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Buy the Book
How the Atlantic Was Won
Losing this battle would have meant losing World War II.
Turning the Tide: How a Small Band of Allied Sailors Defeated
the U-Boats and Won the Battle of the Atlantic
By Ed
Offley
(Basic Books,
478 pages, $28.99)
It’s not that the story of the Battle of the Atlantic hasn’t been told often and well. But Ed Offley’s Turning the Tide is a dramatic contribution to understanding of a long-running and geographically huge confrontation that may have mattered more to the outcome of World War II than more commented-on campaigns.
Offley puts his painstaking re-creation of events together from Allied and German archives, memoirs, previous published accounts, as well as from interviews with survivors of the convoys, both merchant and navy sailors. He tells the big picture story with statistics, timelines, and overviews of strategy, tactics, and equipment involved.
As important and engaging as the sweep and generalities of the largest naval campaign in history are, the bulk of this book, and Offley’s signal contribution, is his first-hand, blow-by-blow descriptions of some of the deadliest and most game-changing encounters of the Atlantic war. Offley shows readers the battle as it was seen by those engaged in it, from ordinary seamen to admirals.
Offley, a long-time military reporter and navy veteran, puts readers of Turning the Tide on the bridge, in the engine rooms, in the U-Boats, and all too often in the life boats or into the icy North Atlantic water with nothing more than a life-jacket. (Being in a U-boat was hell for many reasons, not least of which was because of limited space and very limited fresh water, U-boat sailors could only bring one suit of clothing and could not shower during combat patrols that lasted four to six weeks.) Readers see the two sides duel with each other and with the North Atlantic itself for personal survival, for the survival of Britain, and for the survival of the Allied cause in that all so personal, small-picture way that all wars are fought by the individuals who must bear the sometimes crushing burdens. Some of this, I’m obliged to say, is not for feint-hearted readers.
It’s impossible to overestimate the importance of the Battle of the Atlantic. And not just because it lasted from the beginning of WWII in 1939 to the end of the European war in May of 1945, covered a significant fraction of the planet, and led to the loss of many hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of lives. Most participants in this battle, and those who watched it from afar, clearly understood that if German U-Boats could starve England out of the war the Allies would have been denied the near springboard from which to invade Fortress Europe. (Just imagine the logistics involved in invading France from New Jersey.) Losing the Battle of the Atlantic could have meant losing the war. At the least it would have meant the war lasting past 1945.
To survive itself, and to support the large invasion force of Allied troops who would train there, conduct a huge strategic bombing campaign from there, and eventually invade Nazi-held Europe from there, the United Kingdom, an island nation whose economy and populace had historically depended on imports, had to continually receive huge amounts of food, petroleum, war material and other vital supplies by sea. Even with convoys continually arriving, strict food rationing lasted through the war and even after in the UK. By 1942 U-boats had reduced food supplies to the point that the average Brit civilian could look forward to only 12 ounces of bread and two ounces of tea per day. Meat allotments got down to four ounces of ham or bacon per week and one egg every two weeks.
The early rounds of the battle went to the Germans. With few escort ships or protecting aircraft available and anti-U-boat tactics not developed yet, the Nazi boats had a field day off the U.S. East Coast at the beginning of the war. U-boats sank 229 merchant ships there during the first half of 1942, and almost 400 ships in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and North and Central Atlantic during the same period.
Fortunes of the battle changed multiple times over the next three years as the convoy system was developed and more ships and planes became available to protect the merchantmen. But the contest wasn’t just decided by the bravery and seamanship of allied sailors and the effectiveness of new tactics, as important as these things were. And it wasn’t decided totally by the amount of floating and flying stock available. There was also the critical electronic battle, fought by scientists, technicians, and code-breakers ashore. A major break for the Allies came with the fortuitous capture of a German naval Enigma code machine from an abandoned U-boat and the breaking of the enormously complex code that went with that system.
Changes in weaponry — new types of torpedoes and the development of the hedge-hog, forward-firing mortar system — as well as developments in radar and other detection and tracking technology, gave first one side then the other an edge for a bit until the next development or refinement came along. The Allies finally captured the technology edge and held it to the end of the war.
Much of Turning the Tide is devoted to a detailed narrative of the almost continuous combat endured during the ill-fated trips of eastbound convoys SC122 and HX229 as well as the westbound convoy ONS5. These convoys took place during March and April of 1943, the peak of the effectiveness of the U-boats, and the most worrisome time for the Allies.
The huge losses of these convoys led both British and American leadership to put more ships and planes into the Atlantic fight. These much-needed reinforcements along with technical breakthroughs soon gave the Allies the upper hand, which they never relinquished. England was saved, Fortress Europe was invaded from the Sceptered Isle, and fascism was denied. It was a close business.
With the somber totaling up after the war, we learned that almost 10,000 U.S. Merchant Marine crewmen had died during the battles in the Atlantic. British and Commonwealth merchant sailors fared even worse, with more than 37,000 crewmen lost. The British and Commonwealth fatality rate for merchant seaman was 17 percent, almost three times the fatality rate of the British Army.
As bad as these numbers are, it was much more dangerous to serve on a U-boat. Of the 830 U-boats that put to sea in WWII, 717 were lost in combat or to accidents. Of 39,000 German sailors who went down to the sea in U-boats, 27,490 perished, yielding an almost unbelievable 70 percent fatality rate, making German U-boats the most dangerous branch of any service of any nation during WWII.
Offley skillfully blends history and statistics and analysis as well as heart-pounding narratives of sea-battles that have the immediacy of a good novel, only they tell of real people and real events. Turning the Tide is a long and detailed book that belongs on the bookshelves of professional historians or of general readers attempting to understand a central campaign in the most horrific war in human history.
About the Author
Larry Thornberry is a writer in Tampa.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (34) | Leave a comment
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Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 6:12AM
It's not a bad survey, and it does provide a good introduction for the general reader, in part because it deals with the personal perspectives of many participants. However, it's rather weak on technical details and there are a number of small errors.
It also covers much of the same ground as Michael Gannon's "Black May" (Gannon is also author of an outstanding history of the first U-boat offensive off the coast of the United States in early 1942, "Operation Drumbeat").
Those whose appetites have been whet by either of these books has no choice but to dive into Clair Blair, Jr.'s magisterial two volume history, "Hitler's U-Boat War: Vol.I, The Hunters" and "Vol.II, The Hunted".
Alan Brooks| 6.7.11 @ 7:32AM
The great warriors were at Bletchley Park, too.
Al Adab| 6.7.11 @ 11:46AM
Indeed, Brooks, indeed.
Many often feel like simple cogs in the wheel, but every piece is critical to the outcome.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 1:59PM
This is true, though ULTRA was not nearly as important from a tactical standpoint as many would believe. It provided insights into Admiral Doenitz's operational plans and U-boat deployments, which frequently allowed Admiral Max Horton, the Allied commander in the convoy war, to route shipping around wolf pack concentrations. But the time lag between reception and dissemination of the intelligence was too long to use ULTRA to actually direct convoy battles.
A less well known but more valuable asset was HF/DF, usually called HUFF-DUFF, or "high frequency direction finding". This was a directional antenna mounted both on ships and at shore installations that provided bearings to HF radio transmitters. Doenitz's operational method required his U-boats to report in whenever they spotted a convoy or attacked a ship; U-boats trailing convoys broadcast long duration homing signals to bring other submarines onto the convoy. With HF/DF, these signals could be detected, and their bearing localized. When two or more HF/DF units were present in an escort group, a precise submarine locations could be derived by triangulation, and a destroyer (later, a hunter-killer group) could be dispatched to sink it. The Germans countered HF/DF by developing "burst transmitters" that pre-recorded Morse code messages then transmitted them at a higher speed than human hands could manage, but the Allies in their turn developed automated localizers that could get a bearing on a submarine no matter how brief its transmission. HF/DF was the tactical intelligence system that, together with centimetric radar, gave the Allies the wherewithal for victory.
Mike Hawk| 6.7.11 @ 6:24PM
Ultra was extremely important. After capture of U-110 and U-559 German Enigma machines and codebooks were obtained and the German Hydra code regularly read and information obtained. THe Germans never figured out their codes had been broken. US and British naval forces could track U-boat movements and their supply ships with great accuracy and either sink or avoid them with great efficiancy. Ultra did not know everything, but those at Bltchley PArk knew a hell of a lot.
Stuart Koehl| 6.8.11 @ 10:27AM
ULTRA was most effective at the operational level--that is, in the deployment of forces and the routing of convoys, but it's latency period was too long for tactical use. In the area in and around the convoy, HF/DF. radar and sonar were far more important and effective.
One example of ULTRA's operational effectiveness was the destruction of the Type XIV "Milch Cow" U-boats--large submarine tanker/supply vessels intended to replenish the smaller Type VII U-boats, which were never intended to operate in the mid-Atlantic, let alone off U.S. waters.
Each Milch Cow boat was positioned in a particular grid box in the Atlantic, moved as needed by Behfelshaber das U-Boote (U-Boat High Command). Radio transmissions from Doenitz's HQ to both the Milch Cows and the attack boats were intercepted by the Allies and decrypted by Bletchley Park. This allowed the Allies to track the movements of the Milch Cows and to deploy forces against them. Since the big boats had to loiter in one place for an extended time, sooner or later the hunter-killer groups would find them and destroy them. The eradication of the Milch Cows placed a serious constraint on the ability of Doenitz to keep boats deployed in mid-ocean for extended periods. U-boats might have torpedoes available, but would run short of fuel and have to return home, thus reducing the number of boats on station by as much as a third.
RT| 6.7.11 @ 7:11AM
And for those of us without the discipline to make it through a history book the movie "Das Boot" offers an exciting taste of some of it. I may try to give history reading another chance, though, in the form of this book.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 7:22AM
Be careful about Das Boot, which has been criticized by a number of historians, as well as by survivors of the U-bootewaffe as providing a distorted picture of war in the boats. The movie gives a good feeling for the claustrophobia of the U-boat--more than an actual U-boat, as my daughter discovered when visiting U-505 in Chicago. She could not watch the movie, but found the actual boat pretty spacious (of course, she wasn't sharing it with fifty other guys).
Herbert Werner's "Iron Coffins" is an excellent first person memoir that stands up decades after its initial publication.
Doctor Right| 6.7.11 @ 3:01PM
Distorted, how?
Did they make it look too fun?
voted against carter| 6.7.11 @ 4:25PM
No they were very PC about nazis.
In Germany MOST EVERY ONE was a Nazi.
SORRY the truth hurts. WHY do you think it is
STILL ILLEGAL to show a swastika in Germany to
this day???
And the Anti war bent of the Captain.
If you have the time watch the extended version of DAS BOAT. IE all 6 hours of it. It was a mini series in Germany
And just to be clear, THE NAZI's were, and STILL are VERY despicable people.
"Iron Coffins: IS a MUCH more accurate book.
It is also a better read.
And I am of German heritage.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 9:19PM
"In Germany MOST EVERY ONE was a Nazi."
I would disagree with that. And, of all the services, the Kriegsmarine was the least Nazified--though Doenitz himself was pretty much a true believer. The U-bootewaffe was fairly apolitical, and true-blue Nazis were not popular.
Morale in the U-bootewaffe did not crack, right up to the very end, which is a tribute to the leadership of its officers and the courage and dedication of the enlisted men. By 1944, many suspected Germany could not win, but they continued to go out on patrol, knowing how long the odds were against them.
Voted is right, though--Iron Coffins is a much better, more accurate and more balanced book.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 9:03PM
Bucheim wrote a book based on his wartime diaries (he was a Ministry of Propaganda journalist attached to the U-bootewaffe). Published in the 1970s, it was roundly criticized by other U-boat survivors as not showing a rounded picture of the men who fought in the boats--particularly its portrayal of the men on shore, as well as painting a picture of the officers and men as cynical pessimists. It was very much a product of its time, an anti-war book filled with anti-heroes.
The movie (particularly in its extended edition) is fairly true to the book, and was intended as an anti-war statement as well. It does not give a balanced portrayal of the officers and men who fought in the iron coffins.
Groad| 6.7.11 @ 8:33AM
One of the essential weapons against the U-boats was long range patrol aircraft, that is the Navy PB4Y, the Navy version of the B-24. Equipped with radar and given it's long range it was an essential part of the defense. It also carried depth bombs and they were credited with about 70 U-boat sinkings. These versions of the B-24 were flown by both the Royal Navy and the US Navy.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 10:52AM
The failure of General Hap Arnold of the USAAF and Air Marshall Harris of RAF Bomber Command to release Very Long Range (VLR) aircraft such as the B-24 and the Lancaster to support the Battle of the Atlantic resulted in the loss of countless ships and men during 1942-43, during which time the U-Boats could operate free from aerial surveillance and attack in the mid-Atlantic "air gap". At this time, the Combined Bomber Offensive was accomplishing relatively little, and the number of aircraft requested by the U.S. Navy and RAF Coastal Command was relatively small, but the "Bomber Barons" insisted that they could not afford to divert one squadron to the critical fight against the U-Boats. Their claim that they could stop the U-Boats by bombing German shipyards proved to be empty promises. Eventually, it took direct intervention by FDR and Churchill to have the necessary aircraft diverted, a major step towards turning the tide.
By the way, the number of U-boats sunk by VLR aircraft is almost irrelevant. Their main value was in detecting U-boats far from the convoys, and forcing them to submerge, at which point their mobility and ability to detect convoys was seriously reduced.
The most effective form of ASW aircraft in World War II turned out to be the humble blimp. Not one ship was lost from any convoy being escorted by blimps, and only one blimp was lost to enemy action, while blimps were credited with sinking several U-boats.
Gary| 6.7.11 @ 9:24AM
I remember having the same thoughts as Stuart's daughter upon touring the USS Requin. It seemed very spacious. I said so aloud and got an amused laugh from a retired dolphin serving as our guide. He told us about "hot bunking". It suddenly made the boat seem very small!
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 10:56AM
My daughter just recently had the opportunity to go aboard a Balao class fleet sub preserved at Charleston, SC. As compared to even the long-range Type IX U-505, it was a virtual lap of luxury--even had air conditioning (to improve the reliability of the electronics, not to enhance the comfort of sailors). With a crew of 73 on a war patrol, mostly crammed into the forward and aft torpedo rooms, it was very up close and personal. Most diesel boat sailors I know talk about the unique smell of a submarine, a combination of diesel fug (the oily residue gets into everything) combined with "feet, farts and fannies", that made subs an olfactory delight. Modern nuke boats are virtual hotels in comparison.
sanjuro| 6.7.11 @ 7:13PM
Something women will be experiencing if the Navy places women aboard subs.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 9:23PM
Don't get me started. I have a friend whose daughter is an EWO in a Hawkeye squadron deployed on a carrier. Normally, most junior aviators share a room with three or four other officers. Because there were so few women in the squadron, she shared quarters with just one other woman, meaning that two or three male officers had to bunk in the CPO's quarters, and the CPOs had to bunk with the EMs. And that was on a carrier.
On a sub, men already hot bunk. The 688 boats were built with a crew of 103 in mind, but with the addition of new sensors and combat systems, manning is up to 130 men. Where they will put the women, and how the men will feel about having to move to accommodate them, is something the Navy obviously hasn't given much thought.
Petronius| 6.7.11 @ 9:48AM
There's more on the way about this subject and most of the better titles are still in print. I'm looking forward to Golden Horseshoe; a new biography about Kvkn. Otto Kretschmer and his career commanding U99. Donitz' memoirs, 10 Years and 20 Days is a dry narrative, but the top of this canon. And anybody possessing a shelf full of the old Ballantine pictorial series from the late 60's has true treasure. For those who want a stronger taste of the U Boat campaign, join Sharkhunters.com and get their e-zine.
There was a joke during the Nixon administration. Had the U.S. lost the war, the streets would be full of Volkswagons and Toyotas, and the Secretary of State would have a German accent. The Kriegsmarine enigma codes would not have been broken without the efforts of the National Cash Register Co. of Dayton, Ohio. One of the two remaining bombes which produced the code keys for Naval Intelligence is in their museum. The other is in the Imperial War Museum in London.
C Smith| 6.7.11 @ 10:24AM
Another Turning of the Tide
Daniel,
I was very happy to see the work you have done on the PACIFIC GHOSTS/ WRECK WEB sites. It is good for people to remember the cost of freedom, and I am sure my father would want to assist you.
On 13 September 1942, General MacArthur sent the 32nd Division to New Guinea, more specifically, Buna. My father was among the first, they were ill equipped and unprepared, they made all the mistakes, but they wrote the “definitive” book on jungle warfare; unfortunately, more often than not, they wrote it in blood. Here are a few things I learned from my father; he can correct the inaccuracies:
My father and his company on arriving in Australia had no idea that they that they would be doing anything more than defending the mainland. Their training had prepared them for nothing remotely similar to jungle warfare. However, one midnight, orders arrived. As they gathered their gear, nothing more than they could carry on their backs, one of my father’s comrades yelled: Hey “Sweet Tooth, tell us something funny”! My father sternly reprimanded: “This isn’t funny”! They put their clothes in vats of green dye (everything had to be improvised), and while still drying on their backs, Company “M” loaded on to planes, and took off into the night.
Not sure all the planes make it over the spine of mountains that run the length of New Guinea. Thankfully, the pilot of my father’s plane had them crowd as tight as possible near the cockpit to provide more lift and less chance of stalling.
I will let my father describe the Buna campaign….
Eventually what remained of Company “M” (my father, plus one) was disbanded and merged with another company. From that second company, only 7 emerged from the jungle.
Suffering from jungle rot and unable to walk, my father assisted in training new recruits for “bunker assault.” Because his leg was in such bad condition, they had him lie in a bunker of logs with the cracks packed with rocks and mud, and had him shoot in the air so the new recruits would become familiar with the flash, smoke, sound, trajectory, and most importantly the echo of enemy fire.
To avoid hitting anyone, my he shot at an overhead tree limb. He shot so long he eventually cut it in two. He felt safe there, except for the occasional round that penetrated the bunker!
My father could tell you so much more. I am also sending him this letter, am sure he would be glad to talk with you.
C Smith
Shermans riding again!| 6.7.11 @ 10:37AM
God bless your family and especially your Dad.
Stuart Koehl| 6.7.11 @ 11:00AM
To get a good idea of the horror of the war in New Guinea, I recommend Eric Bergerud's "Touched by Fire: The Land War in the Pacific". Bergerud places special emphasis on how the environment itself was the enemy, inflicting more casualties through disease (malaria, dengue fever, jungle rot, dysentery), malnutrition and heat exhaustion than did the Japanese.
KyMouse| 6.7.11 @ 11:24AM
I used to do some scuba diving, and have a guidebook that tells about the sinking of the Black Point off the coast of Rhode Island. I don't have the book with me to double-check my facts, but here is what I remember (please correct me if I'm wrong):
In May 1945, just after the end of the war in Europe had been declared, a U-boat off the coast of Rhode Island spotted a collier (a coal-carrying ship) near Newport. The old ship had several crewmen but only one gun of any size.
The U-boat hit the Black Point with one torpedo, which broke the old ship in half. Hearing of the attack, U.S. naval vessels started racing to the area; the sub, in shallow waters, tried lying low on the bottom to avoid detection.
The naval vessels dropped depth charges all around the sub, killing everyone on board.
I don't know if the captain had received the news that the war was over. But just think -- with the war over, the sub could have returned home to Germany, and everyone on board could have gone on with their lives. I guess the captain wanted to kill a few more Americans.
Ken (Old Texican)| 6.7.11 @ 12:08PM
My dad was one of thousands of "unlisted casualties" of the Atlantic War.
He was merely a "welding chipper" in a Houston shipyard that manufactured "Liberty Ships".
They filled every space with blown in asbestos to slow down the fires if torpedoed. My dad died of asbestos poisoning. (never sued anyone either!)
Al Adab| 6.7.11 @ 1:05PM
That insulation saved more lives than it took by far. Sorry your Dad had to suffer so, but as you say he was indeed a casualty of the war. Every last soul involved helped contribute to Victory.
KyMouse| 6.7.11 @ 2:34PM
Ken, every time I see one of those commercials about lawyers and asbestos, I remember that, as Al Adab pointed out, asbestos saved untold numbers of military folks during WWII. I'm so sorry about your dad's illness, but God bless him for doing his bit for freedom so well.
MOS was 71331| 6.8.11 @ 1:01AM
In addition to Das Boot, there are other good movies about the naval war in the Atlantic. I particularly recommend:
1. The Cruel Sea, a 1947 Brit movie about a corvette and its crew.
2. The Battle of the River Plate, a 1956 Brit movie about the German "pocket battleship" Graf Spee and the three Brit cruisers which fought it near Montevideo, Uruguay. [The German crew was interned in Uruguay after the Graf Spee was scuttled. One of the crew's officers made it back to Germany and skippered a U-boat. His U-boat with a tenth of the Graf Spee's crew sank more allied tonnage than did the Graf Spee.] [One of the two Brit light cruisers, HMNZS Achilles, survived WWII and was sold to the Indian navy. The Indian navy allowed the ship to participate in the movie and it "played" the other light cruiser in the battle, HMS Ajax!]
Stuart Koehl| 6.8.11 @ 10:32AM
The Cruel Sea, based on Nicholas Monserrat's autobiographical novel, is a true classic. So is "In Which We Serve", starring Noel Coward, the story of a Royal Navy destroyer loosely based on the experience of Lord Louis Mountbatten.
And one should never overlook Sink the Bismarck, with Kenneth More and Dana Wynter. Despite taking minor liberties with the truth (e.g., making Admiral Lutjens an ardent Nazi, when he was anything but), it gets the essence of the story right, conveys much of the tension of that period, and, considering the time that it was made, has spectacular battle scenes.
David| 6.8.11 @ 10:19AM
One of the real unsung heroes of the battle of the Atlantic were those scientists engaged in Operational Research. It was the pioneering efforts of such scientists as Philip McCord Morse, George Elbert Kimball and Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, who came up with the strategies and tactics that won the battle of the Atlantic.
Some examples of USASWORG efforts. Determining the precise attack area to fire missiles from planes that would cause the most damage to subs while trying to crash dive. You had to determine not where the sub was when you fired the missiles, but where it most likely would be when you hit. They determined through the use of mass statistics that the more ships firing on an individual sub, the more likely they would sink the sub. They also determined that depth charges were being dropped at an angle that was designed to hit the widest area possible. However crash diving German subs couldn’t reach that depth, and so charges were missing.
Not having read the book, I don’t know if they are passed over, but in many other histories, we seem to concern ourselves with Enigma and forget the other efforts, that went into winning the war.
Stuart Koehl| 6.8.11 @ 10:45AM
OR is covered, though I think most people will not understand how the application of statistical methods to tactical problems really worked.
For instance, depth charging is actually a form of bombing in three dimensions. One had to guess not only the position of the boat in the horizontal plane, but also in the vertical (i.e., depth). OR examined reports from numerous U-boat sinkings, the characteristics of the U-boats, the sink rate of the depth charges and the effects of explosions at different depths, and worked out the optimal "pattern" of depth charges to be used, with some set to detonate above, some below, and some at the same depth as the U-boat, in order to maximize the probability of lethal damage.
They also applied OR to aerial attacks on U-boats. They quickly determined that the chances of destroying a U-boat from the air once the conning tower had submerged were close to nil--the "area of uncertainty" in which the U-boat was likely to be was just too large. So there was no point in setting the depth of aerial depth charges for 60 feet (as had been the case). Instead, aircraft were instructed only to attack boats that were either on the surface or in the process of submerging, and to set the depth on its bombs to just 25 feet. They also recommended setting the bombs to fall in a tighter pattern, so that several would straddle the U-boat and blow it to the surface. Once these tactics were adopted, the number of U-boats sunk by aircraft soared.
OR extended into many other areas, including how to camouflage aircraft to minimize visual detection by U-boats (white turned out to be best), the optimal altitude to maximize surveillance coverage and probability of detecting a U-boat, and, very importantly, on the size of convoys.
It turned out, counter-intuitively, that large convoys made more efficient use of available escort ships than multiple smaller convoys, because the perimeter of the convoy that needed to be defended increased only as the square root of the number of ships in the convoy. And since the main effect of the convoy system was to empty the ocean by concentrating all ships in one place, a single large convoy had a lower probability of being detected and attacked in the first place.
The British called them "boffins", and we would call them "geeks", but the truth is, we paid attention to them, the Axis did not, and they helped us win the war.
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