I'm very thankful for Briddin. It's a convenient place to dump our stuff whenever we feel like stomping on Europe.
Why Americans should give thanks for the British Empire
- Thread starter Blackleaf
- Start date
Not for the people of Britain, who knew that defeat in that battle would have meant a German invasion.
Britain, as an island nation, already imported about 70% of its food before the war started.
Those American and Canadian supplies were only able to reach Britain due to being protected by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.
The Battle of the Atlantic has been called the "longest, largest, and most complex" naval battle in history., lasting from 3rd September 1939 to 8th May 1945 and it was a British victory.
During WWII, one-third of all the world's merchant shipping was British.
Sorry. But I don't believe that source is credible. It's just sheer desperation from you to try and disprove that the great Churchill - the man who won WWII - said anything bad about Yankeeland.
You only have to google the phrase and 3,260,000 credible sources appear on the screen
The British Empire was the greatest source for good that the world has known in the last 500 years and it's a tragedy that it's no longer here. Let's hope for its return because the world would be a better place.
The Americans were the bad guys in the War of Independence. They were in the wrong.
America only exists today because of the British Empire. For that, most Americans are grateful to the British Empire.
So did the Americans and Canadians.
Because it would have been a disaster.
It was the Bletchley Park codebreakers and Operation Torch which turned the tide in North Africa, as well as the British victory over the Italians at the Battle of Cape Matapan, which Prince Philip took part in. In that battle, the Royal Navy was also aided by the ingenious British codebreakers at Bletchley Park. As British ships of the Mediterranean Fleet covered troop movements to Greece, Mavis Batey, a cryptographer at Bletchley Park, made a breakthrough, successfully reading the Italian naval Enigma for the first time. The first message, the cryptic "Today’s the day minus three," was followed three days later by a second message reporting the sailing of an Italian battle fleet comprising one battleship, six heavyand two light cruiser, plus destroyers to attack the convoys. The British went on to inflict Italy's greatest defeat at sea. The Italian fleet did not venture into the Eastern Mediterranean again until the fall of Crete two months later.
The primary benefit of Ultra intercepts to the effort in North Africa was to aid in cutting the Axis supply line to Tunisia. Ultra intercepts provided valuable information about the times and routes of Axis supply shipments across the Mediterranean. This was critical in providing the British with the opportunity to intercept and destroy them. During the time when Malta was under heavy air attack, the ability to act on this information was limited, but as Allied air and naval strength improved, the information became instrumental to Allied success. It is estimated that 40% to 60% of Axis supply shipping was located and destroyed due to decrypted information.[58][59] Heavy losses of German paratroopers in Crete, made possible by Ultra warnings of the drop times and locations, meant that Hitler hesitated to attack Malta,[60] which aided the British in gaining control of the Mediterranean, as did the defeat of the Italian Navy at the Battle of Cape Matapan.[61] To conceal the fact that German coded messages were being read, a fact critical to the overall Allied war effort, British command required a flyover mission be flown before a convoy could be attacked in order to give the appearance that a reconnaissance flight had discovered the target.
Who was in charge of the land forces? A Brit. Who was in charge of the air forces? A Brit. Who was in charge of the largest seaborne invasion in history? A Brit.
And Sledgehammer was an American idea. And it was a bad one.
The US wasn't in charge of the European Theatre during the war. You weren't even IN the European Theatre to start off with.
The only high point of Dieppe was that it was British troops who were the only ones who had any success.
Have you any evidence for this? Whatever equipment the Americans had they were short of it and had to borrow from the British.
And it was British tanks - the British introduced the newfangled metal monster during that conflict - which helped to win WWI and was turning the tide in the Allies' favour before the US even entered the conflict.
I'm sorry, but Hitler called off Operation Sea Lion, his planned invasion of Britain, BEFORE Operation Barbarossa, as a result of his defeat in the Battle of Britain.
And the Germans failed miserably in the main reason for their bombing of British cities - to sap British morale and produce a British surrender.
The reason they decided to stop was because they greatly underestimated the size of the RAF and the scale of British aircraft production (which was phenomenal). The RAF had destroyed 47% of the Luftwaffe's initial strength of single-engined fighters, 66% of its twin-engined fighters and 45% of its bombers. The Germans were running out of aircrew as well as aircraft. The British did that before the US arrived on the scene. When, in fact, Britain was ALONE in taking on the Germans.
Monty was a highly-decorated hero who was decorated by many grateful nations and even had a Norman commune named after him by the grateful French.
British comedy troupe Monty Python got half of their name from the great man, saying that the name Monty "... made us laugh because Monty to us means Lord Montgomery, our great general of the Second World War"
You can't blame Field Marshal Montgomery for the failure of Operation Market Garden. Montgomery’s plan was a sound one. As Churchill commented: “A great prize was so nearly within our grasp.”
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Market Garden was a disaster just like Dieppe. It is a good thing brits were support troops at D-Day and beyond.
Monty should have been sacked.
Battle of Britain was no more than a succession of dog fights.
A failure. An utter failure. Brit led and brit lost.
The Battle of N. Atlantic was won by Canadian and US ships. N. America fed England. Without us the brits would have starved and withered.
Monty should have been sacked.
Battle of Britain was no more than a succession of dog fights.
A failure. An utter failure. Brit led and brit lost.
The Battle of N. Atlantic was won by Canadian and US ships. N. America fed England. Without us the brits would have starved and withered.
The Flower-class corvette [1][2][3] (also referred to as the Gladiolus class after the lead ship)[4] was a British class of 267 corvettes used during World War II, specifically with the Allied navies as anti-submarine convoy escorts during the Battle of the Atlantic.
73,000 Yank troops took part in D-Day and 61,715 British troops, at a time when the US population was three times that of Britain's.
Thank God he wasn't. He was the brains behind D-Day. And, as I can saying, he was the commander of all the ground troops during that campaign.
As for Market Garden, it failed by a hair's breadth, a bridge too far, but it was not a bad idea.
Monty was the best general of WWII and it really is time the Yank public stopped learning all their "history" from Hollywood films like Patton.
I like what somebody has written about the great Monty on a WWII discussion forum:
Montgomery, despite his character faults, finished the war as a Field Marshal an army group commander then Imperial Chief of Staff and then NATO Ground Commander in Europe in post war era. (Actually Eisenhower insisted his appointment as NATO commander in 1953) After Market Garden during Battle of Bulge Eisenhower even gave him command of two US Armies and left one of these armies under Montgomery's command until April 1945. Appearently he had that much confidence from Supreme Commander despite his odd behavior. Someone stupid (a remark which bounds to ignite simple Monty bashing) would not go these high levels in his career. Market Garden was just one operation and one of the few his strategical sense failed him during his career. He won most of his engagements decisevely before and after the Market Garden and despite his vainglory behavior towards his peers he usually (not always though) planned and executed his operations according to what his men and his forces could do. He was aware of what Allied forces under his command was capable and what limits simple Allied citizen soldiers had. Some call it slow , ponderous , unimaginative and overcautious. I call it responsible generalship. In September 1944 due to a case of victory disaese syndrome everyone in Allied camp were deluded war was about to end victoriously and Germany was finished. Sensibly that was true. But they were fighting against an insensible and illogical totalitarian regime determined to fight to last man and bullet. Neither British nor Americans was aware of this (their previous benchmark was November 1918 when Germany suddenly threw towel and signed armistace. Unfortunetely Hitler and Nazi regime was designed specifically to prevent that happening ever again) and under the spell of their own media propaganda Allied generals deluded themselves. Defeats like Market Garden , Hurtgen Forest or Lorreine Campaign woke them up to reality though these setbacks were not crucial to Allied strategy. Whatever medium sized checks Allies suffered they firmly established themselves to the Continent by September 1944 and no way Germans could seal Second Front anymore.
It was the second-biggest air battle of the war and the second-biggest in history.
Market Garden was certainly not the only setback the Allies suffered in the 1944-45 Northwest Europe Campaign. If somebody made another all star cast film about the Battle of Hurtgen Forest or the Third Army's Lorraine Campaign (Battles of Fort Driant and Metz) or the utter destruction of 106th US Infantry Division in Schnee Eifel durin the Ardennes Offensive or Hammelburg Raid I am sure these battles would be put under the microscope, too. Except these were US Army defeats and so Hollywood is rarely interested in them.
As for the plausibility of Market Garden, remember that the German airborne arm attempted similarly tough assignments too during early years of war. (Netherlands was invaded by German airborne forces cooperating closely by German Army in 1940). Allied generals and airborne commanders felt that they were as capable as their German counterparts and had huge confidence (or overconfidence) on their skill. In fact, they were eager to show what they could do on battlefield. The US Airborne made lots of mistakes, too, during Market Garden (101st US Airborne let Eindhoven bridge be blown to bits in their faces. James Gavin, Cmdr of 82nd US Airborne, also failed to capture the critical Nijmegen bridge on the first day before the 10th SS Panzer Division reconaissance troops captured it).
Great American calamity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hürtgen_Forest
The British would have starved had the Royal Navy not protected those convoys coming to Britain across the Atlantic from North America.
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Market Garden was a disaster. A complete failure. Ground that was taken was given back to the Germans who took out its vengeance on the local population. The brits left them to the mercy of the Nazis.
Monty should have been sacked.
No wonder why he was a subordinate to US General Eisenhower on D-Day.
The Battle of Britain was a sideshow. A series of dogfights and nothing more. And the Germans still managed to turn many Brit cities to rubble.
Monty should have been sacked.
No wonder why he was a subordinate to US General Eisenhower on D-Day.
The Battle of Britain was a sideshow. A series of dogfights and nothing more. And the Germans still managed to turn many Brit cities to rubble.
As much as you try BL, the UK doesn't have the bigger dick.
It did in WWII, when you consider the fact that, for most of the war, Britain had the largest navy on Earth - and had done for 200 years - and that, when America joined the conflict in 1941, it was very much Britain's junior partner, with less troops in the field than Britain until well into 1944.
In fact, for the first couple of years of so of America's involvement in the conflict, the number of American troops taking part in the conflict was just a tenth the number of British troops. America was Britain's junior partner throughout most of the war, yet I bet most Yanks aren't taught that.
Silly BL forgets the whole Pacific Theater.
I can see why. The Japanese drove the Brits right out of the Pacific and they did not return until the Japanese were pushed back to their home islands.
The US had the largest navy in WWII.
First day to last: The Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic
From: Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street and Ministry of Defence
First published: 1 May 2015
Part of:VE Day 70th anniversary
In the first of three blogs, we take a look at three key moments for the Armed Forces in the Second World War.
©Crown Copyright 2014 IWM
Immediately after Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, German U-boats and warships began to threaten British and French shipping lanes, and the Royal Navy became key players in British military action.
The struggle against the German submarines, dubbed the Battle of the Atlantic, was the only battle to last from the first day of World War 2 to the last.
”…the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.”
Winston Churchill
Britain depended heavily on shipping for many of its goods, from everyday essentials such as food and petrol to vital military equipment. To keep the supply lines open, the Royal Navy led and protected large convoys of merchant ships across the Atlantic all throughout the war.
©Crown Copyright 2014 IWM
Around 100 convoy battles took place from 1939-1945. The cost for all involved was significant. By May 1945, over 2,200 British and Allied merchant ships had been sunk, as well as 100 Allied naval vessels and 600 RAF Coastal Command aircraft. Over 30,000 merchant seamen had died, as well as thousands of men from Allied navies and air forces. Many civilian passengers had also died.
On the German side, 510 U-boats were lost. Of some 27,000 U-boat men who served in the Atlantic, over 18000 (or 2 out of 3) died in action. Hundreds more German sailors died while serving on surface warships.
Cracking the Enigma codes
The Royal Navy didn’t only keep the shipping lanes open - they also helped Britain’s codebreakers break the notorious German enigma code.
The Germans were so confident in their “unbreakable” code that they used it openly on the radio waves. But in 1941 a search of a sinking U-Boat uncovered a complete Enigma machine and its encryption codebooks.
©Crown Copyright 2014 IWM
In a brilliant deception, the Navy let the Germans believe their vessel had sunk with the codes aboard, which meant they continued to use their now broken codes on the open airwaves for weeks - helping the codebreakers at Bletchley Park make huge advances in breaking Enigma.
In another historic operation in 1942, three crewmen from the HMS Petard boarded another sinking U-boat to find vital Enigma codebooks. Two of the crewmen, Lieutenant Tony Fasson RN, and Able Seaman Colin Grazier, swam over and retrieved the machine and codebooks, but became trapped aboard the U-Boat. Tommy Brown, a canteen assistant, also swam over, and helped bring the important items aboard the Petard.
Fasson and Grazier’s deaths were not in vain however, as information they retrieved helped Alan Turing break TRITON, the most advanced German code yet – a move which helped shorten the war and save thousands of lives. Fasson and Grazier won posthumous George Medals for their bravery and Tommy Brown also won the George Medal.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-navy-and-the-battle-of-the-atlantic
America was Britain's junior partner in the war, from the moment America entered the conflict in 1941 until well into 1944. At first, it had just a TENTH of the number of troops in the field as Britain had.
As for the Pacific Theatre, I've already explained that Britain had most of its men and resources in Europe to defeat Germany and Italy. They were deemed more important than defending Malaya and Singapore.
In September 1939, the month that war broke out, it had had 15 battleships and battlecruisers, of which only two were pre-WWI; seven aircraft carriers with another six on their way; 66 cruisers, mainly post-WWI; 184 Destroyers of all types. Over half were modern, with 15 of the old 'V' and 'W' classes modified as escorts. Under construction or on order were 32 fleet destroyers and 20 escort types of the 'Hunt' class; 60 submarines, mainly modern with nine building; and 45 escort and patrol vessels with nine building, and the first 56 'Flower' class corvettes on order to add to the converted 'V' and 'W's' and 'Hunts'.
The United States Navy only took over the Royal Navy in the years immediately after WWII as the economic hardships in Britain at the time forced the reduction in the size and capability of the Royal Navy.
The Americans, by contrast, did not suffer economic hardship due to WWII and, in fact, emerged from the conflict as an extremely wealthy nation, thanks in no small part to all that money given to it by the British for weaponry, and so was able to afford a huge navy.
From: Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street and Ministry of Defence
First published: 1 May 2015
Part of:VE Day 70th anniversary
In the first of three blogs, we take a look at three key moments for the Armed Forces in the Second World War.
©Crown Copyright 2014 IWM
Immediately after Britain went to war with Germany in 1939, German U-boats and warships began to threaten British and French shipping lanes, and the Royal Navy became key players in British military action.
The struggle against the German submarines, dubbed the Battle of the Atlantic, was the only battle to last from the first day of World War 2 to the last.
”…the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.”
Winston Churchill
Britain depended heavily on shipping for many of its goods, from everyday essentials such as food and petrol to vital military equipment. To keep the supply lines open, the Royal Navy led and protected large convoys of merchant ships across the Atlantic all throughout the war.
©Crown Copyright 2014 IWM
Around 100 convoy battles took place from 1939-1945. The cost for all involved was significant. By May 1945, over 2,200 British and Allied merchant ships had been sunk, as well as 100 Allied naval vessels and 600 RAF Coastal Command aircraft. Over 30,000 merchant seamen had died, as well as thousands of men from Allied navies and air forces. Many civilian passengers had also died.
On the German side, 510 U-boats were lost. Of some 27,000 U-boat men who served in the Atlantic, over 18000 (or 2 out of 3) died in action. Hundreds more German sailors died while serving on surface warships.
Cracking the Enigma codes
The Royal Navy didn’t only keep the shipping lanes open - they also helped Britain’s codebreakers break the notorious German enigma code.
The Germans were so confident in their “unbreakable” code that they used it openly on the radio waves. But in 1941 a search of a sinking U-Boat uncovered a complete Enigma machine and its encryption codebooks.
©Crown Copyright 2014 IWM
In a brilliant deception, the Navy let the Germans believe their vessel had sunk with the codes aboard, which meant they continued to use their now broken codes on the open airwaves for weeks - helping the codebreakers at Bletchley Park make huge advances in breaking Enigma.
In another historic operation in 1942, three crewmen from the HMS Petard boarded another sinking U-boat to find vital Enigma codebooks. Two of the crewmen, Lieutenant Tony Fasson RN, and Able Seaman Colin Grazier, swam over and retrieved the machine and codebooks, but became trapped aboard the U-Boat. Tommy Brown, a canteen assistant, also swam over, and helped bring the important items aboard the Petard.
Fasson and Grazier’s deaths were not in vain however, as information they retrieved helped Alan Turing break TRITON, the most advanced German code yet – a move which helped shorten the war and save thousands of lives. Fasson and Grazier won posthumous George Medals for their bravery and Tommy Brown also won the George Medal.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-navy-and-the-battle-of-the-atlantic
America was Britain's junior partner in the war, from the moment America entered the conflict in 1941 until well into 1944. At first, it had just a TENTH of the number of troops in the field as Britain had.
As for the Pacific Theatre, I've already explained that Britain had most of its men and resources in Europe to defeat Germany and Italy. They were deemed more important than defending Malaya and Singapore.
The Royal Navy was the largest in the world at the onset of WWII, and had been for 200 years.
In September 1939, the month that war broke out, it had had 15 battleships and battlecruisers, of which only two were pre-WWI; seven aircraft carriers with another six on their way; 66 cruisers, mainly post-WWI; 184 Destroyers of all types. Over half were modern, with 15 of the old 'V' and 'W' classes modified as escorts. Under construction or on order were 32 fleet destroyers and 20 escort types of the 'Hunt' class; 60 submarines, mainly modern with nine building; and 45 escort and patrol vessels with nine building, and the first 56 'Flower' class corvettes on order to add to the converted 'V' and 'W's' and 'Hunts'.
The United States Navy only took over the Royal Navy in the years immediately after WWII as the economic hardships in Britain at the time forced the reduction in the size and capability of the Royal Navy.
The Americans, by contrast, did not suffer economic hardship due to WWII and, in fact, emerged from the conflict as an extremely wealthy nation, thanks in no small part to all that money given to it by the British for weaponry, and so was able to afford a huge navy.
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Silly BL forgets the whole Pacific Theater.... and how the brits retreated not to be seen until 1945 when the Japanese were finished.
The US had the largest navy in WWII.
The Brit Navy was outdated. The RN scrambled their whole fleet just to sink one German battleship which in put the HMS. Hood to the bottom in record time.
It was the US and Canadian Navies that won the Battle of the Atlantic and fed and supplied Bitain.
The U-Boats frightened the Brits... the Canadians and US took them head on and won.
The US had the largest navy in WWII.
The Brit Navy was outdated. The RN scrambled their whole fleet just to sink one German battleship which in put the HMS. Hood to the bottom in record time.
It was the US and Canadian Navies that won the Battle of the Atlantic and fed and supplied Bitain.
The U-Boats frightened the Brits... the Canadians and US took them head on and won.
The Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle of the Atlantic, 1939-1945
Dispatches: Backgrounders in Canadian Military History
Dr. Roger Sarty
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of the Second World War and the most important. Canada was a major participant: this country’s enormous effort in the struggle was crucial to Allied victory. While the ships and personnel of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) operated across the globe during the war, they are best remembered for their deeds during the Battle of the Atlantic.
At stake was the survival of Great Britain and the liberation of western Europe from German occupation. Britain could be saved from starvation, and strengthened into the launching pad for the liberation of Europe, only by the delivery of supplies, troops, and equipment from Canada and the United States. Everything had to be carried in vulnerable merchant ships that faced a gauntlet of enemy naval forces. The friendly territory closest to Great Britain, Canada’s east coast and Newfoundland (which had not yet joined confederation) were in the front line of the Battle of the Atlantic. Canada’s navy and merchant marine, augmented by seamen from Newfoundland, played leading parts in the battle throughout the war.
When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, the German navy, which had prepositioned U-boats (submarines) and powerful surface warships in the Atlantic, began to attack British merchant ships. Halifax, the Atlantic base of Canada’s tiny navy, immediately became an indispensable Allied port from which to fight the Battle of the Atlantic.
During the First World War, 1914 to 1918, the British had sent a strong force to Halifax for protection of Atlantic shipping, and in 1939 the same thing happened. Britain-bound merchant ships of many nationalities also came to Halifax, where Bedford Basin provided a magnificent secure anchorage in which ships could be organized into convoys which then set out under the protection of Allied warships. The convoy system had proven its worth during the First World War. HX-1, the first of the hundreds of convoys that would cross the Atlantic during the Second World War, sailed from Halifax on 16 September 1939.
Canada’s navy in September 1939 included only 3500 personnel, both regular force and reserve, and six ocean-going warships, the ‘River’ class destroyers His Majesty’s Canadian Ships (HMCS) Fraser, Ottawa, Restigouche, Saguenay, St Laurent, and Skeena. A seventh ‘River,’ HMCS Assiniboine joined the fleet in October. All these ships were British built, Saguenay and Skeena according to special Canadian specifications.
Destroyers were among the smallest full-fledged, ocean-going warships, but the ‘River’ class were thoroughly modern — fast and powerfully armed. In the early months of the war, the Canadian destroyers escorted the convoys, and also large Allied warships, within Canadian coastal waters.
Both British and Canadian authorities believed in 1939 that Canada’s navy could expand on only a modest scale, and mainly for operations along the North American seabord. In early 1940, the government placed orders for the construction of 92 small warships: 64 ‘corvettes’, depth-charge-armed anti-submarine escorts, and 28 ‘Bangor’ class minesweepers. These rather slow and simple vessels were all Canada’s limited shipbuilding industry could produce, but they were adequate to patrol the entrance to ports and along coastal routes, where enemy submarines could most readily find ships to attack.
The German offensives in the spring of 1940 that conquered most of western Europe, and Italy’s entry into the war at Germany’s side in June of that year, transformed the war, not least at sea. From bases in France and Norway, right on Britain’s doorstep, the German submarine fleet, augmented by submarines from Italy, Germany’s Axis partner, launched devastating attacks against the overseas shipping on which Britain now wholly depended for survival. Canada rushed four of the ‘River’ class destroyers to British waters, and these protected convoys off the western shores of the British Isles against intense attacks by enemy submarines and aircraft.
Meanwhile, in the fall of 1940 the Canadian government embarked on full-scale naval expansion, laying down additional corvettes and Bangors as soon as the first ones were launched. Canada also began to produce merchant ships. The Royal Canadian Navy further assisted the short-handed Royal Navy by taking over seven of the fifty First World War-era destroyers the still-neutral United States made available to Britain. Canada, although its coasts were now almost unprotected, dispatched the four best of these old destroyers to British waters, together with the first ten corvettes to come from Canadian shipyards. It soon became clear that the old American ships and the new, only partly equipped, corvettes, crewed by former merchant seamen who had had only basic naval training and raw recruits, would need considerable work and time to become fully effective.
There was no time. By 1941, the Germans, encountering stronger defences in British waters, developed highly successful techniques for intercepting convoys at mid-ocean, where they were weakly escorted, if at all, and far from help. Air cover did not extend across the Atlantic, and the mid-ocean area beyond range of patrolling Allied aircraft became a killing ground for the U-boats. The submarines patrolled in long lines and, when one sighted a convoy, shadowed it, summoning the other submarines. They then attacked in a group – a ‘wolfpack’ – at night and on the surface, when their low proffles were nearly invisible to the escorting warships. The U-boats were much faster on the surface than underwater, and they were therefore able to move rapidly through a convoy, making multiple attacks, sometimes sinking with torpedoes three and four ships apiece.
In response to Britain’s call for help, Canada, starting in May 1941, took the lead in building a new naval base at St John’s, Newfoundland, and in supplying most of the warships that escorted convoys across the 3000 kilometres of ocean between Newfoundland and the British Isles. All of the Canadian warships that had been operating in British waters came to Newfoundland and, as additional corvettes were completed at Canadian shipyards, these, with incomplete equipment and virtually untrained crews, launched into the harrowing transatlantic escort mission. Small ships designed for calm coastal waters, with some crews unqualified even for that duty, had to face massed enemy attacks in some of the most stormy open ocean waters in the world.
The great demands on Canadian east coast ports increased rapidly. Growing numbers of ships flowed into the convoy system, and many of these were old vessels in need of constant repair and special services. These vessels had to be attended to even though Halifax, Sydney (since 1940 a major convoy port as busy as Halifax), Saint John, Pictou, and other smaller centres were already swamped with repair work for merchant vessels and warships that had been damaged by the enemy or by the heavy seas. All the while the Halifax base had the additional responsibility of equipping and crewing the scores of new Bangers and corvettes that arrived from builders along the St. Lawrence and on the Great Lakes. The old, cramped Royal Navy dockyard mushroomed with temporary buildings, and the navy took over adjacent army and municipal properties, which almost instantly became overcrowded as well.
At the end of 1941, senior officers warned that men and ships were being tested beyond their limits, with too little and inadequate equipment, insufficient training, and too little time to recover from the horrors they frequently witnessed as ships were blown apart and survivors froze to death within minutes in the frigid north Atlantic. Yet, the exhausted naval seamen and their little warships get no respite – only increased pressure. After the United States entered the war against the Axis powers following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the German navy initiated a major submarine offensive against the North American coast. As part of this offensive, early in January 1942 eight U-boats came in close to the shores of southern Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, torpedoing ships within a few kilometres of land. The quick, effective response of the RCN in organizing most coastal shipping into local convoys soon persuaded the Germans to concentrate against the less well defended US coast. Nevertheless, there were U-boats on station in Canadian and Newfoundland waters through much of 1942; these stayed hidden, dodged the Canadian defences, and sought targets of opportunity. They destroyed over 70 vessels, including 21 in the Gulf of St Lawrence, where deep, turbulent waters helped the submarines to escape detection.
The burden on the Canadian fleet became nearly unbearable. Because the United States, the source of much of the supplies for Britain, was now in the war, in the summer of 1942 the HX convoys shifted to New York. The United States Navy, however, was not yet in a position to defend these convoys, so Halifax-based Canadian warships shepherded them between New York and Newfoundland, and then brought westbound convoys from Newfoundland to New York. These tasks were in addition to the comprehensive network of coastal convoys between Canadian and northern US ports. At the same time, Canadian escort vessels still formed a major part of the mid-ocean force that took convoys between Newfoundland and British waters and, during the summer and autumn of 1942, these corvettes and destroyers faced a new German ‘wolfpack’ offensive that was stronger still than the assault in 1941.
Early in 1943, Britain withdrew Canada’s battered mid-ocean escort groups to British waters to free up crack British submarine-hunting ‘support’ groups to smash the wolfpacks. The RCN needed to upgrade its escort fleet with new detection and weapons technology, something the British had already done with most of their escorts. In fact, the Canadian groups had little chance for rest in British waters since they became heavily engaged on the United Kingdom-Gibraltar convoy run, before returning to the north Atlantic battle. This all-out British effort, with Canadian support, succeeded, and Admiral Karl Dönitz the German commander-in-chief of the U-boat fleet, pulled his forces out of the central north Atlantic in May 1943. Although this was a decisive turn in the war, the Germans still had over 200 U-boats available, and soon they were using new equipment and tactics to challenge Allied defences. The Allies, meanwhile, recognized Canada’s large and expanding contribution to the war at sea by making Canadian and Newfoundland waters a distinct theatre of operations under Canadian command. In place of the previous command exercised by an American admiral based in Newfoundland, Rear-Admiral L.W. Murray established the Canadian Northwest Atlantic headquarters at Halifax on 30 April 1943.
All of the warships and merchant ships Canada could produce were urgently needed to transport supplies to Britain for the final buildup of Allied forces for the invasion of Normandy, the beginning of the liberation of France and northwest Europe. As a testament to its much-improved effectiveness based on new equipment and ships (anti-submarine frigates, true ocean-keeping vessels based on the corvettes but considerably larger, joined the fleet in increasing numbers), during the first half of 1944 the RCN took over full responsibility for escorting north Atlantic convoys to Britain. The navy also sent large numbers of its best escorts, including the venerable ‘River’ class destroyers, into the English Channel to support the invasion, which took place on 6 June 1944. Over 100 RCN ships ranging from large destroyers to troop transports participated in the Normandy landings.
Although the U-boats had little success against the invasion fleet, they were able with new ‘snorkel’ breathing tubes, enabling the submarines to ‘breathe’ and cruise under water for weeks at a time, to press their offensive in the coastal waters of Britain and Canada right to the end of the war. Thus, the Canadian fleet was continuously and heavily engaged in Canadian and Newfoundland home waters, as well as in protecting the by-then enormous transatlantic convoys that fed supplies to the Allied armies in Europe. This was an essential military contribution to the Allied cause. Moreover, the navy maintained its commitments in British and European coastal waters and also escorted convoys to the Soviet Union along the treacherous and unforgiving Arctic route.
Despite the turn of the tide, the German submarine fleet continued to strike effectively. Indeed, during 1944 and 1945, the Canadian fleet took its heaviest losses in action against submarines using sophisticated evasion tactics and armed with powerful new types of torpedoes. Among the ships destroyed by snorkel-equipped U-boats were the corvette HMCS Shawinigan, which was lost with no survivors among its crew of 91, close off Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland on the night of 24 November 1944, the Bangor minesweeper HMCS Claycquot, in the near approaches to Halifax on Christmas Eve 1944, and HMCS Esquimalt another Bangor lost off Halifax, on 16 April 1945, only three weeks before Germany surrendered. Both Bangors sank with heavy loss of life, many of the sailors falling victim to the lethally cold waters off Nova Scotia.
By the last months of the war the RCN had grown to a strength of over 95,000 personnel, 6,000 of them members of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service, and the fleet committed to the Battle of the Atlantic included some 270 ocean escort warships. Canada possessed the third-largest navy in the world after the fleets of the United States and Britain. The most important measure of its success was the safe passage during the war of over 25,000 merchant ships under Canadian escort. These cargo vessels delivered nearly 165 million tons of supplies to Britain and to the Allied forces that liberated Europe. In the course of these operations the RCN sank, or shared in the destruction, of 31 enemy submarines. For its part, the RCN lost 14 warships to U-boat attacks and another eight ships to collisions and other accidents in the north Atlantic. Most of the 2000 members of the Royal Canadian Navy who lost their lives died in combat in the Atlantic. Proportionally, Canadian merchant seamen suffered much more heavily, losing one in ten killed among the 12,000 who served in Canadian and Allied merchant vessels.
Dispatches: Backgrounders in Canadian Military History
Dr. Roger Sarty
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of the Second World War and the most important. Canada was a major participant: this country’s enormous effort in the struggle was crucial to Allied victory. While the ships and personnel of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) operated across the globe during the war, they are best remembered for their deeds during the Battle of the Atlantic.
At stake was the survival of Great Britain and the liberation of western Europe from German occupation. Britain could be saved from starvation, and strengthened into the launching pad for the liberation of Europe, only by the delivery of supplies, troops, and equipment from Canada and the United States. Everything had to be carried in vulnerable merchant ships that faced a gauntlet of enemy naval forces. The friendly territory closest to Great Britain, Canada’s east coast and Newfoundland (which had not yet joined confederation) were in the front line of the Battle of the Atlantic. Canada’s navy and merchant marine, augmented by seamen from Newfoundland, played leading parts in the battle throughout the war.
When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, the German navy, which had prepositioned U-boats (submarines) and powerful surface warships in the Atlantic, began to attack British merchant ships. Halifax, the Atlantic base of Canada’s tiny navy, immediately became an indispensable Allied port from which to fight the Battle of the Atlantic.
During the First World War, 1914 to 1918, the British had sent a strong force to Halifax for protection of Atlantic shipping, and in 1939 the same thing happened. Britain-bound merchant ships of many nationalities also came to Halifax, where Bedford Basin provided a magnificent secure anchorage in which ships could be organized into convoys which then set out under the protection of Allied warships. The convoy system had proven its worth during the First World War. HX-1, the first of the hundreds of convoys that would cross the Atlantic during the Second World War, sailed from Halifax on 16 September 1939.
Canada’s navy in September 1939 included only 3500 personnel, both regular force and reserve, and six ocean-going warships, the ‘River’ class destroyers His Majesty’s Canadian Ships (HMCS) Fraser, Ottawa, Restigouche, Saguenay, St Laurent, and Skeena. A seventh ‘River,’ HMCS Assiniboine joined the fleet in October. All these ships were British built, Saguenay and Skeena according to special Canadian specifications.
Destroyers were among the smallest full-fledged, ocean-going warships, but the ‘River’ class were thoroughly modern — fast and powerfully armed. In the early months of the war, the Canadian destroyers escorted the convoys, and also large Allied warships, within Canadian coastal waters.
Both British and Canadian authorities believed in 1939 that Canada’s navy could expand on only a modest scale, and mainly for operations along the North American seabord. In early 1940, the government placed orders for the construction of 92 small warships: 64 ‘corvettes’, depth-charge-armed anti-submarine escorts, and 28 ‘Bangor’ class minesweepers. These rather slow and simple vessels were all Canada’s limited shipbuilding industry could produce, but they were adequate to patrol the entrance to ports and along coastal routes, where enemy submarines could most readily find ships to attack.
The German offensives in the spring of 1940 that conquered most of western Europe, and Italy’s entry into the war at Germany’s side in June of that year, transformed the war, not least at sea. From bases in France and Norway, right on Britain’s doorstep, the German submarine fleet, augmented by submarines from Italy, Germany’s Axis partner, launched devastating attacks against the overseas shipping on which Britain now wholly depended for survival. Canada rushed four of the ‘River’ class destroyers to British waters, and these protected convoys off the western shores of the British Isles against intense attacks by enemy submarines and aircraft.
Meanwhile, in the fall of 1940 the Canadian government embarked on full-scale naval expansion, laying down additional corvettes and Bangors as soon as the first ones were launched. Canada also began to produce merchant ships. The Royal Canadian Navy further assisted the short-handed Royal Navy by taking over seven of the fifty First World War-era destroyers the still-neutral United States made available to Britain. Canada, although its coasts were now almost unprotected, dispatched the four best of these old destroyers to British waters, together with the first ten corvettes to come from Canadian shipyards. It soon became clear that the old American ships and the new, only partly equipped, corvettes, crewed by former merchant seamen who had had only basic naval training and raw recruits, would need considerable work and time to become fully effective.
There was no time. By 1941, the Germans, encountering stronger defences in British waters, developed highly successful techniques for intercepting convoys at mid-ocean, where they were weakly escorted, if at all, and far from help. Air cover did not extend across the Atlantic, and the mid-ocean area beyond range of patrolling Allied aircraft became a killing ground for the U-boats. The submarines patrolled in long lines and, when one sighted a convoy, shadowed it, summoning the other submarines. They then attacked in a group – a ‘wolfpack’ – at night and on the surface, when their low proffles were nearly invisible to the escorting warships. The U-boats were much faster on the surface than underwater, and they were therefore able to move rapidly through a convoy, making multiple attacks, sometimes sinking with torpedoes three and four ships apiece.
In response to Britain’s call for help, Canada, starting in May 1941, took the lead in building a new naval base at St John’s, Newfoundland, and in supplying most of the warships that escorted convoys across the 3000 kilometres of ocean between Newfoundland and the British Isles. All of the Canadian warships that had been operating in British waters came to Newfoundland and, as additional corvettes were completed at Canadian shipyards, these, with incomplete equipment and virtually untrained crews, launched into the harrowing transatlantic escort mission. Small ships designed for calm coastal waters, with some crews unqualified even for that duty, had to face massed enemy attacks in some of the most stormy open ocean waters in the world.
The great demands on Canadian east coast ports increased rapidly. Growing numbers of ships flowed into the convoy system, and many of these were old vessels in need of constant repair and special services. These vessels had to be attended to even though Halifax, Sydney (since 1940 a major convoy port as busy as Halifax), Saint John, Pictou, and other smaller centres were already swamped with repair work for merchant vessels and warships that had been damaged by the enemy or by the heavy seas. All the while the Halifax base had the additional responsibility of equipping and crewing the scores of new Bangers and corvettes that arrived from builders along the St. Lawrence and on the Great Lakes. The old, cramped Royal Navy dockyard mushroomed with temporary buildings, and the navy took over adjacent army and municipal properties, which almost instantly became overcrowded as well.
At the end of 1941, senior officers warned that men and ships were being tested beyond their limits, with too little and inadequate equipment, insufficient training, and too little time to recover from the horrors they frequently witnessed as ships were blown apart and survivors froze to death within minutes in the frigid north Atlantic. Yet, the exhausted naval seamen and their little warships get no respite – only increased pressure. After the United States entered the war against the Axis powers following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the German navy initiated a major submarine offensive against the North American coast. As part of this offensive, early in January 1942 eight U-boats came in close to the shores of southern Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, torpedoing ships within a few kilometres of land. The quick, effective response of the RCN in organizing most coastal shipping into local convoys soon persuaded the Germans to concentrate against the less well defended US coast. Nevertheless, there were U-boats on station in Canadian and Newfoundland waters through much of 1942; these stayed hidden, dodged the Canadian defences, and sought targets of opportunity. They destroyed over 70 vessels, including 21 in the Gulf of St Lawrence, where deep, turbulent waters helped the submarines to escape detection.
The burden on the Canadian fleet became nearly unbearable. Because the United States, the source of much of the supplies for Britain, was now in the war, in the summer of 1942 the HX convoys shifted to New York. The United States Navy, however, was not yet in a position to defend these convoys, so Halifax-based Canadian warships shepherded them between New York and Newfoundland, and then brought westbound convoys from Newfoundland to New York. These tasks were in addition to the comprehensive network of coastal convoys between Canadian and northern US ports. At the same time, Canadian escort vessels still formed a major part of the mid-ocean force that took convoys between Newfoundland and British waters and, during the summer and autumn of 1942, these corvettes and destroyers faced a new German ‘wolfpack’ offensive that was stronger still than the assault in 1941.
Early in 1943, Britain withdrew Canada’s battered mid-ocean escort groups to British waters to free up crack British submarine-hunting ‘support’ groups to smash the wolfpacks. The RCN needed to upgrade its escort fleet with new detection and weapons technology, something the British had already done with most of their escorts. In fact, the Canadian groups had little chance for rest in British waters since they became heavily engaged on the United Kingdom-Gibraltar convoy run, before returning to the north Atlantic battle. This all-out British effort, with Canadian support, succeeded, and Admiral Karl Dönitz the German commander-in-chief of the U-boat fleet, pulled his forces out of the central north Atlantic in May 1943. Although this was a decisive turn in the war, the Germans still had over 200 U-boats available, and soon they were using new equipment and tactics to challenge Allied defences. The Allies, meanwhile, recognized Canada’s large and expanding contribution to the war at sea by making Canadian and Newfoundland waters a distinct theatre of operations under Canadian command. In place of the previous command exercised by an American admiral based in Newfoundland, Rear-Admiral L.W. Murray established the Canadian Northwest Atlantic headquarters at Halifax on 30 April 1943.
All of the warships and merchant ships Canada could produce were urgently needed to transport supplies to Britain for the final buildup of Allied forces for the invasion of Normandy, the beginning of the liberation of France and northwest Europe. As a testament to its much-improved effectiveness based on new equipment and ships (anti-submarine frigates, true ocean-keeping vessels based on the corvettes but considerably larger, joined the fleet in increasing numbers), during the first half of 1944 the RCN took over full responsibility for escorting north Atlantic convoys to Britain. The navy also sent large numbers of its best escorts, including the venerable ‘River’ class destroyers, into the English Channel to support the invasion, which took place on 6 June 1944. Over 100 RCN ships ranging from large destroyers to troop transports participated in the Normandy landings.
Although the U-boats had little success against the invasion fleet, they were able with new ‘snorkel’ breathing tubes, enabling the submarines to ‘breathe’ and cruise under water for weeks at a time, to press their offensive in the coastal waters of Britain and Canada right to the end of the war. Thus, the Canadian fleet was continuously and heavily engaged in Canadian and Newfoundland home waters, as well as in protecting the by-then enormous transatlantic convoys that fed supplies to the Allied armies in Europe. This was an essential military contribution to the Allied cause. Moreover, the navy maintained its commitments in British and European coastal waters and also escorted convoys to the Soviet Union along the treacherous and unforgiving Arctic route.
Despite the turn of the tide, the German submarine fleet continued to strike effectively. Indeed, during 1944 and 1945, the Canadian fleet took its heaviest losses in action against submarines using sophisticated evasion tactics and armed with powerful new types of torpedoes. Among the ships destroyed by snorkel-equipped U-boats were the corvette HMCS Shawinigan, which was lost with no survivors among its crew of 91, close off Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland on the night of 24 November 1944, the Bangor minesweeper HMCS Claycquot, in the near approaches to Halifax on Christmas Eve 1944, and HMCS Esquimalt another Bangor lost off Halifax, on 16 April 1945, only three weeks before Germany surrendered. Both Bangors sank with heavy loss of life, many of the sailors falling victim to the lethally cold waters off Nova Scotia.
By the last months of the war the RCN had grown to a strength of over 95,000 personnel, 6,000 of them members of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service, and the fleet committed to the Battle of the Atlantic included some 270 ocean escort warships. Canada possessed the third-largest navy in the world after the fleets of the United States and Britain. The most important measure of its success was the safe passage during the war of over 25,000 merchant ships under Canadian escort. These cargo vessels delivered nearly 165 million tons of supplies to Britain and to the Allied forces that liberated Europe. In the course of these operations the RCN sank, or shared in the destruction, of 31 enemy submarines. For its part, the RCN lost 14 warships to U-boat attacks and another eight ships to collisions and other accidents in the north Atlantic. Most of the 2000 members of the Royal Canadian Navy who lost their lives died in combat in the Atlantic. Proportionally, Canadian merchant seamen suffered much more heavily, losing one in ten killed among the 12,000 who served in Canadian and Allied merchant vessels.
How many times do you have to be told that, unlike the Yanks and Canadians, the British were literally in a fight for their nation's very survival and, as a result, kept most of their young men and equipment in Europe to defeat Germany and Italy, which was seen as far more important than defending our Asian colonies.
That is just blatantly wrong. It's as blatantly wrong as saying that the sea is orange.
No, it wasn't. Most of the RN's main ships at the onset of war in September 1939 were less than 20 years old.
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And, pray, tell me, old bean, if that was the case, how did the Americans manage this feat whilst being so reckless and incompetent during the Battle of the Atlantic?
After two years of undeclared war in the Atlantic and a month after Pearl Harbor, the Americans were behaving like it was still peacetime. Large numbers of unescorted ships, their lights on and their crews freely chatting over the radio, gave away their positions. Captains ignored orders to sail without lights because it inconvenienced them and coastal towns eschewed blackouts because it was bad for tourism. Navigational beacons stayed on while American air cover was thin or non-existent. Such was the backdrop of the American situation when this phase of the war began.
U-boat commanders had no problems finding and attacking ships, and because they could not sink all of them, the dilemma was in choosing the best targets. Tonnage figures skyrocketed and soon reached an all time high. The U-boat crews glibly called it the “Second Happy Time” and the “American Shooting Season”.
The first tanker to go down was the Norness on January 14, 1942. Over the next seventeen days, U-boats would send twelve more tankers to the bottom of the sea. The next six months saw wave after wave of German subs sail into American waters and eavesdrop on positioning reports broadcasted over the radio. Although the British had warned of the impending danger of decoded radio signals, the Americans found the idea of U-boats appearing so close to home waters inconceivable. Pressed with the more critical threat of the Japanese fleet, Washington was focused on defeating the island nation in the Pacific theater.
American crews had little experience in hunting subs and, at times, their efforts were somewhat comical. In an anti-submarine operation on February 28, 1942, a Coast Guard Cutter, an aircraft carrier and a navy destroyer hunted and depth-charged an illusionary U-boat – which ultimately turned out to be a whale. Furthermore the Americans operated under the outmoded doctrine of hunter group.
The U-boats continued their hunting unabated. But the problem for Donitz was the lack of sufficient Type IX boats, which were still the only kind capable of reaching the American coast. Not wanting to lose his window of opportunity Donitz decided to employ the medium range Type VIIs to the American coast. By filling one of their auxiliary water tanks with diesel fuel, the Type VIIs gave themselves enough range to participate in the slaughter.
Meanwhile, Donitz began to position U-boat tankers or “milk cows” in the Atlantic. Able to replenish and refuel submarines at sea, these U-tankers greatly extended the operational coverage and patrol time of the underwater hunters. Soon other types of U-boats, including the coastal Type II, sailed to the lucrative hunting grounds on the American coast. Until the Americans began to institute convoys and organizational tactics developed by the British, there was nothing to stop the Reich’s submarines.
By February 1942, the extent of the carnage was becoming widely known. That month, despite efforts of the military to censor information about sinkings, six merchant ships in New York harbor refused to sail until they were given adequate protection. But the US Navy was not yet organized or educated enough to respond to the U-boat threat. The conventional but absurd wisdom of the time was, “Convoys without escorts are better than no convoys at all”. Merchantmen had to be content with extinguishing their cabin lights, muting the radios, and hoping for the best.
Churchill understood the gravity of the situation and knew that Donitz had found his fertile ground. Though hard pressed from fighting on various fronts, the British sent some Corvettes to help the American situation.
Battle of the Atlantic - America Joins the War
A fight for its survival in a war that England started and would not have won without the help of it's allies. Other nations once again coming to the aid of England after it once again bit off more than it can chew. Brits were driven into the English Channel at Dunkirk.
If not for the N. American navies England would have starved. They could not even protect it's children as Brit parents sent thousands to the US and Canada to be safe.
I can just hear the words of generous families in the US and Canada as frightened British children arrived safely on our shores.
"You are safe now. Do not be afraid because our brave sons will save your island and then you can go home."
If not for the N. American navies England would have starved. They could not even protect it's children as Brit parents sent thousands to the US and Canada to be safe.
I can just hear the words of generous families in the US and Canada as frightened British children arrived safely on our shores.
"You are safe now. Do not be afraid because our brave sons will save your island and then you can go home."