Saw it yesterday.
I found it to be very fast paced, and showed you what those sub-killers were up against in the North Atlantic.
Heroes.....
He claimed they were winning the war in the Atlantic, and the U.S. was acting as if it were in the war, anyway.
Declaring war on the U.S. would allow him to finally win the war in the Atlantic.
It was one of Hitler and Germany's worst mistakes of the war.
Glad you enjoyed it. I’ll add it to my list.
The civilian Merchant Marine crews put their lives on the line as much as any soldier did. It’s a shame they didn’t get due recognition for that until long after the war ended (1988).
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-01-30-mn-10163-story.html
Five long-range (Type IX) U-Boats sailed for the eastern seaboard shortly after the declarations of war between the US and Germany in 1941 (the crews celebrated Christmas during their transit across the Atlantic).
The number of ships that were sunk and the loss of human life that took place as a result of these five submarines remains one of the least-known Allied losses of the war.
Saw most of this watching Victory at Sea as a kid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ausVC2NhAo
I have been looking forward to this movie. The story of the U-boat war in the Atlantic has always deserved far more attention and the previews look great. The thought of being in one of those tin cans, underwater tubes, or on a hapless merchant ship in icy waters is terrifying, but they all did it anyways - most without proper recognition.
Glad to hear it was as good as it looked!
Thanks for the review. Sounds like a great movie. Tom Hanks is a fav.
Added to my Netflix ‘saved’ queue until it’s released on DVD.
It was fantastic. It’s been a looong time since I’ve seen anything this good and well done.
“” “” Did some reading on the convoys and found out that one sending supplies from Scotland to Russia lost 24 out out of 35 ships. .”” “”
A nice video on salvaged cargo from the convoy:
Restoration of the M4 Sherman Tank in Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wCG0nYeBYQ&t=195s
Read “The Good Shepherd” by C S Forester.
Will plan on seeing it.
some interesting backgroundhere:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-submarine_warfare
During the Second World War, the Allies developed a huge range of new technologies, weapons and tactics to counter the submarine danger. These included:
Vessels
Allocating ships to convoys according to speed, so faster ships were less exposed.
Adjusting the convoy cycle. Using operations research techniques, analysis of convoy losses over the first three years of the war showed that the overall size of a convoy was less important than the size of its escorting force. Therefore, escorts could better protect a few large convoys than many small ones.
Huge construction programmes to mass-produce the small warships needed for convoy defense, such as corvettes, frigates, and destroyer escorts. These were more economical than using destroyers, which were needed for fleet duties. Corvettes were small enough to be built in merchant shipyards and used triple expansion engines. They could be built without using up scarce turbine engines and reduction gears, thus not interfering with larger warship production.
Ships that could carry aircraft, such as the CAM ships, the merchant aircraft carrier, and eventually the purpose-built escort carriers.
Support groups of escort ships that could be sent to reinforce the defense of convoys under attack. Free from the obligation to remain with the convoys, support groups could continue hunting a submerged submarine until its batteries and air supplies were exhausted and it was forced to surface.
Hunter-killer groups, whose job was to actively seek out enemy submarines, as opposed to waiting for the convoy to come under attack. Later hunter-killer groups were centered around escort carriers.
Huge construction programmes to mass-produce the transports and replace their losses, such as the American Liberty Ships. Once shipbuilding had ramped up to full efficiency, transports could be built faster than U-boats could sink them, playing a crucial role in the Allies winning the “Tonnage war”.
Aircraft
Air raids on the German U-boat pens at Brest and La Rochelle.
Long-range aircraft patrols to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.
Escort carriers to provide the convoy with air cover, as well as close the mid-Atlantic gap.
High frequency direction finding (HF/DF), including shipborne sets, to pinpoint the location of an enemy submarine from its radio transmissions.
The introduction of seaborne radar which could enable the detection of surfaced U-boats.
Airborne radar.
The Leigh light airborne searchlight, in conjunction with airborne radar to surprise and attack enemy submarines on the surface at night.
Magnetic anomaly detection
Diesel exhaust sniffers
Sonobuoys
Weaponry
Depth Charges, the most used weapon, were improved during the course of the war. Starting with WW1 vintage 300-pound (140 kg) depth charges, a 600-pound (270 kg) version was developed. Torpex explosive, which is a 50% more powerful explosive than TNT, was introduced in 1943. Y-guns and K-guns were used to throw depth charges to the side of the escort vessel, augmenting the charges rolled off the stern and letting the escort vessel lay a pattern of depth charges
The development of forward-throwing anti-submarine weapons such as Hedgehog and the Squid. This allowed the escort vessel to stay in contact with the submarine during an attack.
The FIDO (Mk 24 ‘mine’) air-dropped homing torpedo.
When the German Navy developed an acoustic homing torpedo, torpedo countermeasures such as the Foxer acoustic decoy were deployed.
Intelligence
One of the best kept Allied secrets was the breaking of enemy codes including some of the German Naval Enigma codes (information gathered this way was dubbed Ultra) at Bletchley Park in England. This enabled the tracking of U-boat packs to allow convoy re-routings; whenever the Germans changed their codes (and when they added a fourth rotor to the Enigma machines in 1943), convoy losses rose significantly. By the end of the war, the Allies were regularly breaking and reading German naval codes.
To prevent the Germans from guessing that Enigma had been cracked, the British planted a false story about a special infrared camera being used to locate U-boats. The British were subsequently delighted to learn that the Germans responded by developing a special paint for submarines that exactly duplicated the optical properties of seawater.
Tactics
Many different aircraft from airships to four-engined sea- and land-planes were used. Some of the more successful were the Lockheed Ventura, PBY (Catalina or Canso, in British service), Consolidated B-24 Liberator (VLR Liberator, in British service), Short Sunderland, and Vickers Wellington. As more patrol planes became equipped with radar, U-Boats began to be surprised at night by aircraft attacks. U-Boats were not defenseless, as most U-Boats carried some form of anti-aircraft weapon. They claimed 212 Allied aircraft shot down for the loss of 168 U-boats to air attack. The German naval command struggled to find a solution to the aircraft attacks. ‘U-Flak’ submarines, equipped with extra anti-aircraft weapons, were tried unsuccessfully. At one point in the war, there was even a ‘shoot back order’ requiring U-boats to stay on the surface and fight back, in the absence of any other option. Some commanders started charging batteries during the day to gain more warning from air attack, and perhaps gain time to submerge. One solution was the snorkel, which allowed a U-boat to stay submerged and still charge its batteries. A snorkel made a U-boat more survivable and losses to aircraft went down. However the low snorkeling speeds of 5 to 6 knots (9.3–11.1 km/h; 5.8–6.9 mph) greatly limited the mobility of the U-Boats.[11]
The provision of air cover was essential. The Germans at the time had been using their Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor long range aircraft to attack shipping and provide reconnaissance for U-boats, and most of their sorties occurred outside the reach of existing land-based aircraft that the Allies had; this was dubbed the Mid-Atlantic gap. At first, the British developed temporary solutions such as CAM ships and merchant aircraft carriers. These were superseded by mass-produced, relatively cheap escort carriers built by the United States and operated by the US Navy and Royal Navy. There was also the introduction of long-ranged patrol aircraft. Many U-boats feared aircraft, as the mere presence would often force them to dive, disrupting their patrols and attack runs.
The Americans favored aggressive hunter-killer tactics using escort carriers on search and destroy patrols, whereas the British preferred to use their escort carriers to defend the convoys directly. The American view was that defending convoys did little to reduce or contain U-boat numbers, while the British were constrained by having to fight the battle of the Atlantic alone for the early part of the war with very limited resources. There were no spare escorts for extensive hunts, and it was only important to neutralize the U-boats which were found in the vicinity of convoys. The survival of convoys was critical, and if a hunt missed its target a convoy of strategic importance could be lost. The British also reasoned that since submarines sought convoys, convoys would be a good place to find submarines.
Once America joined the war, the different tactics were complementary, both suppressing the effectiveness of and destroying U-boats. The increase in Allied naval strength allowed both convoy defense and hunter-killer groups to be deployed, and this was reflected in the massive increase in U-boat kills in the latter part of the war. The British developments of centimetric radar and the Leigh Light, as well as increased numbers of escorts, reached the point of being able to support U-boat hunting towards the end of the war, while earlier on, the advantage was definitely on the side of the submarine. Commanders such as F. J. “Johnnie” Walker of the Royal Navy were able to develop integrated tactics which made the deployment of hunter-killer groups a practical proposition. Walker developed a creeping attack technique, where one destroyer would track the U-boat while another attacked. Often U-boats would turn and increase speed to spoil the depth charge attack, as the escort would lose sonar contact as it steamed over the submarine. With the new tactic, one escort vessel would attack while another would track the target. Any course or depth change could be relayed to the attacking destroyer. Once a U-boat was caught, it was very difficult to escape. Since Hunter-Killer groups were not limited to convoy escort, they could continue an attack until a U-Boat was destroyed or had to surface from damage or lack of air.
The earliest recorded sinking of one submarine by another while both were submerged occurred in 1945 when HMS Venturer torpedoed U-864 off the coast of Norway. The captain of Venturer tracked U-864 on hydrophones for several hours and manually calculated a three-dimensional firing solution before launching four torpedoes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_John_Walker
Another hero. sunk the most u boats during the war.
PFL