merchant service had gone through bad interwar years but during the war seamen were formed into a ‘pool’ by means of the ‘Essential Work Order’ of May 1941. This brought permanent engagement and regular pay. Crew accommodation in many ships was squalid, dirty, unhealthy and cramped, and would have horrified any factory-inspector. Yet during the war Britain’s Shipping Federation was receiving a hundred letters a day from boys (16 was the minimum recruiting age) asking for a job afloat.
When war began Britain’s merchant service included 45,000 men from the Indian sub-continent (including Pakistan) and over 6,000 Chinese, as well as many Arabs. When it ended, the Official History says, 37,651 men had died as a direct result of enemy action, and the true total, including deaths indirectly due to war, was 50,525.
The U-boat war was no doubt difficult and dangerous, and the German navy lost 27,491 men out of approximately 55,000.18 Perhaps the most important figure – and the most surprising – is that less than 50 per cent of all U-boats built got within torpedo range of a convoy. Of the 870 U-boats that left port on operational trips, 550 of them sank nothing.
The sea has always attracted men from far and wide. On the escorts there were Dutchmen, Free French, Poles, Norwegians, Americans and many Canadians. The Atlantic convoys were not the worst perils the sailors faced: those convoys to Murmansk saw ships labouring under tons of ice and attacked constantly from German bases in Norway. Convoys through the Mediterranean to Malta were equally hazardous.
Ultimately it was the vast resources of the United States of America which decided the outcome. Using the techniques of mass-production, American shipyards proved able to build a freighter in five days! Despite the war in the Pacific, the US spared carriers, escorts and aircraft to supplement British and ever-growing Canadian naval forces in the Atlantic. Soon there would be US armies to be supplied in Europe and North Africa. During a war of unprecedented supply lines and unprecedented amphibious operations, a war in which every front demanded more and more seagoing vessels, the ships kept coming.
I have to report that M. Blériot, with his monoplane, crossed the Channel from Calais this morning. I issued to him a Quarantine Certificate, thereby treating it as a yacht and the aviator as Master and owner.
The Collector of Customs at Dover, 25 July 19091
To understand why an improvised and inadequate mixture of British military formations were sent to war in 1939 it is necessary to remember that her army had always been quite different in tradition, formation and function to any of the continental armies.
In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, standing armies were established on the Continent, not so much in response to foreign wars as to civil strife and rebellions. From that time onwards continental rulers made sure that every town had its barracks and parade ground. The constant sound of bugles and drums reminded the discontented that ‘who draws a sword against a prince must throw away the scabbard’. A centralized and severely regulated life is still the normal one for most Europeans, who remain subject to compulsory military service and are required to carry identity papers that they have to produce for any authorized inquirer.
Apart from a riot here and there Britain did not need such control of its population. England’s civil war had ended in a consensus as the English discovered that they hated foreigners more than they hated their own