There was a convoy, SL 125, homebound from Freetown at the end of October 1942. It was weakly defended – by escorts who had not worked together before – and having passed through the centre of a patrol line formed by eight U-boats (later reinforced to ten) of the Streitaxt (‘Battle-axe’) Group, was badly mauled in a running battle which lasted a week. The approaches to Gibraltar were thus cleared of U-boats a few days before the arrival of the ‘Torch’ assault convoys. But this has only served as the idea for a novel: there is no other similarity between it and the fictional convoy SL 320. I should add that in researching the facts of the convoy operation and ‘Torch’ itself, I came across no evidence of SL 125’s timely passage through those waters being anything but fortuitous.
AF