Thursday, February 13, 2020
Tsundoku Thursday - A Not So Polite War
The Battle of the Atlantic is one of those subjects in military history that gets a lot ink spilled and electrons wasted.
That being said, I don't know if it is one that anybody, other than the most ardent student of WWII history, ever really gets.
Your average thumbnail goes something like:
"U-Boats bad, convoys good. Air coverage more better. Yay escort carriers. Oh, look, we took France. Battle over."
Oh, and that Alright Alright Alright fella from Texas captured a German typewriter and won the war.
As an aside; in 7th grade I realized I may have been a bit of a nerd when I told a very pretty girl whose's name escapes me at the moment that I really didn't want to go see U-571 with her again because it was terribly inaccurate.
And did you know most of the heavy lifting of convoy operations was done by the Royal Canadian Navy?
A case could be made that the RCN did better than both the RN and USN in ASW during WWII.
The Brits concentrated soley on getting ships through. We only wanted to sink U-Boats. The Canadians decided to politely disagree and do both.
Marc Milner writes an excellent one volume overview of the war against the U-Boat.
"Battle of the Atlantic" while not imaginatively titled tome is a great read. I mean, he legit starts with very first U-boat kill of the war and goes all the way to the German capitulation.
Very much like the Confederate raider Shenandoah, there were U-Boats at sea and hunting write up until Adolf put PPK in his mouth.
Give it a read. I can't recommend it enough.
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Hey Mack;
ReplyDeleteThe war in the Atlantic was brutal, not only did you have to worry about submarines, the Occasional Dornier D200 condor, the weather would flat out kill you, especially the "archangel" runs to Soviet ports to help the Soviets against the Germans.
You'd like the book a lot. And it covers the fight against the Condors in detail, too.
Delete"Black May" is another good read in this vein. Title refers to May 1943 which some argue was the tipping point in the Atlantic against the U-boats. An entire book, mostly about May 1943 events but with a good amount of background to explain the significance of the events of that month.
ReplyDeleteIt's been probably 10+ years since I read it so memory is only so-so, but I recall the short version being that the Atlantic was lost by the Germans because they sent for the most part 1930s era U-boats out against 1940s ASW.
I'll have to check out the book you reference, after reading Black May, I don't recall them mentioning much other than RN and USN efforts.
I was in Cold War era USN submarines and I recall a friend of mine in SSNs mentioned that the RCN (in his opinion) were better than the USN and RN at ASW when he'd done exercises with them.
I'll add that to my Amazon list. CDR Milner served in the RCN and covers May of 43 in a chapter. Thanks for the suggestion.
DeleteI read it over thirty years ago and it's been on my bookshelf ever since. It's a terrific book.
ReplyDelete