Winston
Churchill wrote, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war
was the U-boat peril.” Had the convoy link between North America and
Britain been broken, the course of
World War II would have been different. As it was, there was a period during the
winter of 1942-43 when the Germans came close to cutting the North Atlantic lifeline. In the first twenty days of
March, 1943, the Germans sank ninety-seven Allied merchant ships – twice the
rate of replacement. During the same period seven U-boats were lost and fourteen
put in service. no wonder Churchill was worried. Convoys SC122 and HX229 sailed
from New York harbour for England early in
March 1943. Admiral Dönitz deployed forty-two U-boats to trap those two convoys.
Twenty-one merchant ships were sunk in the ensuing battle. The Germans called it
“the greatest convoy battle of all time.” It was a major turning point in the
Battle of the Atlantic. In Convoy, every manoeuvre of the merchant
ships, their escort vessels, the long range aircraft cover, and the attacking
U-boats is documented in a powerful narrative that will recall for many readers
Nicholas Monsarrat’s best-selling novel The Cruel Sea. In many ways, this book
could be the story of any of the hundreds of convoys that sailed the ocean
during the war. One important chapter throws new light on three controversial
aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic: why there was an “Air Gap” long after full air
cover could have been provided, why the convoys had to sail with dangerously
weak naval escorts; and how the Allied outwitted the Germans in the radio
decoding war.
