There are many battles in World War Two which historians claim to be the “most important battle of the war.” But the Battle of the North Atlantic really was the most important battle of the war. Had we lost, then Great Britain would have been forced to surrender.
U-Boats, Allied escorts ships, and aircraft from both sides played the major role in this battle and beginning with this post I am going to post once or twice a week on the Battle of the North Atlantic. I can do this for years probably because the Battle lasted all of World War Two. While the German U-Boats were decisively beaten by May of 1943, they continued to launch attacks from the Indian Ocean to the Caribbean to the Irish Sea to the Southern Atlantic to the North Atlantic to the Bering Sea and all along Norway and the route to Murmansk. They even had a U-Boat base close to Singapore.
All Allied merchant shipping worldwide moved in specific convoys, on specific dates, all welded together in something known as the Allied Interlocking Convoy System. After 1942, the first year the US was in the war, the system was largely in place. Absolutely nothing about Allied convoys was random. Ships were scheduled months in advance to bring specific cargo to a specific port at a specific time.
When you look at a picture of an Allied convoy in the North Atlantic in World War Two, you can be sure that very little has been left to chance. Each ship has been allotted a specific place in the convoy depending on type of ship, cargo, final destination, etc. It wasn’t haphazard. Unlike the German merchant marine in World War Two, which maintained its independence from the Kriegsmarine to the detriment of the German war effort, all Allied merchant shipping was subordinated to the US Navy or Royal Navy or some combination.
Each convoy in the North Atlantic had a commodore who was in charge of all merchant ships and was located with a staff of signalmen in the center front of the convoy. All of these men were retired British admirals who had been recalled to the colors and given the temporary rank of commodore. But the man in charge of the entire operation was the SOE, Senior Officer Escort, the commander of the escort ships. He had the final word although he might be a very young man.
In the first months of the war it was catch as catch can when assembling escorts for a convoy. When a U-Boat attacked, there wasn’t even a standard response. Different escort commanders ordered different things. There had to be standard methods. The British and the Americans excelled at something the Germans paid very little attention to and given the German interest in detail, it is a surprising oversight. And what the Americans and the British did far better than the Germans was operational research.
It will sound strange, I know, but outside consultants, yes, consultants, would analyze the records from every single Allied convoy. They would study these with great intensity and would run various scenarios using mathematical models. Based on this on-going research, standards were developed for every aspect of a convoy to maximize their chances of success.