"The Battle of the Atlantic was the only thing that really frightened me" - Winston Churchill.



As in the First World War, the German leaders gambled on knocking Britain out of the conflict by a submarine blockade:

The navy was the weakest of Germany's armed services when war broke out in 1939. The battleship Bismarck was launched in 1940 but was sunk on its maiden voy-age in May 1941. Her sister ship Tirpitz was bottled up in Norwegian waters where British bombers sank her in November 1944.

Early in the war the German Navy under Admiral Erich Raeder recognised that the submarine offered the only effective German action at sea. Against the 22 battleships and 83 cruisers of the French and British navies, Germany had only three small 'pocket' battleships and eight cruisers. However, its submarine skills were very advanced, though there were few actual submarines. In 1939 there were only 57 U-boats available, and not all these were suitable for the Atlantic. Under Admiral Karl Donitz the submarine arm expanded steadily and soon took a heavy toll of Allied shipping. Donitz was deeply affected by his experiences as a U-Boat Captain during WW1, which led him to formulate a new tactic for undersea warfare - Wolfpack.

The submarines, or 'wolf packs' hunted at night linked by radio. In 1940 over 1,000 Allied ships were sunk, one quarter of British tonnage. In 1941 1,299 ships were sunk and British exports fell to almost one third of the pre-war total. When the United States entered the war late in 1941 the wolf packs picked off American merchantmen still sailing singly and unescorted. The Germans punished the American's lack of experience with ferocity. In the first four months of 1942 2.6 million tons of Allied shipping was sunk. Donitz was clear - he had to capitalise on their naivety:

The outlook for torpedoed sailors was not bright , left drifting in flimsy lifeboats with little or no provisions, often thousands of miles from land:

During 1942 the submarine came closer than at any other time in either world war to undermining fatally the British war effort. U-boats operated in the 'Atlantic Gap', the area in mid-atlantic outside air cover from aircarft based in Canada or Britain, supplied by special vessels known as 'milch cows' which carried additional torpedoes and food. German naval intelligence broke British codes and directed submarines to oncoming convoys. Early in 1942 convoy losses reached exceptional levels. However, the defending escort ships were fighting back:

In February Donitz replaced Raeder as head of the German navy, and with over 300 operational U-boats at the Battle of the Atlantic became a key area of German strategy.

Principally through the efforts of ULTRA, the work of the code-breaking team at the Bletchley Park Research Centre, Allied intelligence at last had regular readings of German signals. New radar aids made the detection of submarines by ships and aircraft much more effective. Fast and hard-hitting escort groups were organised to accompany convoys and move as a body to fight marauding submarines.

One of the turning points came around Convoy ONS5 at the beginning of May. It was to prove a decisive battle and a decisive turning point in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Above all the use of aircraft, either over the Bay of Biscay where submarines returned to their bases, or over the Atlantic Gap (now closed by very long-range B24 Liberator bombers), brought a high level of loss to the submarine arm. 41 U-boats were sunk in May alone, and these losses were unsustainable.

The U-boats retreated and the German navy played no further part of any significance in the war. Out of 39,000 German submariners, 28,000 lost their lives, including Donitz's own son. In May 1945, Donitz was designated by Hitler as his successor, though with the war so nearly at an end this was a largely meaningless appointment. Donitz was tried at Nuremberg in 1946 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The text for this feature is taken from The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Third Reich by Richard Overy.

The thing that specifically made the submarines vulnerable was the capture of a German Atlantic map showing the 'kill zones' of the subs, making it far easier to find them through ULTRA.

I have tried to read Doenitz's memoirs but they are as dry as dust. The man was a true technocrat. He spent only 10 years in Spandau and probably wouldn't have even been put on trial if he had not become Fuhrer after Hitler's suicide. Chester Nimitz sent a letter to Nuremburg stating he had conducted 'unrestricted submarine warfare' in the Pacific, giving some cover for Doenitz.

Matt

Doenitz does not come off as a likable human being in Speer's memoirs, either. Or the Spandau diary.

You should see him in the Thames World at War series, old and deaf, bellowing at the camera like it was a recalcitrant junior lieutenant.

But his son died on a U-Boat, in combat.

Great topic, Andy!

Last year the BBC broadcasted a three part documentary series about the Battle of the Atlantic. Have you seen that one?

Very interesting, and indeed, Churchill was really frightened by this battle, which outcome was decisive for the further course of WWII.

Mark

I dont recall seeing it Mark, but I probably have. My wife gets bored to tears when ever I try to watch something on WW2. Good job I got my own telly in my office

I think not enough time is spent on the deeds of the Allied merchant navy. "Forgotten Fourth Service"

The world today can never repay the debt owed to these men and women. To them we say "Thank you, we will never forget what you did."

Over 30,000 men of the British Merchant Navy were lost between 1939-1945.

1,554 Canadian Merchant Seamen, lost during WWII from Canadian, British and foreign ships.

On September 3rd 1939 a few hours after war had been declared against Germany the first shipping casualty occurred in the sinking of the Donaldson Line passenger ship Athenia with the loss of 112 passengers and crew. For almost six years there was barely a day went by without the loss of merchant ships and their crews.

"In these anxious days, I would like to express to all officers and men in the British Merchant Navy and British Fishing Fleets my confidence in their unflinching determination to play their vital part in defense. To each one I would say, Yours is a task no less essential than allotted to the Navy, Army and Air Force. You have a long and glorious history, and I am proud to bear the title Master of the Merchant Navy and Fishing Fleets."(King George VI speech at the beginning of WWII.)

I like this passage, "On all the oceans white caps flow, you do not see crosses row on row, but those who sleep beneath the sea, rest in peace for your country is free."

Andy

On the evening of the 3rd September 1939 a few hours after Britain declared war on Germany, The passenger liner Athenia, 13,581grt (Donaldson Line), sailing from the Clyde and Liverpool to Montreal was attacked by U-30 250 miles West of Donegal. Two torpedos slammed into her Port side. 112 passengers and crew died. The Battle of the Atlantic had begun. A lot worse was to follow as the U-boats ravaged allied shipping for nearly six years until Germanys unconditional surrender to the Allies by Admiral Karl Donitz at Rheims on 7th May 1945, which was also the day the last British Merchant ship, Avondale Park, Hull to Belfast was sunk by U-2336 after it failed to to receive the surrender signal on the 4th May.


The rules of war were that no passenger ships should be attacked steming from the world wide outcry after the sinking of the Lusitania in W.W.I. The Commander of U-30, Fritz J Lemp was said to believe that the Athenia was an Armed Merchant Cruiser. Adolph Hitler worried about reprisals from America because of the amount of American passengers onboard at the time put his propaganda machine into action and denied all knowledge of the incident. Commander Lemp was recalled to Germany to help the cover up.

After Germanys defeat in W.W.I the Treaty of Versaille had forbidden Germany to keep any U-boats, however once Hitler came to power he placed Karl Donitz, a U-boat veteran in charge of rebuilding the Kreigsmarine. Before and during the war some 1,154 U-boats were commissioned. By 1945 751 had been lost resulting in the deaths of 28,788 sailors. Of the 5,150 Allied ships sunk from 1939-45 the U-boats were credited with 2,828 sinkings. Over 2,500 were flying the Red Ensign.

Allied shipping losses peaked in 1942, largely because of the intervention of the USA which gave greater escort cover to the Convoys, Britain also had the advantage of radar, and the fact she had been deciphering the German Enigma codes for some time at Bletchley Park. Enigma machines were similar to a typewriter keyboard with rotors which were also lettered. Enigma codes were being successfully deciphered since the early 1930's, but because machines were being updated with more rotors giving more complex codes, British Intelligence needed updated examples of these machines. The capture of two of these machines involved U-boats. On 9th May 1941 U-110 under the command of Fritz J Lemp (Athenia sinking), attacked a convoy along with U-201. After being spotted by the Escort ships Aubretia, Bulldog, and Broadway the U-110 was forced to the surface after depth charges were dropped. Believing he was about to be rammed Lemp ordered his boat to be abandoned. At the very last moment the Bulldog turned to evade the collision when her Commander realized he could capture the U-boat. The story goes that Lemp dove into the sea and tried to board his vessel to scuttle her, and was subsequently shot and drowned. On board U-110 was the latest Enigma machine.

Orders to U-boats......."Do not rescue any men, do not take them alongand do not take care of any boats from the ship. Weather conditions and the proximity of land are of no consequence. Concern yourself only with the safety of your own boat and with the efforts to achieve additional success as soon as possible. We must be hard in this war. The enemy started the war in order to destroy us and thus nothing else matters"......... Karl Donitz (then Vice Admiral)

from British merchant navy .co.uk

"I've had one ambition from the time this war began: to find a German soldier, surrender to him, and spend the rest of the time in a PoW camp."

I Said this to Joe Beck on the deck on the SS Ashby, outward bound for West Africa to pick up iron ore. The sun was shining, the sea was blue and apparently benevolent.

"That's a worthy want, " he agreed, " I might join you. They're out there under the water looking for us. When they find us they'll blow us up and if we're lucky we'll be able to swim like the clappers and surrender."

He was absolutely right. They were out there in their little sub and within the next hour they torpedoed our ship. They did't wait for me to surrender; they buggered off. Joe could'nt have joined me; he was dead.

The twenty-eight of us who survived in the lifeboat saw torsos, limbs and heads floating in red water. The sharks came soon but the Germans had long gone.

The bodies disappeared quickly too. (Prologue from Fireman & Trimmer Bill Linskey's book "No Longer Required"

H&J, thanks for bringing up this topic. It definitely was a war in the Atlantic. My Grandfather(a Navy vet of WW1)decided at age 53 that he wanted to do something more for his country and so enlisted in the Merchant Marine, against the wishes of my grandmother. He was appointed 2nd Assistant Engineer on the newly minted Liberty Ship S.S. William P. Frye, built by New England Shipbuilding in So. Portland, Maine.
On it's maiden voyage as part of convoy HX 230(Halifax to England), it developed mechanical problems. Subsequently the Frye dropped farther back in the convoy until it was alone. Hove to and making repairs having just come through a tremendous gale, it was spotted by a u-boat, which radioed ahead to the other u-boats on line. The William P. Frye was able to get underway again, however it was too late. Lagging behind the protection of the convoy, the Frye was closed upon by the wolfpack and subsequently sunk by U-610 captained by Walter von Freyburg. The first torpedo impacted in forward starboard hold #1, the grain it was carrying absorbing this first torpedo . They were not so lucky on the next one. A second torpedo hit amidships sinking her in minutes.

It was on a cold night in the North Atlantic March 29, 1943 that this ship, just a few hours out of England, went to the bottom. A total of 7 survivors were able to climb up onto a small barge that they were carrying. They would be picked up several days later by H.M.S. Shikuri and dropped off in Ireland. The S.S. William P. Frye, slid beneath the waves with approximately 40 Merchant Marines, one of which was my grandfather, and 20 Naval Armed Guard.

Two footnotes.
Kapitan Walter von Freyburg and crew would not live to see the end of the year. The U-610 would be bracketed and sunk with all hands by a Royal Canadian Sunderland aircraft flying out of a base in Ireland in October of that same year. As an eerie coincidence, there had once been another S.S. William P. Frye----a three masted schooner. This ship was sunk during WW1 by, you guessed it.............a German submarine.

A good place to learn a lot about the Battle of the Atlantic is at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

There you can board and walk through U-505, the submarine the US Navy boarded and captured on the high seas, the first man-o-war the US Navy boarded and captured since 1814.

It's been restored and is still being restored to its wartime trim, and walking through it (the tape tour includes sound effects from Das Boot) gives you a real sense of the environment and claustrophobia of the U-Boat war.

I understand the German companies that built U-505 helped restore it, too, figuring that if a U-boat should be on display (and a National Historic Landmark), then it should be the best representative of German industry and workmanship possible, which is a sound idea.

Dirigoboy, you must be proud of your grandfather for doing something like that, and at his age. Great courage.

It must of been very hard to keep sane on those merchant ships knowing you had nothing to defend yourself with, and knowing you could be hit at any time without warning. And as you pointed out after your grandfathers ship was sunk, it took several days before the remaining crew were rescued.

Thanks for adding that story.

Andy

The battle of the Atlantic was won by an invention. It was the work of British scientists. The British Navy and their American ally therefore won the battle and the German Navy lost. Centimetric radar enabled ships and planes to detect and attack a surfaced submarine at night. The secret was short wavelengths of ten centimetres and less.

Arnold-Forster explains:
"You transmit a beam of electromagnetic waves. When the beam hits a target it bounces back. By measuring the time elapsed between the transmission and the receipt of the echo you can measure the target's range. By observing the bearing you can determine the direction of the target from your own ship or aircraft. You have located the target. ....The trouble with the early radar sets was that they were too bulky. What the Allies still needed in the Battle of the Atlantic was a radar small enough to be fitted into an aircraft or a small warship."

The reason the sets were too bulky was that the wavelengths they used were too long. A long wavelength obliged you to use a very large 'mirror' to concentrate the beam. If you wanted to reduce the size of the mirror so that it would fit into an aircraft you had first to reduce the wavelength.

Once this was done by the British Navy, the tide turned dramatically in its favour. March 1943 had been the worst month of the war for the Allies in the Atlantic, with 41 ships sunk in the first 10 days of the month. But April and May 1943 were the worst for Dönitz, with heavy U-boat losses.

View from a submariner, of a sinking sub

"A dreadful drama unfolds inside the submarine: the water gushes in through a hole in the mess-room forward of the control room: The batteries are flooded; the salt water comes into contact with their sulphuric acid and gives off dense stifling fumes of that terrible chlorine gas, which is sucked up into the engine room by the still-functioning diesel engines.


"The men's lungs are burnt out even before the order to abandon ship reaches them. Slowly the poisonous fumes reach the forward positions. Commander Hoeltring, who has been taken on board after his own submarine has been sunk, leaps up from his bunk and dashes to the control room, where one of his men, too seriously hurt to move, is dying. The chloride fumes arrive just as he does so. Knowing that he is finished, the young sailor begs his captain to finish him off quickly; Hoeltring obeys: taking out his pistol he first shoots the sailor then, half suffocated, puts a bullet through his own brain. In the control room there is a wild rush towards the fresh air. Throwing discipline to the winds, ratings and officers fight madly with fists and spanners to get up the ladder to that little round opening framing the blue sky."

In May 1943 Dönitz went to tell Hitler that his U-boats would have to break off the Battle of the Atlantic, at least for the time being.

Dönitz to Hitler, (May 1943)
"What is now decisive is that enemy aircraft have been equipped with a new location apparatus ...which enables them to detect submarines and to attack them unexpectedly in low cloud, bad visibility, or at night. Much the largest number of submarines now being sunk are being sunk by aircraft. .......In the last month losses have risen from 14 submarines, that is about 13% of those at sea, to 36 submarines or perhaps 37, that is about 30% of the submarines at sea. These losses are too high. We must now husband our resources because, to do anything else, would simply be to play the enemy's game."

Though I never had the opportunity to meet him, I am proud of him. It has taken a very long time and monumental struggle by Merchant Marine vets to be officially recogized by the government. I guess they didn't count until they looked at the casualty rate and the amount of supplies they brought to the front. Truly a sad legacy.

For U-boats, visit: uboat.net. They have a tremendous website.
For Merchant Marine in all wars go to www.usmm.org
For Naval Armed Guard go to www.armed-guard.com

Attack on an Arctic Convoy, 1942

The supply convoys that slowly plodded through the Atlantic were the lifelines of the Allied campaign in Europe during World War II. The Germans knew that if they could cut those lifelines, they would be that much closer to victory. The stakes were high and the game dangerous. The civilian Merchant Marines who manned the ships grimly calculated where they slept aboard ship by the cargo they carried. If you were hauling a load of iron ore, you slept on deck for you had only a few seconds to clear the ship once a torpedo hit. If you carried general cargo, you could sleep below decks but kept your clothes on because your survival time was calculated in minutes. If, however, your ship carried a load of aviation fuel, you were free to sleep naked, below decks, with the door closed since you would never have the time to escape the certain and sudden oblivion of a torpedo attack.

Of all the convoy routes of World War II the most dangerous was the Arctic course followed by ships carrying supplies to the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel. Forced to follow the coastline of Nazi-occupied Norway, the convoys were not only threatened by submarines but subject to attack by land-based aircraft and surface vessels from Norwegian ports. These hazards were compounded by the brutal and often unpredictable weather. Finally, throughout the Arctic summer, these convoys were forced to tread their way north fully exposed in twenty-four hours of daylight.

A Life or Death Struggle

The following account was written by an American crewmember serving aboard an armed merchant ship during 1942:

"The snow and the sleet squalls passed. Wednesday gave a clear cerulean sky, a blue and gleaming sea, very little horizon or zenith cloud. This was their day, the Nazi's, we knew. We dragged our ammunition cases closer to the guns; got ready as well as we could.

They came early: the Heinkels, the Messerschmitts, the Stukas, the Junkers 89's, and all told there were 105 of them over us during that day's fight that was to last twenty hours. They used everything: 1,100-pounders, 550's, 250's, aerial torpedoes, mines, their cannons, and their machine guns; while outside, always trying to get in, their submarines rushed our escort.

That was hell. There is no other word I know for it. Everywhere you looked aloft you saw them, crossing and recrossing us, hammering down and back, the bombs brown, sleek in the air, screaming to burst furiously white in the sea. All around us, as so slowly we kept on going, the pure blue of the sea was mottled blackish with the greasy patches of their bomb discharges. Our ship was missed closely time and again. We drew our breaths in a kind of gasping-choke.

At about half-past ten that morning, the long-shanked Fourth Mate and I were on the after guns on the poop. Two Messerschmitts came after us, off the bank of broken cirrus cloud on the Northern horizon. Since Monday, the Messerschmitt squadrons had given our ship a lot of attention, no doubt remembering their pal that we had nailed. This pair came down in one-two formation, the after-most perhaps three hundred feet behind his partner. At the start of their direct dive on us they had about two thousand foot altitude.

It was my first time to fire at them, and, eager and excited, I shot too soon. My tracers curved off; I was out of range, so I cut the guns. But they kept on coming, bigger and bigger in the ring sights, their wings growing from thin lines to thick fierceness from which lanced gun flame. We could see the bombs in the racks; we could see the bombardiers. Together, the Fourth Mate and I cut in at them.

We were leaning far back, knees bent, hands hard on the rubber grips, fingers down on the triggers, eyes to the ring sights. We were no longer conscious of the empties clacketing out underfoot, of the cold, the trembling motion of the ship as the other bombs burst. Here was death, and we were throwing death back to meet it.

The aftermost plane peeled off, banking towards the ship astern. The other kept on, right into our fire, smack for us. Then he dropped it, a 550-pounder. He was gone, away from our fire, and, hanging to the guns, all we could do was look up at that bomb.

It fell, slanting with the pull of the plane's speed. It whirled, screaming and howling in the air directly over- head. We could very clearly see the cylindrical khaki shape, the fins, even the white blur that was the serial markings on the side. This was for us, we thought. This was death. Even should it miss, the concussion will take the T.N.T. There was nothing to do but hang on tighter to the gun grips. We said good-by to each other, but the bomb held our cars, the sound of it seemed to possess all sound.

Then in some sudden and not-yet-strong gust of wind it veered a bit. It struck the sea no more than twenty-five feet astern of us. There was the impact of passage into the sea, an immense, rushing smack, then the detonation. My wife's image was before my eyes. I stood there waiting for the T.N.T.

Water went tumbling over me in a dousing, blinding column. The ship rose and fell, groaning, terribly shaking. Empty cartridges jumped under the shock, pitched off into the sea. Beneath my feet, as the ship still jarred from that awful violence, the deck seams opened, and the oakum lay loose.

Water dripped from my helmet brim into my eyes. I was soaked from the collar of my sheepskin coat to my felt-lined boots. Beside me, still at his station between me and the Fourth Mate's guns, was old Ben. He was the oldest A.B. in the ship; Ben, a Baltimore man, who in the last war had seen service at the front in France. He might have run as that bomb fell, taken out forward for the life boats on the boat deck, anywhere away from the bomb. But he stayed there; he just bent his knees and set himself and waited, empty-handed and where he belonged.

For that moment of steadfastness, I loved Ben, and I always shall. We looked staring, shaking, just about conscious, into each other's eyes, and as the frightful tightness gave from our stomachs and lungs, spoke to each other. I forget what we said, and I guess it doesn't matter. We talked as shipmates, that was all."

"Attack on an Arctic Convoy, 1942," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2001).

Wow, another great story! I keep repeating myself here. Can you imagine waiting for an explosion, saying good-bye to each other?

Vee

Some of Mr. Raeder or Donitz had even reached the Gulf of St-Lawrence between New-Brunswick and Quebec here in Canada, It was the first time that any enemy ships entered the Canadian waters. and the scariest part about it....I took long for the Canadian defense to notice it.

Its actually a cop that saw them, and reported it to the proper authorities.

Amazing but true, In late 1940, there were ONLY some 22 operational U-boats in the atlantic waters reducing Britains imports from 80 million tons per year to slightly less than half of that.
Now that is effective warfare economics.

Liverpool shipowners lost over 3 million Tons of shipping. This was more than the entire Merchant Navies of Norway, Netherlands and Greece put together.

Of the 830 operated U boats at least 750 saw service in the Atlantic or British coastal waters, of these, 510 or 2 out of 3 were lost.

600 RAF Coastal Command aircraft were also lost in the Atlantic.

The Battle lasted from the first day of the war 1939 to the very last day of the war. 1945.

After the German declaration of war against America Dec 41 the U boat crews entered another "happy time"
on the Easter seabord of USA, "The American Turkey Shoot" as the crews called it cost America 149 ships within weeks. It was 6 months before there was a coastal blackout and coastal patrols introduced.

"the battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor throughout the war"
Winston Churchill.

The order forbidding U-boats to make any effort to rescue survivors was issued after two incidents in which U-boats seeking to help survivors were attacked by allied aircraft while flying a red cross flag, and with their decks loaded with survivors. The Nurnberg court found that his sentence was not based upon his conduct of unrestricted submarine warfare (although it apparently determined that sinking of neutral ships without warning was a violation of international protocols) both because on Nimitz's testimony and because of a British Admiralty order issued on May 8, 1940, directing that shipping in the Skagerrak would be sunk on sight.

The German navy also started the war with two excellent battlecruisers. The Gneisenau was sunk by British bombers and the Scharnhorst fell under the guns of the Duke of York off North Cape. Both were damaged during the Norway invasion, following which they raided convoys in the North Atlantic. In one celebrated action, the auxiliary cruiser Rawalpindi held the two of them away from her charges while they scattered, with fatal results to herself. (Another such cruiser, the Jervis Bay, had the same experience with the Scheer.) On their last raid they were about to pounce on a collection of merchantmen when they noted an "R" class battleship in their midst, and decided discretion was the better part of valor. They were in Breast when the Bismark's loss marked the end of the use of German surface warships in the Atlantic, and they (along with the Bismark's consort Prinz eugen) greatly embarrassed England by returning home through the Straits of Dover in broad daylight, unscathed eccept for an unfortuante encounter with a stray mine.

Mike

OOPS!!
My apologies for confused history. The Rawalpindi was NOT escorting a convoy when she had her fatal encounter with the German battlecruisers, she was patroling the Iceland-Faroes gap -- and this happened in late 1939, not after the Norway invasion.

However, the German warships employed as convoy raiders were a major concern to the Royal Navy. A normal escort group was helpless against these raiders -- indeed, one of the worst convoy disasters of the war, PQ17, occurred when the escort of a Murmansk-bound convoy received a report that the Tirpitz was sailing to intercept the convoy. With no hope of successfully fighting that behemoth, the Admiralty ordered the convoy to disperse and proceed independently, and withdrew the escorts to safer waters. The Tripitz never came, but U-boats and the Luftwaffe sank 22 of the 33 ships in the convoy. Nor were these German ships anything to sneeze at. The Graf Spee, while suffering considerable topside damage, was essentially intact in mobility and firepower following the action off the River Platte. On the other hand, Exeter was a wreck, with all but one of its 8" guns out of action, steering by hand and burning fiercely. In addition, Ajax had her two after turrets knocked out, leaving only Achilles in good fighting trim.

These ships did not have nearly the impact they might have had. Hitler was very fearful of the public relations effect of the loss of a major warship, and he constantly insisted that the Kriegsmarine not unnecessarily endanger its ships. It's very hard to fight a war effectively (particularly against a larger and very aggressive opponent) without taking risks.)

Mike

I added a series of photos relating to the sinking of the Graf Spee to the following topic last year, if anyone is interested. (Can't seem to make the link work properly though, sorry...my excuse is that I haven't been around on the boards much recently!)

[url=http://forums.wildbillguarnere.com/index.php?showtopic=6985&hl=Graf+Spee]

In amongst my Grandad's wartime photos, which my Grandma showed me for the first time last October, was this set of postcards. They seem to be part of a series which depict the sinking of the Graf Spee. There's a bit about why he might have had the postcards in my thread about him in Veterans Stories (Victor Hallam - A gunner in the Navy during WW2)

Vicky

Rather odd that for the strength that it projected, and as efficient as his wolf packs were, particularly up until the end of 1943, Hitler never trusted the naval services. Many officers in the German navy failed to buy in to the Nazi ideal and it has been duly noted in other conversation that many refused to give the Hitler salute, some even in his presence, instead offering the more traditional salute.

The German Navy also protected its Jews and Mischlinge from the Nazis...Rogge, Backenkohler, Ascher, were all part-Jewish. Gunther Lutjens, who went down with the Bismarck, as a Mischlinge as well.

When Kristallnacht took place, Lutjens sent an angry telegram to Hitler on the atrocities. Der Fuhrer told Lutjens to stick to navigation and gunnery...or else. I have often felt that this was a major factor in his extreme depression and cautious handling of the Bismarck.

The Allied Merchant seamen of WW2 are the reason why I went into the Merchant Marine for a time between high school and college. It's just sad that their rights to veteran status were denied them for so long, despite the hardships they endured at sea against the wrath of Hitler's U-Boats.

God bless them all

Yes God bless them, Its a shame but the fluid battlefields are impossible to imagine, and you cant go there to see anything of them. Churchill always knew that the battle of the Atlantic was the most critical factor in the whole of the British experience in the 2nd ww.

Thats what always caught my attention... the fact that what they did and what happened to them lies submerged beneath miles of water, some wrecks never to be seen or heard of ever again.