U-Boats Triumph in the Atlantic

As the year 1942 opened, Germany was much better positioned to damage the United States than vice versa. Though the bombers of Hitler’s Luftwaffe lacked the range to bomb American cities, his navy possessed hundreds of operational submarines that could play havoc with US shipping.

Only Hitler’s earlier desire to keep America out of the world conflict had spared the US merchant marine in the two years before Pearl Harbor. Now that he had declared war on the United States, the German leader unleashed his U-boats off American shores.

The results were nightmarish. The commander of the submarine campaign, Admiral Karl Doenitz, reported to Hitler that "our U-boats are operating close inshore along the coast of the United States of America, so that bathers and sometimes entire coastal cities are witnesses to the drama of naval war. The clashes are marked by the fierce flames of blazing tankers."

American Merchant Ships under U-boat Attack

The American public was panicked by all the burning boats off the eastern seaboard and frightened by rumors that German bombers would soon arrive to heighten the chaos.

Reading reports about the disarray, Hitler chortled over FDR’s apparent willingness to allow "his merchant shipping to ply peacefully back and forth along the American coast for us to pick off like sitting ducks." Writing to Winston Churchill in March of 1942, FDR admitted that "my Navy has been definitely slack in preparing for this submarine warfare off our coast."

Those words were an amazing piece of understatement. During the first half of 1942, Hitler’s submarines sank almost 400 ships in American waters. The total number of U-boats lost in the same period was six. It added up to the most disastrous defeat in the history of US naval warfare.

And the U-boats, incomparably Hitler’s most effective weapon against the United States, continued their missions of destruction throughout the war. By V-E day in May of 1945, over 15,000 Americans had perished at sea as a result of the action of German submarines.

But the real crisis began to pass when improved antisubmarine technologies on ships and long-range aircraft allowed American sailors and airmen to send more and more U-boats to the bottom. Better organized and better escorted convoys were also crucial in blunting the U-boat attack.

German U-boat under Attack by US Bomber

The Battle of the Atlantic would have been much worse if Hitler had spent more time developing his overall strategy for world conquest. Early on, he had failed to fully recognize the U-boat’s potential. Had he given Admiral Doenitz’s submarines a larger share of his war budget, the result might have permanently disrupted the American supply line to Europe and devastated the Allies’ war-making capabilities.

Instead, the determination of the US Navy to come fighting back from defeat prepared the way for global Allied victory. A report approved by US admirals stated that "The Battle of the Atlantic was the most important single operation in World War II, for upon its outcome rested the success or failure of the [Allied] strategy in all other theaters of operation."

© 1998 by Larry Hedrick. All rights reserved.

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