In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Over the years the story of the war at sea during the Second World War with reference to Germany and Italy has been told mainly in terms of the defeat of the U-boat campaign against shipping. Certainly two, perhaps three, themes have been at the basis of British accounts of the defeat of the German campaign against Allied and neutral shipping. The first has been the British claim for the credit of that defeat, and the second was the abysmally poor showing of the U.S. Navy in the first six months after the American entry into the war. A third point is the assertion of the singular importance of May 1943 in the German defeat. Most certainly the very bad performance of the U.S. Navy in the first six months of 1942 cannot be gainsaid, not least because of the utter inadequacy of provisions despite the United States’ having had some seventeen months’ notice of the coming of war to the western North Atlantic. There is no disputing the significance of events in the course of May 1943, but the argument that this was the month of the U-boats’ defeat is entirely fatuous. The U-boats were defeated in April–May 1945. The victory that was won in May 1943 had to be secured repeatedly over the following two years, and while the events of May 1943 possess special significance, it is as part of a process of mounting losses that really began in February 1943. Moreover, the events of May 1943 must also be seen in association with those of July–August and October–November 1943, when the U-boats, reorganized, re-equipped and committed afresh to the campaign in the North Atlantic following their previous reverses, incurred chapter five Navies, Sea Power, and Two or More Wars 84 Introduction to the Second World War defeats that were no less significant than that of May 1943. And while May 1943 was significant in terms of U-boat losses, which were more than double the worst previous month of the war and were the second-heaviest singlemonth losses in the entire war, August 1943 had special significance, and for a reason that seems to have eluded most historians: it was the first month in the war when the number of U-boats lost exceeded the number of merchantmen sunk by the U-boats. The defeat of the U-boats was the result of a number of factors coming together over a prolonged period of time. If the British claims to victory are to be afforded due consideration, however, then note needs be made of British culpability in the period between June 1940 and August 1942, and this has very seldom been given much historical examination. The fact is that the British record in these twenty-six months stands in very sharp contrast to events in the last year of the First World War. As was noted in the companion volume of this account, in 1917 a total of seventy-three and in 1918 a total of ninety-one Uboats were lost to all causes, yet in 1940 the U-boats lost to all causes numbered just twenty-four and in 1941 only thirty-five. In 1942 the number reached eighty-seven, but the fact of the matter is that in 1940 and 1941, and on the basis of numbers that initially were less than that available to the German high command in February 1917, the German offensive against shipping was significantly successful, and at minimal cost in the face of what was a singularly ineffectual conduct of the defense on the part of the British Navy. ThislatterpointmaynotrecommenditselftothenavalcirclewithintheUnited Kingdom, but what seems to have defied proper presentation, examination, and explanation is that in the period prior to August 1942 a German submarine force that began the war with little more than a third of the number of boats with which it had begun the unrestricted campaign in February 1917 inflicted losses, and commanded a rate of exchange, that would have been crippling, and that might well have forced Britain to surrender but for the fact that losses were covered by the Norwegian and Dutch shipping that acceded to the Allied cause after April 1940. How the U-boat service commanded such success, how such a situation could have come about, defies ready understanding. Certainly the defeat of France, and the resultant German acquisition of bases on the Atlantic coast, was a very important factor in German success...

Share