Not long after Hitler assumed control of Germany's destiny in 1933, the Third Reich laid the foundation of a submarine fleet which it intended should isolate the British Isles when the time came to wipe out the humiliation of 1918. By May, 1945, Germany had built more than 1800 submarines, including midgets, with a total gross tonnage of approximately 1,000,000 tons. But they had not won the war for Hitler.
During World War I the German submarines came very close to starving the British Isles. World War II was a highly mechanized conflict, requiring immeasurably more ship tonnage for the movement of supplies to feed the machines of war as well as the men who operated them.
Germany lost 199 U-boats in World War I. In the recent war she sacrificed 777 underseas boats and over 30,000 men without achieving her objective. The Italian Navy had tried to help out, losing 95 submarines for its trouble.
The U-boat operations in the Atlantic and, with Italian assistance, in the Mediterranean cost the Allies heavily in merchant ships and crews, but they failed to achieve the effectiveness the German admirals had hoped they would.
The United States Navy and the British Admiralty have placed the losses of merchant ships among the Allies and the neutral nations at a total of 4,770 ships of 21,140,000 gross tons. Of these, submarines accounted for 2,770 ships of 14,500,000 gross tons.
A total of 538 United States merchantmen totaling 3,310,000 gross tons was lost between December 7, 1941, and the end of the war. Enemy submarines sent down 440 of these for a tonnage score of 2,740,000.
The War Shipping Administration quotes slightly different figures, but it includes all U. S. flag vessels lost by enemy action after September, 1939. The Navy calculation listed American flag vessels lost before the declaration of war in the "neutral" column. The WSA reckons the United States loss as 570 vessels with a deadweight tonnage of 5,431,000.
The dollar loss involved, with no thought to the millions in cargo which went to the bottom, may be judged by the insurance payments to the vessels' owners of $217,000,000, with an additional $50,000,000 in claims outstanding.
The cost in lives was 5,579 American merchant seamen dead. Survivors who were taken prisoner totaled 487.
To accomplish these results, Germany had begun in 1933 to rebuild a submarine force. Naval draughtsmen began that year to work on U-boat designs. Two years later, in August, 1935, the first submarine went into the water. Between August, 1935, and May, 1945—just under 10 years—German shipyards turned out 1,158 submarines ranging in displacement tonnage from 250 to 1,600, and in the last year of the war added 700 midget submarines to these.
This construction comprised 173 of the largest boats, those of 1,000 to 1,600 tons; 865 medium boats of from 500 to 1,000 tons; and 120 small boats of 250 to 500 tons.
The midget subs were of several types. The Hecht was a 10-ton boat carrying a crew of two. The Germans built 53 of them. They turned out 149 boats of the Seehund type, a 15-ton, two-man vessel. About 200 of the one-man Biber were constructed. Another one-man affair was the Molch, of which about 150 were completed. About 144 of the remote-controlled Linse completed the list of midgets.
Submarine construction in German yards rose from 23 boats in 1939 (15 in the last four months, after the war began) to 387 boats of 275,306 tons in 1944, the high point of production.
Submarine bases had been made a top priority air target when the U-boat offensive in 1942 caused alarmingly-high shipping losses. The bombing attacks, however, had little effect on submarine production until 1945, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey in Germany has discovered. For instance, the Germans built a total of 973 Type 7 and Type 9 boats during the war, and only three of these were delayed beyond scheduled completion by the air attacks prior to 1945.
By 1944, nevertheless, the accelerating disruption of the German industrial and economic structure, the result of the inauguration of effective strategic aerial bombing, was making itself felt in the U-boat construction field. The year 1944 showed the greatest numerical production of U-boats, but fewer subs became operational from January, 1944, to the end of the war than had joined the fleet in 1941.
The year 1944 saw the beginning of the sectional submarine program. The Type 21 sectional boat had been designed by the end of 1943, and production was started in 1944 in three yards. Thirty-two steel firms were turning out the steel pressure hulls; 11 plants were making and assembling the sections which were shipped to the three yards for final assembly.
The first Type 21 boat was launched on April 20, 1944. A total of 508 were scheduled to be built, at the rate of 33 a month. Actually, 90 were produced in 1944 and 29 in 1945 before the war ended in May. The Type 23 sectional boat was programmed for a total of 260 subs, to be built at a rate of 10 a month. Production figures show that only 42 were completed in 1944 and 21 in 1945.
How had the Battle of the Atlantic been going?
Speaking in the House of Commons on February 11, 1943, Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that in the first year of the war 19 merchant ships had been sunk for each U-boat destroyed., In the second year, he said, this ratio had been cut to 12 for 1, and in the third year to 71/2 for 1.
Britain profited from its experiences in the First World War and had instituted convoys immediately after the start of World War II. Anti-submarine vessels for the protection of the convoys were dangerously few, however. The destroyers-for-bases deal added some, and more, both frigates and destroyer escorts, came later from American shipyards.
When the United States came into the war, the U-boats moved in close to the North Atlantic coast. The first ship to go down was the Norness, hit by a torpedo southeast of Block Island on January 14, 1942. Survivors were brought to Newport, Rhode Island, where many of the destroyers of the so called neutrality patrol had been based until their transfer a short time before to Casco Bay.
The United States lost 318 merchant ships to all types of enemy action in 1942, with the submarines off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts playing the major role. From March through July, 204 American ships were sunk—well over one a day. June was the worst month: 49 American ships went down in 30 days.
The year 1943 saw an improvement in anti-submarine protection which was reflected in a lesser number of sinkings. Our merchant losses for 1943 fell to 129 ships. Sinkings in 1944 totaled only 59 ships while we lost only 22 in 1945 before V-E Day. (These losses were to all causes, but the German U-boats can be considered chiefly responsible.)
The North Atlantic, the hunting grounds of the U-boat wolf packs, saw the largest number of American merchantmen go down. About 220 were sunk there during the war, with 70 per cent of them claimed by the enemy on the Western Hemisphere side. Losses in the Caribbean numbered approximately 120, with 42 more in the South Atlantic and 25 in the Gulf of Mexico. About 45 American ships were sunk in the Pacific and nearly 30 more in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
The secret files of Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, the chief of the German submarine service, were found after the collapse of Nazi resistance. They show that the losses suffered by the U-boats during the height of the 1942 campaign were 300 per cent over the monthly average of the war up to that time. In November, 1942, the Germans had sent out 63 U-boats, and 15 of them had been destroyed.
At the end of 1942, Doenitz's records showed, the Germans had 210 "front" submarines available for operations against the Allied enemy. An additional 53 boats were on duty at naval schools for the instruction of green crews, and 119 more were being built or tested before final outfitting.
In April, 1943, the United States Navy estimated that the Germans had 400 to 500 U-boats in service, with one-third of them on the prowl at any one time, another third en route to or from port, and the rest in base for overhaul and refit.
The cautious statements about the effectiveness of our anti-submarine measures disclose that 90 U-boats were destroyed in May, June and July, 1943, or about one a day. The United States Navy accounted for 29 of these. U-boats destroyed in August, September and October, 1943, totaled about 60.
Merchant ship losses in November, 1943, were less than for any month since May, 1940. For the entire year 1943, cargo ship losses were only about 40 per cent of the tonnage that went down during the desperate months of 1942. Nearly half of 1943's tonnage was sunk in the first three months of the year. The second quarter accounted for only 27 per cent of the year's total and the last six months for only 26 per cent.
The effectiveness of the U-boat was clearly diminishing. The Battle of the Atlantic would go on to the end of the war, but it already had been won.
What happened in 1943 to bring this about? A look at the list of United States Navy ships commissioned that year gives a partial answer. Eleven escort aircraft carriers had gone into service in 1942. To these were added 24 more in 1943. In addition, the Navy commissioned 233 destroyer escorts in 1943, and American shipyards had built in that year for the British Royal Navy a total of 26 escort carriers and 66 destroyer escorts. Not all these vessels by any means were put to work hunting U-boats, but those that were proved highly effective.
The Army Air Forces anti-submarine patrols had become by 1943 so competent that U-boats were approaching our coast only at great risk. Navy air and surface forces were building up their strength so that the AAF could be relieved for other duties.
The threat from the air had become so great that in 1943 the Germans began to load their U-boats with anti-aircraft weapons and changed their tactics to a fight-it-out procedure. The results were discouraging, for the Germans, and late in the war they altered tactics again. They could not alternately dive and surface, they could not fight on the surface, so with their Schnorkel they attempted to remain submerged all the time.
Early in the war there had been areas of the ocean in which the U-boat commanders felt reasonably safe. The arcs of the patrol planes from the Allied bases on both sides of the Atlantic failed to overlap completely because of the limit to the range of the Planes in use. In those areas which the landbased planes could not cover, the U-boats played on the surface, rested the crews, and fueled and provisioned from "milk cow" cargo subs.
And suddenly carrier planes were upon them as they dozed on the long swells. No longer was any spot in the ocean secure from air attack. Planes from escort carriers no longer were waiting for submarines to approach the shipping lanes; they were the hunters now, and the submarines the hunted.
The effectiveness of air attack on submarines, by the Army, the Navy, and the R.A.F., is apparent now that access can be had to German and Allied naval records. The Germans lost 354 submarines to air attack. Despite the meagre air offensive against the U-boats in the early years of the war and the vast programs of destroyer escort and other anti-submarine vessels so enthusiastically entered into, only 246 U-boats were destroyed by attack by surface vessels. An additional 49 were sunk by combined surface and air attacks.
Other recorded losses were: to mines, 30; to Allied submarines, 21; to other various causes, 49. The cause of the destruction of 28 is unknown. The total destroyed was 777. An additional 217 were scuttled after V-E Day. Submarines of all types surrendered upon the German collapse numbered 181.
For its part, the Italian fleet lost 116 submarines, including 17 scuttled after the Italian surrender. The losses were: 32 to surface attack; 24 to aircraft; 19 to Allied submarines; 4 to surface and aircraft; 4 scuttled before the surrender; 4 wrecked; 4 captured; 2 by collision; 2 by mines; 1 grounded and destroyed; 3 unknown. Only 21 Italian submarines were left to be surrendered.
With the exception of those scuttled, the combined German and Italian submarine loss was 872 boats. Allied and neutral merchant ship losses from submarines numbered 2,770 vessels, totaling 14,500,000 gross tons. Some few of these were lost to Japanese subs, so the German U-boats and Italian subs scored about three merchant ships totaling perhaps 15,000 tons for each underseas boat that was destroyed.
This can be compared with the record made by United States submarines. Fifty-two of our boats were lost, but four of them, at least, were victims of non-operational accidents. The Japanese counted 1,750 steel merchant vessels, exclusive of small craft, as sunk by American subs. Thus our submarines sank 36 Japanese ships for every one of their number lost, or better than 10 times the German-Italian record. M. Kitagawa, chief civilian in the Japanese Merchant Marine Committee, has placed the merchant tonnage lost to United States submarines at 5,850,000, or an average of about 122,000 tons for each American submarine lost.
Our submarines accounted in addition for 194 Japanese warships, including one battleship, eight aircraft carriers, 15 cruisers, 42 destroyers, 28 submarines and 100 small craft.
An interesting aspect of the submarine warfare around the world is the rather surprising number of submarines sunk by other underseas boats. The Japanese lost 28 of their boats to our subs, beginning with the 1-173 (or 73) off Midway on January 27, 1942. Two were destroyed on May 17, 1942: the 1-28 off Truk, and the 1-164 south of Kyushu. Five were sent down by our subs in four days off Luzon: RO-115 on February 10, 1945; RO-112 the next day; RO-113 on February 13, and RO-55 and RO-43 both on February 14. Two Japanese submarines are credited to British subs. As noted above, Allied submarines accounted for the amazing score of 21 German U-boats and 19 Italian underseas craft.
A reporter on the staff of the Providence Journal for twelve years, Mr. Spilman was a war correspondent with the 43rd Infantry Division in the New Guinea and Philippines campaigns.