The Grey Atlantic
ON MONDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER, a young ship designer called Robert Cyril Thompson had been asked to come to London for a meeting at the Admiralty to discuss an important mission to the United States. This, he was told when he got there, was to persuade the Americans to build merchant ships on behalf of the British. It was explained that this was of vital importance. U-boats were sinking ships headed to Britain at rates of more than 350,000 tons a month. At present, the Admiralty could cope with this: at the end of June, Britain had had some 18,911,000 deadweight tons of shipping – that is, the weight when fully loaded – under its control, and by the end of September that figure would be 18,831,000, barely much of a difference at all. However, that figure might easily start to drop rather quickly if the U-boats kept sinking ships at similar rates. The problem was that British shipyards were simply not building enough merchant ships quickly enough, and were further constrained by the blackout, which because of the size of these vessels and the outdoor nature of the work meant construction work had to stop during the hours of darkness. Only the US had the ability to build the kind of numbers needed, which, in the first instance, was a minimum of sixty new vessels, each of around 10,000 deadweight tons. The Admiralty wanted Thompson to head this mission and to go to America right away. He accepted on the spot.
It showed enormous good judgement on the part of the Admiralty to single out Cyril Thompson, who was only thirty-three, worked for a family firm that had been struggling to survive just a few years earlier, and might easily have been overlooked for someone of both greater years and experience. Yet, despite his comparative youth, and despite owing his position at Joseph L. Thompson to family connections, he had none the less gained a deserved reputation as one of Britain’s leading and most dynamic shipbuilders. In 1935, he had won a Gold Medal from the North-East Coast Institute of Engineers and Shipbuilders for producing a pioneering paper on how to increase the service speed of merchant ships without an increase in power. And at six feet three inches tall, and broad as well, Thompson was a big man physically as well as in character, blessed with a touch of genius and a determination that had been quickly respected not only within the firm but within the industry as a whole.
Joseph L. Thompson had been founded the previous century at North Sands on the mouth of the River Wear at Sunderland in the north-east of England, and Cyril was one of two sons who both joined the family business. After Cambridge and an apprenticeship with Sir James Laing & Sons, another Sunderland business, he had joined the family firm at twenty-three and become a director a year later. The 1930s had been a lean time for shipbuilding; however, Cyril Thompson was convinced that the way to revive British merchant shipbuilding was to design and construct cheaper and more economic-to-run vessels. With this in mind, he drew up a number of designs, testing models thoroughly at the National Physical Laboratory’s test tanks at Teddington, until finally settling on a distinctive new hull form that caused less drag and, when put together with a more efficient engine, would create a ship that required significantly less power to achieve a decent speed. With a further eye on economy, he reckoned these designs could be built for less than £100,000.
At any rate, someone at the Admiralty had clearly been taking note, which was why, on 21 September, following on from his meeting in London, Thompson set sail for the United States, accompanied by Harry Hunter of North-Eastern Marine Engineering, the firm that had designed the more efficient engines now powering the new Joseph L. Thompson ships. At no point did the Admiralty ever specify that the ships should be built to a British design. None the less, as the designated Head of the British Shipbuilding Mission, Thompson was told that he had to personally approve the technical details concerning the designs, and with this in mind he crossed the Atlantic with blueprints for a new ship that was just beginning construction at Thompson’s shipyard at North Sands.
The Admiralty had made it crystal clear just how vital it was that he bring home the deal. Whether the Americans would play ball, however, was another matter; US shipyards were already known to be working at capacity constructing their own naval and merchant shipping requirements.
Much rested on Thompson’s shoulders.
Out in the Atlantic, the U-boats were continuing to wreak havoc, and not least U-48, which, in two patrols with Kapitänleutnant Hans-Rudolf Rösing, had accounted for twelve ships, amounting to some 60,000 tons of shipping; this was indeed proving a ‘Happy Time’ for the U-boat and her crew. After the U-boat’s eighth patrol, however, Rösing had been posted to become U-boat liaison officer to the Italians based at Bordeaux, so his place was taken by Heinrich ‘Ajax’ Bleichrodt, who had yet to command his own U-boat. By this time, the entire 7th Flotilla was based at Lorient, and the U-boat arm was making the most of the newly conquered Atlantic ports, which saved a time-consuming trek through the Baltic, North Sea and out over the north of Scotland; now they could head straight out of the Bay of Biscay and into the Atlantic.
Nor were there any signs that the change of commander was about to have an effect on U-48’s ongoing success. Bleichrodt was inexperienced and, as far as Suhren was concerned, it showed. However, the rest of the crew, Suhren included, knew all the tricks and were able to compensate; after all, it was Suhren, as torpedo officer, who was responsible for most of the shooting in any case. And ten days into their patrol they had sunk four ships, including an 11,000-ton liner, the City of Benares, which tragically had been carrying a large number of children who were being evacuated to Canada. Those on U-48 had been unaware of this, although Hitler had already declared that all Allied or neutral shipping was fair game.
On 20 September, the submarine was off the west coast of Ireland when it received a coded message from U-47, commanded by Günther Prien, already famous throughout the Reich for his exploits, not least sinking the Royal Oak in Scapa Flow almost a year earlier. Prien had spotted a large eastbound convoy heading to Britain, and since U-48 now had the latest, most advanced radio equipment, he asked her to report this news to Dönitz at his command post in Lorient, who immediately ordered them to ‘Proceed to beacon.’ This meant U-47’s beacon – U-48 was to join U-47 and the two were to operate together. Then, at 5.15 p.m., they received another signal, directing four more U-boats towards U-47. Now U-48, U-65, U-43, U-99 and U-100 were to assume attack formation.
Dönitz was ordering them to form a wolfpack, and more specifically a ‘stripe’, which meant stretching themselves out in a line on the surface across which the convoy was expected to pass. The U-boats would be approximately five miles apart. Such tactics were not new, but only with the new improved radio technology they were now using could this be effectively put into practice. At any rate, by the morning of 21 September, all five were converging on Prien’s U-47.
Just after 3 a.m. on the morning of 21 September, U-48 had the convoy HX72 of forty-three ships from Halifax to Liverpool in sight. Just over two hours later, they picked up an SOS from a ship called Elmbank, a large freighter, carrying timber and sheet metal, which had been hit by Otto Kretschmer’s U-99 amidships and had gone down in just forty seconds. Peering through the periscope, Bleichrodt had seen flashes and the sound of dull explosions. Half an hour later, they were also in position to fire. Suhren missed with their first torpedo, but the second, fired twenty minutes later, hit, the detonation sending huge columns reaching high into the air. They had hit the Blairangus. Fires now broke out on the ship as her cargo began to explode. Lifeboats were hurriedly launched, but the skies were grey with squally showers and, after a while, the stricken ship disappeared from view. U-48 now turned her attention to a tanker, although, again, the torpedo missed. Another immediate shot was not possible because they discovered one of the torpedo fins had been dented. Turning around, they now took over from U-47 as the convoy shadow, radioing position reports to the other U-boats.
All day, U-48 kept up with the convoy, waiting for darkness, as were the others in the wolfpack. Several were low on torpedoes, U-47 and U-48 included, but at twenty minutes before midnight Suhren attacked with his last tube, hitting Broompark, which soon began to list.
That night the carnage really began as HX72 struggled on, the wolfpack snapping at its heels. U-99 sank two, including a 9,200-ton tanker. U-47 then surfaced, and with U-99, used their guns to finish off the Elmbank, which had limped on all day. In a move that was typical of the very best U-boat captains, U-100, commanded by another ace, Joachim Schepke, then manoeuvred into the heart of the convoy and sank three more. All through the next day, the wolfpack continued to keep up with the convoy, picking off one ship after another, U-100 sinking a further four. By the time U-48 turned for home, eleven ships had been sunk and a further two badly damaged – more than a quarter of the entire convoy.
There were a number of reasons for these extraordinary successes. The first was the experience and skill of the tiny U-boat force crews, who in this first year or so of war really were an elite band. Bleichrodt might have been new to the U-boat arm, but men like Suhren were, by this time, old hands, who were able to combine innate skills with a kind of sixth sense born of experience. The biggest aces of all – Prien, Schepke and Kretschmer – were similarly hugely experienced. All were still young men but had served in the German Navy for many years – Schepke and Kretschmer had joined in 1930 and Prien in 1931 – and they had learned their craft on sailing ships and surface vessels before joining the U-boat arm. The sea was in their blood.
The second reason was the lack of escorts for transatlantic convoys – that is, destroyers, which had been developed specifically for hunting U-boats in the last war, and smaller sloops and corvettes. In part this was because of the loss of a sizeable number during both the Norway campaign and the evacuation from Dunkirk, but principally it was because the Admiralty had decided these escorts should be taken off convoy duty to strengthen the southern commands. They were to be added to the constant anti-invasion patrols, to harass and bombard the enemy’s build-up of shipping gathering in the Channel ports, and to be on hand to attack the invasion fleet should it ever attempt the crossing. There were a number in the Admiralty who were rather hoping the Germans would attempt it, confident as they were that a mass of barges carrying troops and only very lightly escorted would be easy meat and decimated as a result. Their confidence probably wasn’t that misplaced.
Yet if this policy was understandable enough, it was none the less militarily rather illogical, as Admiral Forbes, C-in-C Home Fleet, repeatedly tried to point out. Forbes correctly argued that no German invasion was going to happen while the RAF was still flying, and therefore concentrating so many surface vessels in the Thames and on the south coast was completely unnecessary. Minesweepers, minelayers and capital ships were one thing, but escorts were wasted there. As it was, the Royal Navy had around 700 minesweeping vessels operating in the Channel by September. In any case, it was inconceivable that Britain would not know up to twenty-four hours beforehand that invasion was imminent – the time it would take any escort from the Western Approaches to reach the south-east.
Forbes, however, had not won the argument, and so most convoys had been crossing the Atlantic with barely any escorts at all; in fact, ocean convoys averaged just two escorts at this time. As a consequence, if a convoy ran smack into the path of a stripe of U-boats, carnage would follow, as it had with HX72 and then as it did again during two more, SC7 and HX79. In a matter of weeks, three convoys had suffered forty-three losses. A decent number of escorts accompanying these convoys would have certainly made a big difference.
Despite Forbes’s entirely understandable concerns, however, these disasters were still rare. After all, the Atlantic Ocean was a big place and, with barely more than a dozen U-boats operating at one time, it was more than likely a convoy would slip past undetected. As it happened, by the end of 1940, a staggering 692 convoys had arrived and 17,882 ships had been sailed, of which just 127 had been sunk in convoy; this amounted to a mere 0.7 per cent of the total. Or, to put it another way, 99.3 per cent of ships sailing in convoy were getting through.
Yet a further 865 ships had been sunk in 1940, and that was rather too many. All of these had been hit when sailing independently from convoys. There were, however, good reasons for sailing ships independently, no matter how compelling the convoy statistics. To begin with, many neutrals chose not to sail as part of the convoy system, but from June Hitler had announced that all ships were fair game, neutral or not. Others were simply too slow for convoys or even too fast. A large number became stragglers – that is, they might develop some problem and then find themselves lagging behind. Escorts, especially when in such small numbers, could not afford to risk leaving the many to protect the lone lame duck.
But a further reason was because convoys were only escorted part way across the ocean and then tended to disperse. Up to July, escorts only had the range to accompany outward-bound convoys as far as 17°W, which was roughly due south of Iceland. In October, this was then increased to 19°W. Air cover from Britain was also limited. The U-boat aces like Prien, Kretschmer and Schepke scored most of their hits on independently sailing ships. The Moordrecht, sunk by Teddy Suhren’s ‘supershot’, was travelling independently, for example, having dispersed from convoy HX49 heading to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and steaming on her own to a different port.
The truth is, the Admiralty had been caught out by the dramatic events of the summer. Like the rest of Britain’s war leaders, they had not expected France to collapse so quickly and in their pre-war appreciations had assumed that any U-boat campaign would be largely coastal and so had planned accordingly.
A major rethink was needed, and swiftly too. In the Battle of the Atlantic that was now unfolding, neither side could afford to stand still for a moment. This was becoming a battle both of wits and of resources, and one in which the stakes could not possibly have been higher.
The U-boat arm may have been demonstrating its lethality all too clearly, but the same could not be said for the submarines of the Regia Marina, the Italian Navy. Although it had boasted the world’s largest submarine force, it had managed to lose no fewer than thirteen since Italy had declared war back in June. A little too late, it seemed, they had discovered the clarity of the Mediterranean waters worked against them, as RAF aircraft were able to see them even when they were as deep as 70 metres below the surface. Their German allies had repeatedly attempted to pass on practical advice on a range of military matters, and had warned them of British developments in anti-submarine warfare and the use of aircraft in this role, but it had gone unheeded. As it was, time and again, the RAF had caught Italian submarines on the surface and in daylight. Considering how hard it was to hit a submarine from the air, even if perfectly visible, the loss of thirteen was reckless, to say the least.
Nor was the Italian battle fleet winning any points either. After the embarrassment of the action at Calabria in July, the fleet had left its base in Taranto on 31 August in an attempt to intercept the British Mediterranean Fleet as it escorted a convoy to Malta. Bizarrely, however, Amiragglio Cavagnari, C-in-C of the Regia Marina, ordered the fleet to turn back for port if no contact had been made by dusk. Rather than heading for home at dusk, however, Cavagnari ordered it to do so at 4.30 p.m., and an hour later it complied. As a result, it missed an understrength British fleet by half an hour. Nothing could have demonstrated Cavagnari’s defensive mindset more. The Italian Admiral still hoped the British would evacuate the Mediterranean of their own accord and lacked confidence in the seamanship of his men, so the move out to sea from Taranto and back was a placatory nod to Mussolini’s aggression. Cavagnari was going to do everything he could to avoid a scrap, even when the odds were stacked in his favour. So far, the Italians had managed to capture a largely undefended British Somaliland, advance a few miles into Egypt and half-heartedly bomb Malta. Mussolini was beating his chest and talking of Italy’s military destiny, but the Comando Supremo, the Italian Chiefs of Staff, and his senior commanders were not hearing him.
In London, over 120 American correspondents had been covering the Battle of Britain and now the Blitz. These men and women were providing a rich diet of newspaper and magazine articles, newsreels and radio broadcasts for a population that was increasingly fascinated by the dramatic events taking place on the far side of the Atlantic. One of the radio men in London was Eric Sevareid, who had only just managed to escape from southern France and make it back to England. He was now one of a number of men gathered around Ed Murrow, the man responsible for CBS’s entire war coverage.
Everything in Eric Sevareid’s education, upbringing and liberal beliefs told him that war was to be avoided at all costs. Even during the battle for France he had remained convinced that the United States should keep out. Now, however, after that long and unforgettable summer, he had reached a crossroads and was taking a turning he had never expected. It was, he believed, the experience of being in London, with Britain attacked daily, that had changed his mind. ‘The course was quite clear now,’ he wrote. ‘The duty was to fight with every means available, even though the better future of men was not guaranteed by success in the fighting. But success in the fight would give the future a chance at least.’ The alternative, he believed, was a new age of barbarism creeping across the planet. ‘There was no possible living with Fascism,’ he added, ‘even for a strong America; neutrality was quite impossible.’
By this time, Sevareid was a sick man and in need of rest. He had accepted, as Ed Murrow had accepted, that it was the task of radio men like himself to convince Americans that the fate of Britain and the United States were inextricably linked. But they didn’t need him personally; Murrow was doing that job sublimely and without equal, so he asked to go home. Murrow acquiesced but asked him to make one last broadcast before he left. Sevareid agreed.
‘When all this is over,’ he told his listeners, ‘in the days to come, men will speak of this war, and they will say: I was a soldier, or I was a sailor, or I was a pilot; and others will say with equal pride: I was a citizen of London.’ As he was saying this, he couldn’t help a catch in his throat. Afterwards, he felt it had been mawkish and was embarrassed to think that anyone could have heard him, yet over and over he was told how it had brought a lump to the throat of listeners too. In these tense, difficult times, in the midst of a war that was unlikely to end anytime soon, and in which everyone, it seemed, was expected to keep calm and carry on, a little bit of revealed emotion had hit a chord. ‘In contribution it was a mite,’ he wrote, ‘but apparently it helped.’ Propaganda, as all those fighting the war were keenly aware, was an invaluable tool.
Britain’s determination to keep fighting was throwing Mussolini’s war plans awry and showing up the shortcomings of both the armed forces and Italy’s ability to wage war. The Navy was proving feckless, so too was Graziani in Egypt, and the country was already running short of food. On 2 October, Generale Ubaldo Soddu, the Under-Secretary for War and effectively Mussolini’s military Chief of Staff, issued a directive calling for a mass demobilization, which would begin on 10 November and last four days. The many peasant soldiers from the countryside were needed back on the land, helping with the harvest now that sea imports of food had been cut off; rationing had already begun, on cooking oil and fats. There were some 1.5 million men under arms at the time; 750,000 of them were to be sent home.
For Maresciallo Badoglio, who was all too aware of Italy’s military shortcomings, this was good news, even though the demobilization, based on class, would cause mayhem as men were pulled from their units. The reason for his magnanimity was his assumption that there could no longer be any more talk of invading Yugoslavia or Greece, which both Mussolini and Ciano had been gunning for in recent weeks. In fact, having so feared Italy’s entry into the war, Ciano had become the leading hawk with regard to an invasion of Greece. Not only had he overseen the bribing of certain Greek generals and politicians, but he was convinced that Greece, militarily weak, would be a walkover. ‘Two hundred airplanes over Athens,’ he said, ‘would suffice to make the Greek government capitulate.’ By invading Greece and occupying all the Greek islands of the Aegean, Italy could dominate the eastern Mediterranean and strengthen its position against the British with both ports and airfields.
Badoglio had been quite wrong in his assumption, however. On 12 October, the Italians learned that German armed forces were moving into Romania. In fact, the Romanian Government had only invited Luftwaffe units in to protect its oilfields, but it stung Mussolini’s paranoia about German domination, especially since Hitler and von Ribbentrop had repeatedly warned Ciano and Mussolini about not making a move against Greece or Yugoslavia until Britain had been defeated. ‘Hitler places me in front of a fait accompli,’ he railed. ‘This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin. He will find out from the papers that I have occupied Greece.’ Mussolini’s pride was further dented by Graziani, who had replied to orders to advance in Egypt in the middle of the month with another request for a postponement.
This was Mussolini’s worst nightmare: a bullying, dominant ally with a raft of victories already under its belt, and his own useless generals lacking any kind of get up and go; and all the while the British, who were supposed to be dead and buried already, were getting stronger, not weaker. This was not how it was supposed to be, and now the Germans appeared to be invading his patch. Mussolini wanted a parallel war in which the Germans butted out and where the British were so weak, his victories would be ridiculously easy, but which would make him, and Italy, look good and the leading world player he thought they should be. So far, nothing had gone to plan at all, but a swift victory over the feeble Greeks could change all that. Mussolini outlined his new directive for an attack on Greece on 15 October. Neither Cavagnari nor Pricolo, heads of the Navy and Air Force, were present, which was odd considering the part their services would be expected to play. Badoglio was present, as were Ciano and General Soddu, Mussolini’s military toady. Another absentee was Cesare Amé, the head of SIM, the secret intelligence service, whose views on Greek weakness were not so confident as those of Ciano’s staff.
The invasion would take place in two phases, Mussolini told them – first against the whole southern coast of Albania and the Ionian Islands, and then a swift knockout blow against the mainland by troops already stationed along the Bulgarian border. Bulgaria would go along with the plan and its own forces even advance towards Salonika, because it was in their interests to do so. At that point, Bulgaria had not been told any of this, but Mussolini airily assured them he would write to King Boris and fix it. He reckoned 70,000 troops should suffice, and he was confident it would be a cake-walk. It was to be launched no later than 26 October, i.e. in nine days’ time.
The recklessness of this plan put anything Hitler had proposed into the shade. Hitler at least had a large, experienced and highly disciplined Army and Air Force to help him. This should have become all too apparent in the days that followed, but nothing, it seemed, could now deter Mussolini from the path on which he had set himself. Badoglio implored Ciano to back down, reporting that all three service chiefs were against it, and to Soddu threatened his resignation. By the time he faced Mussolini, however, he had decided to keep his objections to himself. In fact, as the invasion date grew closer, he appeared to become more enthused, latching on to Mussolini’s idea for a co-ordinated two-pronged assault into Greece and Egypt. None of them appeared to appreciate the huge logistical difficulties: the lack of adequate ports in Albania, the mountainous terrain, almost no proper roads, the potential poor weather that could easily come their way. But even when King Boris of Bulgaria replied thanking Mussolini for his kind offer but firmly stating he would pass on an invasion of Greece this time, the Duce was not to be deterred, even though it meant the invasion would now have to take place entirely through Albania and without Bulgarian support.
On 19 October, he wrote to Hitler, dismissing German suggestions that France should join the Axis, rejecting a recent offer of troops in North Africa, showing no interest at all in getting Spain to join the war, and warning him of his intentions towards Greece. ‘In short,’ Mussolini told him, ‘Greece is to the Mediterranean what Norway was to the North Sea, and must not escape the same fate.’ His anger at German dominance, his paranoia and his determination not to be thwarted any more in his quest for glory had ensured that Mussolini’s grip on reality had now entirely deserted him.