This video took a bit longer to make than it was supposed to due to some tech issues, but its finally here! Episode 1 in this series: ruclips.net/video/Obrv_GdvNf0/видео.html Get Early Access to videos and support their creation on Patreon: www.patreon.com/historigraph
@@historigraph Most don’t know our WW2 Naval ensign. You need to mention the country. I grew up with regimental and warship photos in every second house. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy in the world. Out of five D-Day beaches we got one, the Brits and Yanks two each. No one else got a beach. We all too often get rolled into the Royal Navy. Yes, we used similar equipment (with mods for our more northern climate), but we built most of them ourselves, designed and built our own medium tank, the Ram, and designed and manufactured our own radars and sonars. We were the third major player on the Western Front.
As I recall, the Royal Canadian Navy numbered over 100,000 sailors, almost all in the Atlantic. 270 of its ocean-going escort vessels (Patrol Boats, Corvettes, Frigates, etc) fought in the Atlantic anti-submarine convoy escort actions across the Atlantic. As well, more than 7 RCAF squadrons of long-range aircraft operated continuously from Canadian shores. RCAF and RCN assets were integrated into overall RN control during convoy missions. Just saying, we were there, heart and soul.
Feels like were always forgotten on the world scale whenever anyone is disucussing either of the WWs. Just important we as Canadians remember our efforts and those who sacrificed. The world may always forget, but as history has shown, underestimating Canada often leads to major surprises once we do show up.
Canadian effort should not be underestimated. Industrially Canada was also an essential part of the Allies. Canadian factories manufactured more tanks and trucks than Italy and Japan combined.
I had heard that it wasn't a case of Admiral King not learning the obvious convoy and costal blackout lessons, but of him resenting the British and so pointedly doing the opposite of any advice they gave him.
Except he was well known to hate everyone, much like Gen."Vinegar" Stillwill; to say he only hated the British, which seems to be a narcissistic viewpoint. This would also ignore that Adm. King had no authority over anything on land. So, turning out lights on the coast was a civilian matter. Not King. Lack of ships to cover everything required this was even pointed out by the British. They could cover main convoys and a couple major Naval engaments, but not convoys from one US port to another. The Germans only recently to that point had the subs large enough to get all the way to US ports.
Between like 1776 and the 1940's, there were quite a number of American generals and officers who very much resented the British. I've read about quite a few American admirals and generals in WWII who were described as "Anglophobic" and used slurs like "the L*meys". That resentment didn't totally come out of the blue. There were moments in that stretch of time where British leadership and generals had looked down on their American counterparts. And of course, there were moments of conflict that soured opinions. Thankfully, the animosity has seemed to diminish greatly!
My British great grandfather perished towards the end of the war in the merchant navy. It's too easy to forget the sacrifices of the early 20th century
Was fortunate to have met a RN veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic and also the Arctic convoys. He was torpedoed twice iirc and lucky to have survived. One ought remember that most of the convoy escorts had open bridges and exposed to the elements, the woollen clothing would get soaked. Conditions were even worse in the Arctic, where the constant sea spray froze in the rigging and on the superstructure. We especially should not forget the role played by the civilian merchant seamen.
Even during the war, as a boy, I was allowed into the docks in Durban and had visited RN and MN ships - and, since my sister worked for the S African equivalent of NAAFI, many were invited to visit us. Open bridges were more-or-less state of the art. Woollen clothing of the upper body was of course protected by oilskins. Seafaring is not fun.
the Battle of the Atlantic is the longest lasting single continuous battle ever fought anywhere in the world, lasting over 😂6 years, from the declaration of war, in 1939, until the final ending of hostilities in 1945. and there were only two branches of the services represented, (one from each side,) who can say that they were involved, and saw action from the very first day to the last. they are also the two branches which suffered by far the highest death rates of any branch of any military service of any other country who took part in WW 2 on the allied side, the Merchant navy suffered by far the highest death toll than any other service, on both sides, with only the German U Boat fleet suffering higher losses than the Merchant Navy. they are also the only services who can claim to have fought in the battle of the Atlantic from the very first day to the last, on the allied side, the highest casualty rate ever suffered by a single convoy was a convoy made up of UK merchant ships, with mainly British and US crews, which had set off from Iceland, bound for Murmansk, via North Norway, out of the 34 merchant vessels which set off in convoy to Russia, only 11 ships made it to Murmansk, all of the rest, 23 ships, were sunk due to enemy action, with 153 Merchant Navy personnel losing their lives in the worst allied merchant navy convoy disaster ever. and yet, despite the dedication shown time and again, risking their lives daily, at a speed rarely exceeding 10 knots, every day for the two weeks it took a convoy to cross the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York, then another 2 weeks to return, there were no such thing as “tours of duty” offered to the ordinary British Merchant navy man, if he wanted to get payed, he simply had to sign articles and set sail, no ship, no pay…which meant many merchant navy men spent at least 5 years criss-crossing the Atlantic, my father being one of them, he was also on some Artic convoys, though he fortunately he missed the PQ 17 disaster, he rarely spoke of his war experiences, with one particular occurrence which he mentioned from time to time, and said that he would tell me some time, but he never did, dying of a massive heart attack at the age of 66, one year after he retired, i did however hear the story, and its one of the most harrowing stories ever to come out of the dark days of WW2, and it is the story of the “city of Benares” a fast liner, with 100 children aboard' making for canada, and a new life away from the war, she was considered too fast to be torpedoed, and set off ahead of the convooy my father was on, then word came through that she had been hit and was sinking, by the time the convoy arrived, the Benares was gone , with most survivors in the water, .the convoy kept its speed up, fearing the u boat might still be around, despite every vessel putting out grabnets, not one survivor made it aboard a convoy vessel, out of the 100 children who entered the water alive, and who could be heard shouting for help, only 7 survived, my father maintained the convoy ran them down, a fact he never got over, and why he found it hard to tell the story, right up to his death in 1981,
@@robertmagnusjamieson1759 Had heard the stories of ships not being allowed to stop to pick up survivors, which must have been hard on the crews hearing cries for help. Must have been terrible to witness children being left behind. No wonder your father found it difficult to talk about.
The writing on the wall for the U-boat arm came much earlier. In early March of 1941, over the course of ten days, Germany lost its three most distinguished and celebrated U-boat aces. Prien and Schepke were lost with all hand in their boats and Kretschmer was captured after losing his boat. It was such a shock to Hitler that he staged the release of information on the three aces over the course of the coming summer to soften the blow to the home front. What most people don’t realize is that U-boats spent most of their time on the surface. On the surface they operated at 18 knots(convoys operated at 7-12 knots). Submerged U-boats could only do 8 knots for two hours before draining ALL battery power. They could operate longer at lower speeds. So, U-boats had to be on the surface to position themselves for attacks. They could submerge to fire torpedoes after the set up. The advent of radar and the ability to protect convoys with air cover is what did the U-boats in. Great video.
@@derrickislander I forgot about the see-saw battles over ENIGMA. Allied convoys were constantly using decrypts to skirt around wolf pack patrol lies in the vast Atlantic. Little known, but Kreigsmarine Intelligence was pretty adept at breaking merchant navy radio traffic. While Royal Navy cyphers were much harder to crack, convoys could be located by tapping into comms amongst the merchant fleet.
I think you’ll find that radio comms were kept to a minimum, due to RDF. Enigma was broken, but it had to be broken more than once. Germans changed it.
@@peterwebb8732 The Allies knew the Germans had broken merchant marine codes. They calculated that the costs of changing the code would be more than the losses in ships. Rather cold blooded calculus but that is what happened.
So you're in boot right now. Stay motivated. It's a mindset and you just gotta adopt it. You may even need to lie to yourself about it. False motivation is better than no motivation
As a Writer and Historian in Aruba for the last 26 years, permit me to say that the little island of Aruba, the Lago Oil Refinery and its employees played an important role during WWII. The refinery was suplying out of every 12 gallons of the 100 octane Aviation gasoline used by the Allies, one gallon was from the Lago refinery. No wonder the Germans sent U-boats U-156 and U-502 to destroy the refinery, the lake tankers which were brining the Lake Maracaibo cude oil. One February 16, 1942, @1:31am Aruba was schocked when U-156, with its Captain Werner Hartenstein sent his first torpedo (in the Western Hemisphere) on the SS Pedernales, destryoed it partially, did ot sink, but two minutes later torpedoed the other lake tanker SS Oranjestad which sank half hour later. Eight victims on the SS Pedernales and 15 on the SS Oranjestad. The U-502 sank SS San Nicolas, SS Tia Juana from the Lago refinery. 17 victims on the SS San Nicolas and 7 on the SS Tia Juana. I wrote nine books, four on the WWII. The story is long.
The casualty rate of the submarine service of the Kreigsmarine was not just worse than any other branch in WW2, it was probably worse than any other force in history over an extended conflict. You were likely to survive in some concentration camps than in a submarine.
@@mikereger1186Doing a tour as a tail gunner in a heavy bomber was probably the next worst position you could be in. Probably around 50% casualties. But when you were hit there was a *chance* you might be able to parachute out, and if you survived your 30 missions then you were finished. Whereas you were 99.9% a goner if you got depth charged and - like with the rest of the German forces - you'd just keep being sent on missions until you didn't come back.
For Bomber Command, both the British and Americans had loss rates for planes that generally ran between 15-30%. Depending on exactly which period of the war you were talking about and the target. US and UK Bomber Command crew losses were likewise high, and varied by position and platform. But in general the number I’ve seen quoted was the chances of an individual bomber crewman becoming a casualty (KIA/WIA/POW) was about 35% over the course of their service. The German U-Boat crew losses in absolute numbers were lower, but as a proportion were catastrophic. Germany lost 75% of their U-Boats and their crews during the war. Very, very few crewmen survived the sinking of their subs but it sometimes happened. The chance of a German submariner surviving more than a handful of patrols was basically zero.
@@recoil53 How about even a convoy to North Africa or Italy in 1943? U-Boats were literally everywhere, and until the September capitulation, you also had to possibly deal with the Italian Navy, with its own three large battleships.
A major element in the allies controlling the North Atalnatic Gap was Chuchill's brilliant manouvere to invoke the 1373 Anglo-Portugese Treaty of Military Alliance. This led to an agreement for Great Britain to consrtuct an airfield on the Azores which allowed the RAF Coastal Command to finally get the air coverage they needed.
A humorous incident occurred when Franco and Salazar (the Spanish and Portuguese dictators) met with Hitler. Salazar detested Hitler, when Hitler raised the possibility of Germany basing submarines in the Azores, Salazar (apparently with a straight face) "reluctantly" declined, citing the 1373 Treaty of Windsor. Hitler apparently nearly choked. He later remarked of the meeting "I would prefer to have a root-canal than go through that again".
@@ChrisCrossClash I may be in error as to whether Salazar ever met Hitler. He did however respond to German requests to base submarines in the Azores as I described above. You are correct; the root canal comment was made after a conference with Franco.
The adage that "War is won by Logistics". Early on it was thanks only to the Lend Lease that kept the UK afloat at all really otherwise the Battle of Britain may very well have been lost. Similar goes for what the Soviets were receiving which propped them up just enough while they rebuilt or just plain built industry that was destroyed//non-existent West of the Volga onto the East side...just out of reach of the Germans.
not to diminish their heroism, but Atlantic was only one route of supply going through Persia/India or even just through Pacific Ocean was possible and took most of the throughput
Eh, historians agree that the supplies sent to the USSR saved thousands of lives but that the USSR would have still won without them. The war would have raged on for many more years though. These sailors saved a lot of lives.
@@michimatsch5862 it's a politically charged question, so historians' answer highly depends on specific historians we'll see in a hundred years whose opinion prevails
My father-in-law fought that battle, flying in the belly of PBYs out of Iceland hunting U-boats. He said they would take bets on the way back to base on how many planes had slid off the icy runways. Truly the Greatest Generation.
Overall, a great video that gives a good summation of the stages of the lengthy and hard fought Battle of the Atlantic. However, I take some issue with a couple of aspects. The first is, although you show the Canadian blue ensign in the video (which was not the national flag of Canada during WWII by the way, just the Naval Jack), you never mention the Royal Canadian Navy and its essential role on the Battle of the Atlantic. Canadian warships made up approximately 40% of all the escorts during the battle (Canada launched as many Flower Class corvettes as the Royal Navy) and arguably the battle would have been lost without Canada's contribution along with those of Britain and the USA. Rear Admiral Murray of the RCN was the operational commander of the western Atlantic Ocean, commanding from St. John's, Newfoundland. My second issue is that you gloss over the responsibility Ernest King held for the dismal record of sunken merchant ships in the first half of 1942. It wasn't merely that the US was unprepared and overly committed in the Pacific. King LOATHED the Royal Navy and so refused to follow any advice or suggestions offered by the Navy that had been fighting the Kriegsmarine for over three years already, no matter how logical or necessary. He REFUSED to force coastal cities to have blackouts, thus making darkened Allied ships easily silhouetted against those same city lights for U-boats to aim at. American ships talked openly on their radios in plain English, often revealing ship movements to listening U-boats. US ships didn't zigzag, the most effective defence against from being torpedoed and American patrols kept to a strict schedule that the German submarines quickly learned and thus avoided. And most egregious of all, he refused to organise the merchant ships into convoys, as the British suggested. The Royal Navy had made this mistake in WWI, preferring to go a-hunting for German U-boats, not realising that by using convoys the U-boats were forced to come to them. Britain was on the point of starvation in 1917 before the First Sea Lord decided to institute the convoy system. In WWII, the British started using convoys from day one, having learned the lesson well from the previous war. King's other issue was that he had no faith in Naval intelligence, even that provided by his own Navy. And since most of the intelligence he was receiving came from the British, he dismissed it out of hand, despite how important it often was. However, he was very good at blaming his subordinates for his own shortcomings and it was because of all of this that FDR had to finally step in and force him to do his job properly. He was apparently horrible to work for as well - his own daughter is reputed to have said once, "My father is the most even-tempered man I have ever met. He's in a constant rage."
While all of those ships were being sunk along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. there was complete disregarding of the proof of convoy system by King ignoring the fact a Canadian navy escorted convoy from South America up that same coastline did not lose one ship during the worst period of those 360 sunk unescorted ships.
That last statement was tongue in cheek but good job trying to pass it as fact. But yeah aside from Montgomery he was really hated by all sides of the allies.
@brustar5152 more uneducated dribble. There was no disregard of convoy system. Alot of those ships sunk were in ports not in transit. Also so you have a slightest clue how big the US is? From the ports of New Orleans to New York, there was not enough ships or planes to cover the entire sea board. Maybe if the US hadn't been shipping the British and other allies so many aircraft and other defense weapons systems as part of lend lease there would have been more planes available to do ASW work
@@Matt-mt2vi I'd be careful accusing others of "uneducated dribble", mate. Perhaps you should take a look at the maps showing where the ship sinkings took place. Unless a lot of those ports were hundreds of miles east of the shoreline, you are rather mistaken. Also, the majority of the "defense systems" were older US Coast Guard cutters and vintage WWI destroyers, neither particularly well suited to anti-submarine work. That's why Canada had to give the USN our Flower Class corvettes as a stop gap while US yards scrambled to build suitable anti-submarine warships, many of which were the British-designed River Class frigates..
The numbers of ships and submarines built and destroyed in WWII is just staggering! Building those submarines and huge ships was not an easy task, yet they cranked out thousands and lost hundreds
ships and boats back then were certainly a lot simpler than what we have now, plus, ww2 saw all major combatants mobilize enormous resources to fight this war, this is very much total war and gearing your country for waging war
And in recent decades, a cruiser being sunk makes headlines all over the world (Belgrano in the Falklands and Moskva in the Russia-Ukraine War). I have to chuckle about it a bit considering that whole aircraft carriers sinking was the norm in the World War II. Literally EVERY modern war looks small compared to it.
Gee, this may come as a shock folks but the Royal Canadian Navy played a very big part of the North Atlantic battle against the U-Boats...Oh, don't forget Canada was at war 10 Sept.39 so we sorta had a head start. Our little corvettes were the terror of the U-Boat boys.
@@obvious-troll True, but keep in mind the Canadians started the war with 2 rusty old protected cruisers and a handful of equally terrible destroyers. And yes, a lot of those ships were U.S AND UK built, but a fair few (especially the Flowers) were home built.
The Battle of the Atlantic by the start of 1943 seemed to be another slugfest after 1942, but then by May it suddenly all but over. It's not exactly like that, but the switch up in balance of power was quite brief.
Yeah , it takes time to build the parts that go into factories that make the parts. A lot of people don't appreciate the whole unseen supply side of the economy. Once the designs were done, the factories reconfigured, and they made production efficient it was just an impossible battle for the Axis. I think the US alone built 17 Essex carriers, almost 100 escort carriers, and several hundred destroyers just during the war. The US trained 435K pilots & air crew alone. The Axis HAD to win a quick war, but a sucker punch like Pearl Harbor meant the US population would be angry enough for a long, drawn out war.
Never stormed a beach, never drove a tank, never took an inch of land nor liberated any citys. But enableling it all while sitting on a silver plate for wolfs to come and eat them whole surrounded by stormy ice cold water. O7
This is something people don't understand when they think all the major battles happened on the Eastern Front. You have to get soldiers, vehicles, and materiel to Europe to fight Germany and in the way of that are the deadly U-Boats
Correct. The unconscious brain takes what is as just existing. It takes conscious, deliberate thought, which is prompted by direct experience, to be consciously aware of the chain of events that must occur for, say, a Sherman tank to end up in northern France at the D-Day landings, along with a full supply of fuel, ammunition, spare parts and a trained crew. A person who doesn't do this intentional thought can easily, mindlessly assume it "just happens".
Admrial king was a a bad Anglophobia, his hate of the english made him ignore all advice from the royal navy about naval escorting costing countless lives, he should of been shot for treason
But less so if during that same space of time the allies have built 370 merchant ships. U-Boats sunk vs U-Boats launched is also important. In a war of logistics whoever has an attrition of matériel is losing - by about May 1943 that was the U-Boats. More merchants to make up losses and then some. More advanced warships with latest detection gear and weaponry, better training facilities etc etc. More warships means ample convoy protection but also allows for hunter-killer groups sweeping ahead and not tethered to the convoy, and with the resources to find, fix and kill a u-boat. If Donitz and German industry couldn’t compete with that, if they couldn’t churn out more U-boats than they lost and with better technology, then the outcome was basically inevitable.
Kinda sad this video doesn’t really mention the Royal Canadian navy who played a major roll in the battle of the Atlantic and convoy escort during the war…
For anyone who's watching this, you're obviously interested in this period. You should check out the movie Greyhound with Tom Hanks. Absolutely stunning short movie about a crossing of the Atlantic for a convoy protection battleship. It was pure gripping action the entire time(about an hour and 10-20 minutes). I've watched it 3 times and each time, I'm on the edge of my seat.
One should not forget the contribution made by physicist Luis Alvarez, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Airborne Allied radars were giving advanced warning to German U-boats. When the aircraft approached, the U-boats simply submerged. Radar could not track them when submerged. Radar power weakens as the inverse SQUARE of the distance. Because there are TWO paths for reflected signals, radar RETURN signals decreased as the inverse FOURTH power of the distance. Alvarez's brilliant idea: Have the radars adjust energy to the THIRD power of the distance. The result was that radar signal strength received by the U-boats DECREASED as the aircraft approached. Hence, the U-boat captains were tricked into staying on the surface even while Allied patrol planes approached. However, the return signal INCREASED as the planes approached. By the time the U-boat captains realized that they had been tricked, it was too late, their boats could not evade allied weaponry. Nobody in the Kriegsmarine had the foggiest idea that they were being tricked, because the captains who had figured it out were dead.
It was arguably the most important battle/theatre of the war, but definitely the most important one that the average person on the street has never heard of.
I always consider the greatest land battle in the entire war was at Stalingrad. Both sides had enormous losses but it showed the chink in the German armor; the Soviets developed a fighting spirit and destroyed the myth of the unbeatable German army. Hitler, never a good tactician, exposed his armies to unnecessary losses by refusing to allow any retreat.
A measure of how desperate things were on the US side early in the war was the creation of the Civil Air Patrol, volunteer civilian pilots with quasi-military status flying U-boat recon patrols in civilian aircraft painted bright yellow. As the regular forces ramped up, their job later became pilot training and air search and rescue, and they still exist today.
Indeed - people get obsessed about big tanks and V-weapons, but an allied destroyer or Liberator probably had far more state-of-the-art, and actually effective, tech on it than just about anything Germany created during the war.
In effect, the Allies, with the exception of the Soviet Union, were soundly defeated. The Allies lost a huge commercial zone in Eastern Europe and East Asia. Western colonies were liberated by Japan and disappeared. Communist guerrillas in the USSR and China were victorious, the rest of the world was a defeated nation
4:04 Just an FYI, the Canadian Red Ensign, was not blue. It was red, hence the name. This whole video is unbelievable though. Never in my life have I watched a documentary about the Battle of the Atlantic with not one single mention of the RCN or RCAF. The entirety of Canada's contribution, according to this documentary, is the wrong colour flag. Pretty offensive.
US admiral Ernest King's stubborn refusal to employ convoy tactics against the u-boats had be be one of the most catastrophically stupid decisions made by any commander during WW2. His mind boggling negligence cost the allies millions of tons of cargo, and thousands of sailors.
That was not the case at all, and King was never ordered by FDR to start convoys. King had been conducting convoys in the Atlantic since early 1941. Don't be mislead.
Admiral King was not just "slow" to realize the value of convoys, he outright rejected it simply because it was a British solution to the U-Boats. King was a well known Anglo hater and he cost hundreds of sailors their lives because of his ignorance and stubbornness.
Admiral King stated in January 1942 that the only way to protect merchant shipping was the use of ESCORTED CONVOYS. King and the U.S. Navy declined to use UNESCORTED CONVOYS. When the Navy had the suitable ships and crews, they began ESCORTED COASTAL CONVOYS in the spring of 1942. King didn't hate the British. That is a myth. He didn't trust them, but that's not the same thing. King got along fine with Churchill, his Royal Navy counterpart Admiral Pound and the rest of the British General Staff.
That is simply revisionist history. Why was there the "Second Happy Time" as the U-boat commanders called it then? Because U.S freighters were unescorted. Do some research and you will find that King has been noted by numerous creditable historians as anglophobe. @@dukeford
Admiral King was a great leader - except for his near hatred for the British. He flatly refused to do anything that the British did. He did eventually wake up. But many seamen were lost for nothing.
My dad was stuck on the Azores off the coast of Spain . Deeply involved in the U boat war but thought he was missing the action . An airbase on the island killing U boats ... TOO bad he cannot see the history of what he was really doing ...
My dad the same. Radioman 'stuck' on the east coast doing experimental radio stuff. After the war, he found out he was on the ground floor of radio detection used in anti-sub action.
King, like many other high ranking officers, were anglophobes. They refused point blank to listen to what the Royal Navy and Army had learned the hard way during two years of war. Their arrogance and belief in their own superiority, caused the deaths of thousands. Changing that mindset took far too long, and cost even more lives. Even towards the end of the war, their arrogance and refusal to listen to those with far more experience, continued to cost lives. Unfortunately, even today, not much has changed.
How much merchant shipping did the Brits lose the first two years? How many combatant ships? (answer: a shitload) The Royal Navy had hardly covered itself in glory the first two years of the war, the sole exception being the Bismarck pursuit. The U.S. Navy was under no obligation to take ANY British naval advice at face value.
Ridiculous, basically everything you said is historically inaccurate. The only more ridiculous is the term anglophobe, which is about as dumb as those who use Russophobia. The 2nd happy time was only 6 months, not your ridiculous 2 years. Convoy escorts from the US to Britain were happening over 6 months before the US entered the war. Do yiu have the slightest clue how big the US is? The US didn't have active Navy size it eventually had, to cover all that territory. Maybe instead of giving the British and other all that lend lease, maybe they would have better protection and aircraft.
One early partial solution was to move the US coastal shipping to the existing and also urgently improved inland channels, i.e. between the islands and the main coast line. If you have a good map, you can see how amazingly long this navigation route really is, and how challenging it would be for U-boats to try interceptions there. Of corse that only served US domestic shipping.
Dont forget allan turin ' he decifered the emigma codes ' closing the black gap 😁 so we knew wear the uboats were at any given time ' this was the beggining of the end of the wolf pack '
I agree. Should King have been fired for his poor judgement and lack of preparation? Heh, heh! What would that self described SOB have done with a subordinate who failed so spectacularly?
Do tell. Let me guess, you think he hated the British so much he sacrificed sailors? Even though he well known to hate everyone. Or was he not to force the coastal lights out, an act he didn't have the authority to do. That was a civilian matter or Army issue, Navy authority ended at docks. Or maybe because he didn't have enough ships to cover both the Atlantic and Pacific main Naval operations to also cover convoys from one US port to another before getting into the main convoy.
For a great account of this on the micro-level, read the novel The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monserrat. The film made of it is also very good, but the book is magnificent and very moving.
A lot of these cargo-ships sunk off the US Eastern Board would've survived if the Federal authorities had ordered a blackout of the coastal towns and cities as many of the ships were sunk at night because the lights in the background created a sillouette that the U-boats could track and target.
King rejected the idea of convoys. It wasn't that he merely had not learned about them. He rejected them for a year or more. American merchantmen lost their lives because of that idiot's stubbornness.
King stated, right at the start of the war, that the only method of protecting merchant shipping was via ESCORTED CONVOYS. The U.S. Navy rejected the British method of convoys without escorts as being useless, and had the data to back it up. The Navy started running ESCORTED convoys as soon as they had enough ships to do so, in limited use by April 1942. That's not a year, is it? Your argument is totally without merit.
@@dukeford8893 Could be. I have read several times that it was King that PERSONALLY rejected convoys. Also, we had transferred over to Britain a large number of destroyers. Were those the ships WE needed to protect convoys?? Are you sure King said that convoys were the only way to protect merchant ships?? if so, that is counter to everything I have read. BUT -- "facts" that are "well known" and cited in books can turn out to be false. Case in point -- The Chieftain fully debunked many "facts" that stated the Sherman tank was crap. He showed with excellent citing of sources how wrong those "facts" were. So, I am fully willing to update my knowledge -- when I need to.
Lovely but your graphic at the start totally downplayed the contribution of the RCN in crewing a substantial percentage of the naval escorts operating on the North Atlantic, it is not the UK and the USA versus the Kreigsmarine UnterseeBoot Service but all of the various Allied navies who contributed ships from the Royal Norwegian Naval Service and the Free French to the Dutch sailors who stayed to fight for their homeland.
The RCN had the 3rd largest Navy at the end of the war, but there was no real competition left for the 3rd spot.. And I believe the majority of it was the very small Coverttes, which made it too small for the Hedgehog. It's great for assisting in locating the subs. As for the number of Uboats sunk, the British sank over 400, the US sank 150 plus, and Canada sank about 30. This includes uboats sank by planes, not just ships. Just because they didn't sink that many didn't mean the warships in that convoy didn't play a part in defense of the convoy
@@Matt-mt2vi Canada switched to building mainly frigates by 1942. They built so many corvettes at the start because they could build them at ship yards throughout the Great Lakes, corvettes being small enough to pass through the canal into the St. Lawrence. The corvette was a very capable submarine hunter killer with the type sinking many u-boats. The RCN sank fewer u-boats due to lack of opportunity given they covered the western Atlantic where uboats were much harder to locate then say the Bay of Biscay. By 1942, 50% of all transatlantic convoys were being escorted by the RCN. By the end of the war the RCN was considered to be the best anti-submarine navy in the world, a distinction it held throughout the Cold War.
@@obvious-troll That claim does not stand scrutiny - the RCN played a significant role in the Atlantic, often overlooked - but by 1945 the Royal Navy was the leading anti submarine navy with people like Johnny Walker and Donald MacIntyre in the forefront - the former credited with 20 U-boats sinkings.
The Americans had a habit of not listening to those who went before them. Pershing did the same thing in WWI, there was no way that the Brits and French were going to advise him, even though they had been fighting for year. The Americans wound up having to learn the hard way.
Admiral King hated the english and all of their advice- so no convoys, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands of merchant men. Early Canadian convoys had few escorts with them, so lack of escorts was not an answer. Just personal mailce.
King's alleged hatred of the British has no basis in fact, and the very idea that a senior commander would sacrifice men because of some personal bias is ridiculous.
You failed to mention that the cracking of the enigma code have a tremendous advantage as u boats routinely gave away there position in radio messages to high command
If Dönitz had, had it his way with a lot more u-boats Brittain might have been seriously threatened but, with the actual numbers that were available for the German forces, never! Germany should used the steel and craftsmanship for building u-boats instead of capital warships. Luckily they didn't.
The Eighth air force suffered about half of the U.S. Army Air Force's casualties (47,483 out of 115,332), including more than 26,000 dead. The Eighth's brave men earned 17 Medals of Honor, 220 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 442,000 Air Medals. so it is the allied equivalent
Bombers were really a lethal enviroment in WW2. RAF Bomber Command suffered 63,976 casualties out of a force of 125,000, including 55,573 killed. I think 22 VCs were awarded to Bomber Command in WW2. For comparison, Fighter Command "only" suffered 4905 casualties with 3,690 killed. Coastal command was slsightly higher with 5,866 killed in action.
In terms of casualty rates RAF bomber command was probably the Allied equivalent of the German U-boat arm. That being said all western allied bomber forces suffered heavier than average losses.
One anecdote I just want to add is that of the absolute legend Johnny Walker. At the beginning of the war he was seen as an old and tired officer in the Royal Navy, some what past his prime. But by the end of the war he was largely responsible for anti submarine taskforces and should be given a lot of credit for the maneuvers used. Empire of the deep (a brilliant read) devotes a lot of content to him and I'd strongly recommend looking him up. He often goes unmentioned, unremembered and is also passed off as unremarkable. But my guy spent his war playing mad lad British tunes over the loudspeakers as he rammed subs. What a legend! en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_John_Walker
In the periode of October 1942 - March 1943, it looked as if the Allies were going to lose the battle of the Atlantic. One British officer at the Western Approaches HQ in Liverpool said in january 1943: "We have lost the war. We have enough fuel for the whole country, for two weeks. We are staring defeat in the face."
Yeah, that seems false.. the 2nd happy time was several months before. Even then oil tankers from the US were fast enough to travel on thier own. Not to mention US oil workers had nearly 80 well drilled in England by that point.
It’s often overshadowed, overlooked, or ignored. But the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest battle fought in the war. It may not have been fought with grand armies, but rather fought with intelligence agencies, navies, merchant vessels, and aerial craft. The Battle of the Atlantic secured the Allied victory by allowing them to be able to land supplies. Godspeed to those who perished. Requiescant in pace in aquis Atlantici. And to Historgraph, a very well made video. Superbly detailed and designed. Godspeed to you.
I had the privilege several years ago of serving a massive dinner for some of the crew members on those merchant ships. I hated the job because of the snooty people we usually served, but that was a night where I thought everything needed to be perfect for them.
Good video. My father in law joined the Navy on 12/8/41 at 16. By early 1942 he was a torpedo man in the destroyer escort fleet, doing convoy duty in the North Atlantic. He also made 37 trips through the Panama Canal seeing Naval combat in both the Atlantic & Pacific theaters. I was fortunate enough to hear some of these stories first hand, when he realized that I too am a Navy vet. Not only did I hear his but I also hear some of my brothers father in law (USMC WWII). I will never forget those men or their stories, we miss you Brownie & Norm. Thanks to all now serving, Including or British allies, those who have, and those who will in the future. FLY NAVY!!!
This was excellent. Particularly interesting the bit about the convoys benefiting the Soviets too, which one doesn't often realize. (Only thing I was hoping to see was a shot of a PBY-5A.) Thank you for this.
Riddle me this, if the ultimate destination for much of the goods funneled through the Atlantic was the USSR, why were these not transported via Alaska? Even with Manchuria in war, there was still plenty of room north for safe passage.
Because logistics. Riddle me this: How are you going to bring millions of tons of supplies through mountainous terrain, virtually no roads or mud roads at best, and freezing temperatures and terrible weather. And that's not even Siberia. Which is that but worse, and is about 50x larger than Alaska. Remember this when hearing WW2. This isn't hoi4, you can't do the things you do in that game in real life.
Think my comment got hidden so I'll repost. Basically, they do, but since the ships had to be inspected by the japanese, and thus had to be Soviet flagged and without war materiel, it was of less importance. Besides, it only somewhat makes sense for the western states, because the Pacific and Siberia are really big. Search for Pacific Route.
It probability did not make sense logistically or tactically. To get from Vladivostok to Moscow, it would take a week on the train (using the infrastructure of today), and that without any interruptions and damage caused by the war. So it would take at least 2 weeks to have the supplies even close to the front. Whereas the train journey from Murmansk to Moscow is 1.5 days today (so closer to 3 or 4 depending on how bombed out the railway was) This is also ignoring that most of Russia's major ports in that part of the world are in close vicinity to Japan, which would slow the supplies again. It also prevents the use of the Royal Navy (RN). The RN had undisputed control of the surfaces around GB and the Atlantic. The RN was based out of Scapa Flow at the time, which is extremely close to all the shipping lanes and ensured that any major german surface threat would not be left alone for long, whilst being a great logistical hub for any allied vessels. We're need to address that the US-UK Lend lease programme saw thousands of merchant ships cross the pond anyway, which had the infrastructure and organisation to defend again U-boats, which the RN and RAF was more experienced in doing Overall, it made more logistical and tactical sense to to via the UK and not Alaska
Bro why did you gloss over Canada's part within the Atlantic so much aside from one mention of it being 1 of the 3 allied navies fighting there. I mean Canada's biggest contribution to the war which is VERY OVERLOOKED is it's contribution of military supplies and food as well as training to the common wealth and allies. Heck even Churchill called Canada the aerodrome of democracy. Canada produced nearly 900,000 trucks only beaten by the USA in WW2 in that regard. Canada also created 50,000 tanks, 40,000 anti aircraft naval gun, and 1.7 million small arms which a large chunk of went to the Soviet Union. Please could you at least when talking about Canada in this topic at least acknowledge us considering how much we contributed in this sense.
To be fair, this is just a 10 minute video on how the allies won the battle of Atlantic. Understandable to some being upset for Canada's role being forgotten that includes me but adding Canadian contribution during the battle of Atlantic would be better off in a separate video because like you said Canada's contribution and role is actually huge and crucial to the war effort and should never be forgotten.
If any comfort, my grandad sailed on T-2 tankers from spring ‘42 to ‘46. The standout from Bayonne after loading was terrifying. Reaching Halifax, they came under Royal Canadian Navy escort and he always maintained the skills of those Canadian escorts was why he survived the war.
1917 At first, the British Admiralty failed to respond effectively to the German offensive. Despite the proven success of troop convoys earlier in the war, the Channel convoys between England and France, and the Dutch, French, and Scandinavian convoys in the North Sea, they initially refused to consider widespread convoying or escorting. Convoying imposed severe delays on shipping, and was believed to be counterproductive, amounting to a loss of carrying capacity greater than the loss inflicted by the U-boats. It was disliked by both merchant and naval captains, and derided as a defensive measure. It was not until 27 April that the Admiralty endorsed the convoy system, the first convoy sailing from Gibraltar on 10 May.[40] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat_campaign#Allied_response
2:18: FDR never ordered King to institute a convoy system. It took 6 months to put together suitable escort ships and crews. When the Navy had the resources, they began escorted convoys.
The argument the sources I read made was that the navy *did* have suitable resources, but that King prioritised destroyers for the pacific theatre at a time when they were not as badly needed as in the atlantic
King was the head of the US Navy. Should he really have needed a politician's help, when the wisdom of convoys had been clearly demonstrated late in WW1 and in the first part of WW2? The US Navy certainly did have the resourses. Look at the Order of Battle of the US Atlantic Fleet in January, 1942. In particular, look at the number of destroyers.
@@obvious-troll Mentioned? You call saying 3 navies were involved "mentioned" Canada was integral to victory in the battle. By the end of the war, Canada had the 4th largest navy in the world, almost all of it involved in convoy escort duties. Halifax and St. John's were the western termini of the convoys until the U.S. got their shit together.
@@obvious-troll Pff! A MENTION..!? Not by name, he didn't. "Three allied navies...". And in the first minute he referred to the "American and Royal Navies". Bullsh!t. Canada was a full member of that battle! How many good Canadian boys went to the bottom of the sea having given their all? Naw, but we're used to it. The film "The Longest Day" mentions Juno Beach briefly as a subtitle before switching back to the "real" action among the US and Brits. We had one of the 5 beaches, and not a single Canadian character in the film. Not even a mention by name in a sh!tty YT doc like this one. Just a blue naval ensign which nobody today can recognize.
@@Great_Sandwich Calm down ffs. Its called the Royal Canadian Navy. Its a Royal Navy but Canadian. There is nothing wrong with what OP said. Whats wrong with using the Canadian ensign? Thats like not using the Reichskriegsflagge to represent the Kriegsmarine in WW2. He shouldnt dumb the content down for the audience
Admiral King has been faulted for not having merchant ships in convoys at the beginning of WW2. He said that sinking ships in coastal convoys at the time would be like shooting shooting 🔫 fish in a barrel. This was because the USA lacked escort ships and aircraft to defend them adequately. The US was arming civilian ships and aircraft 2:10 o fill this gap! Here are the reasons were that FDR had used, given, sold, and lent the British patrol aircraft including 12 B 17s, of which the US Army had at the time only 24, medium bombers, fighters, and escort ships (50 destroyers) to protect them. Another reason was that since the destruction of the American battleship fleet in Pearl Harbor, King put stopping the Japanese military expansion in the Pacific, his immediate priority. King needed destroyers to protect his remaining capital ships from subs I wish I knew who started this smear on a great man's reputation and ĥow it started. King knew the value of convoys because the US had used convoys in WW1. Those stupid Yanks must have forgotten.
@@dukeford8893 Oooopsy! If they didn't have enough ships; why then mention the fact that one of those larger North Atlantic convoys had only ONE escort ship but still convoyed. Why also mention that American naval ships patrolling the coastline were still using no radio discipline at all? Pfisht! The U.S. had as many ships available to them as did the Commonwealth navies when they commenced convoy escorting. Lame excuses aren't reasons for the apparent rampant stupidity.
King and the Atlantic Fleet were running convoys a year before Pearl Harbor. With the Brits and the Canadians. The advise he rejected was operating UNESCORTED convoys.
I was stationed on aWWII destroyer from 1968-1971 but recently there is a good movie GREYHOUND that shows the battle in the Atlantic Ocean and destroyers were single mount and more able to change directions than my double mount guns on my destroyer that was used at longer distance targets
Ridiculous comment. Listen to it again - "American and Royal Navies" - its plural for a reason. And not only that, there is literally a canadian flag and visual on screen at that same moment- it could not be clearer
@@historigraph "Royal Navies"..!? What the hell does that mean to anyone!? WE WEREN'T PART OF THE ROYAL NAVY, "historian"! We were in the Royal CANADIAN Navy, and full members of that battle. Do you really think you can save face by mentioning a blue Canadian naval ensign that you display for a few brief seconds? Who today would even recognize that? You made a "documentary" without mentioning one of the three full participants on the Allied side. Poorly done on your part. Do better next time.
@@obvious-troll Read the comments, troll. Say, maybe next time they can do one on the Gallipoli campaign and refer to the Aussies as being one of the British armies.
You mention American and Royal navy. What about the Royal Canadian Navy? The Battle of the Atlantic was in large part was won by the efforts of the Canadians. They had their own navy and many Canadians lost their lives fighting this battle.
My grandfather was on convoy duty in the Atlantic. One night 6 ships were sunk around his!!! My grandmother told me that when he came home he would have night terrors and she would have to change the sheets nightly because he would sweat so bad at night. Their both long since passed away but seeing this made me think of them. Miss them both.😢
And upon the North Atlantic Lies the silence of the sea And on the quietest night in the darkest hour The Kriegsmarine appear Above the surface it seems quiet and calm Deep down below the wolfpack lurks
Admiral King was an anglophobe, if the Brits were in favor of it he wouldn't be. Churchill said after the war that the battle of the North Atlantic was what concerned him most through out the course of the conflict
They failed to adapt quick enough and paid the ultimate price. Chosing flak guns over diving? Hard pass. A U-boat rarely won that fight. Just get the hell under. A submarine is without a doubt thee worst AA platform one could use. There is a reason other sub forces never trained for that as a first option, only if diving wasn't an option. That said, our boats could detect an aircraft beyond the horizon and dive before it ever got to the subs position. That is far more survivable than trying to shoot it out. Just finished Iron Coffins(usually read on Pacific and Mediterranean) and so many U-boats fell to duels with aircraft. Radar detectors that didn't work often caused the U-boats to get caught with their pants down more often than not. Especially at night. At first the Germans didn't have enough U-boats and then when they had enough it wasn't enough at all. The irony.
My dad was in the Canadian Merchant Navy, the Germans sunk the Newfoundland ferry in oct 41, the old man said it took Halifax command 2 weeks to send a destroyer to chase them out of the area. At low tide in Louisbourg NS you can see the large concrete blocks that held the sub nets down in the mouth of the harbour.
2 things killed the German U boats- surface running, and the breaking of the enigma machine, one thing that would have went a long way to prolonging the campaign, ..the Snorkel.
The mustach man made a mistake prioritizing surface ships while neglecting uboats. The materials used for sharnhorst and bismarck class battleships, and hipper class heavy cruisers would have been far more useful invested in Uboat production.
Let's not forget that it would take 12-21 months to build a U-boat vs an average of around 30 *days* to build a Liberty Ship plus the crew training requirements for the Liberty Ships would be less... In a war of attrition, this makes a big difference...
@kevinstreeter6943: That was after D-Day when the allies had captured most of the French ports that the Germans had been using. Their U-Boats were transferred to Bergen (Norway) but by that time they could only operate (mostly) in British coastal waters as the Atlantic had been secured.
Very well done, and great detail. There are some points I would like to add. First, the US 10th Fleet was a major contributing factor, despite have no ships. It was an array of radio direction finders spread from Greenland to South America that allowed the allies to track the uboats by their radio communications with their command. Also, another factor in the early high shipping losses was the US failure to black out coastal cities. U-boats literally used the city lights in the background to target merchant ships. And do not take these points as criticisms at all. Any video can get bogged down with details, I only mention those because so few know about either.
Can we appreciate the industrail might of the US of putting aircraft carriers in the Atlantic just to hunt submarines? While at the same time pumping out carriers for the Pacific War, its main theaters for carriers.
So many salty morons in these comments saying “but the Canadian navy”, mf he literally always highlights Canada, UK and US on the map as the allies, meaning it is always acknowledged of the Canadian navy. You guys are just salty because he’s not glorifying Canada alone constantly with exaggerated lies. Why can’t we just accept the allies were powerful together and that the war was impossible without the contribution of all.
This video took a bit longer to make than it was supposed to due to some tech issues, but its finally here!
Episode 1 in this series: ruclips.net/video/Obrv_GdvNf0/видео.html
Get Early Access to videos and support their creation on Patreon: www.patreon.com/historigraph
ok
Bad video. You should have mentioned the RCN in the intro.
@@waynesworldofsci-tech
Be less dumb.
@@waynesworldofsci-tech I did - 'Royal Navies' with Canadian ensign clearly visible
@@historigraph
Most don’t know our WW2 Naval ensign. You need to mention the country.
I grew up with regimental and warship photos in every second house. Canada finished the war with the third largest navy in the world. Out of five D-Day beaches we got one, the Brits and Yanks two each. No one else got a beach.
We all too often get rolled into the Royal Navy. Yes, we used similar equipment (with mods for our more northern climate), but we built most of them ourselves, designed and built our own medium tank, the Ram, and designed and manufactured our own radars and sonars.
We were the third major player on the Western Front.
For a 10 minute video you've explained the key points of the Battle of the Atlantic very well. Well done sir!
+1 When I see a good video and it's 27 minutes long, I'm like, come on bro?! Perfect video.
He talked about the submarine war and didn't mention the words "depth charge" or "sonar" once.
@@adrianmillard6598True, but at least he mentioned the hedgehog.
@@adrianmillard6598 Direction finding is asdic and hedgehog mines replaced traditional depth charges
The Russian Navy was extremely important in these battles,...after all they defeated the Germans all by themselves! Just ask a Commie!
As I recall, the Royal Canadian Navy numbered over 100,000 sailors, almost all in the Atlantic. 270 of its ocean-going escort vessels (Patrol Boats, Corvettes, Frigates, etc) fought in the Atlantic anti-submarine convoy escort actions across the Atlantic. As well, more than 7 RCAF squadrons of long-range aircraft operated continuously from Canadian shores. RCAF and RCN assets were integrated into overall RN control during convoy missions. Just saying, we were there, heart and soul.
The entire theatre was commanded by Leonard W. Murray of the RCN.
Feels like were always forgotten on the world scale whenever anyone is disucussing either of the WWs. Just important we as Canadians remember our efforts and those who sacrificed. The world may always forget, but as history has shown, underestimating Canada often leads to major surprises once we do show up.
The Canadian navy was the 5th largest by 1945, and sunk 31 German Uboats
Canadian effort should not be underestimated. Industrially Canada was also an essential part of the Allies. Canadian factories manufactured more tanks and trucks than Italy and Japan combined.
And were very much appreciated.
I had heard that it wasn't a case of Admiral King not learning the obvious convoy and costal blackout lessons, but of him resenting the British and so pointedly doing the opposite of any advice they gave him.
A lot of authors seem to concur that he wasn't a big fan of the Brits, yeah
Except he was well known to hate everyone, much like Gen."Vinegar" Stillwill; to say he only hated the British, which seems to be a narcissistic viewpoint.
This would also ignore that Adm. King had no authority over anything on land. So, turning out lights on the coast was a civilian matter. Not King.
Lack of ships to cover everything required this was even pointed out by the British. They could cover main convoys and a couple major Naval engaments, but not convoys from one US port to another.
The Germans only recently to that point had the subs large enough to get all the way to US ports.
Between like 1776 and the 1940's, there were quite a number of American generals and officers who very much resented the British. I've read about quite a few American admirals and generals in WWII who were described as "Anglophobic" and used slurs like "the L*meys". That resentment didn't totally come out of the blue. There were moments in that stretch of time where British leadership and generals had looked down on their American counterparts. And of course, there were moments of conflict that soured opinions.
Thankfully, the animosity has seemed to diminish greatly!
@@SeattlePioneerThe issue was that, outside of his abrasive personality, his decision making and leadership was really quite good
My British great grandfather perished towards the end of the war in the merchant navy. It's too easy to forget the sacrifices of the early 20th century
My great grandfather was a skididi toilet.
Was fortunate to have met a RN veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic and also the Arctic convoys.
He was torpedoed twice iirc and lucky to have survived.
One ought remember that most of the convoy escorts had open bridges and exposed to the elements, the woollen clothing would get soaked. Conditions were even worse in the Arctic, where the constant sea spray froze in the rigging and on the superstructure.
We especially should not forget the role played by the civilian merchant seamen.
Even during the war, as a boy, I was allowed into the docks in Durban and had visited RN and MN ships - and, since my sister worked for the S African equivalent of NAAFI, many were invited to visit us. Open bridges were more-or-less state of the art. Woollen clothing of the upper body was of course protected by oilskins. Seafaring is not fun.
the Battle of the Atlantic is the longest lasting single continuous battle ever fought anywhere in the world, lasting over 😂6 years, from the declaration of war, in 1939, until the final ending of hostilities in 1945.
and there were only two branches of the services represented, (one from each side,) who can say that they were involved, and saw action from the very first day to the last.
they are also the two branches which suffered by far the highest death rates of any branch of any military service of any other country who took part in WW 2
on the allied side, the Merchant navy suffered by far the highest death toll than any other service, on both sides, with only the German U Boat fleet suffering higher losses than the Merchant Navy. they are also the only services who can claim to have fought in the battle of the Atlantic from the very first day to the last,
on the allied side, the highest casualty rate ever suffered by a single convoy was a convoy made up of UK merchant ships, with mainly British and US crews, which had set off from Iceland, bound for Murmansk, via North Norway, out of the 34 merchant vessels which
set off in convoy to Russia, only 11 ships made it to Murmansk, all of the rest, 23 ships, were sunk due to enemy action,
with 153 Merchant Navy personnel losing their lives in the worst allied merchant navy convoy disaster ever. and yet, despite the dedication shown time and again, risking their lives daily, at a speed rarely exceeding 10 knots, every day for the two weeks it took a convoy to cross the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York, then another 2 weeks to return,
there were no such thing as “tours
of duty” offered to the ordinary British Merchant navy man, if he wanted to get payed, he simply had to sign articles and set sail, no ship, no pay…which meant many merchant navy men spent at least 5 years criss-crossing the Atlantic,
my father being one of them, he was also on some Artic convoys, though he fortunately he missed the PQ 17 disaster,
he rarely spoke of his war experiences, with one particular occurrence which he mentioned from time to time, and said that he would tell me some time, but he never did, dying of a massive heart attack at the age of 66, one year after he retired,
i did however hear the story, and its one of the most harrowing stories ever to come out of the dark days of WW2, and it is the story of the “city of Benares” a fast liner, with 100 children aboard' making for canada, and a new life away from the war, she was considered too fast to be torpedoed, and set off ahead of the convooy my father was on,
then word came through that she had been hit and was sinking, by the time the convoy arrived, the Benares was gone , with most survivors in the water,
.the convoy kept its speed up, fearing the u boat might still be around, despite every vessel putting out grabnets, not one survivor made it aboard a convoy vessel, out of the 100 children who entered the water alive, and who could be heard shouting for help, only 7 survived, my father maintained the convoy ran them down, a fact he never got over, and why he found it hard to tell the story, right up to his death in 1981,
@@robertmagnusjamieson1759
Had heard the stories of ships not being allowed to stop to pick up survivors, which must have been hard on the crews hearing cries for help.
Must have been terrible to witness children being left behind.
No wonder your father found it difficult to talk about.
The writing on the wall for the U-boat arm came much earlier. In early March of 1941, over the course of ten days, Germany lost its three most distinguished and celebrated U-boat aces. Prien and Schepke were lost with all hand in their boats and Kretschmer was captured after losing his boat. It was such a shock to Hitler that he staged the release of information on the three aces over the course of the coming summer to soften the blow to the home front.
What most people don’t realize is that U-boats spent most of their time on the surface. On the surface they operated at 18 knots(convoys operated at 7-12 knots). Submerged U-boats could only do 8 knots for two hours before draining ALL battery power. They could operate longer at lower speeds. So, U-boats had to be on the surface to position themselves for attacks. They could submerge to fire torpedoes after the set up.
The advent of radar and the ability to protect convoys with air cover is what did the U-boats in.
Great video.
@@derrickislander I forgot about the see-saw battles over ENIGMA. Allied convoys were constantly using decrypts to skirt around wolf pack patrol lies in the vast Atlantic. Little known, but Kreigsmarine Intelligence was pretty adept at breaking merchant navy radio traffic. While Royal Navy cyphers were much harder to crack, convoys could be located by tapping into comms amongst the merchant fleet.
I think you’ll find that radio comms were kept to a minimum, due to RDF.
Enigma was broken, but it had to be broken more than once. Germans changed it.
@@peterwebb8732 The Allies knew the Germans had broken merchant marine codes. They calculated that the costs of changing the code would be more than the losses in ships. Rather cold blooded calculus but that is what happened.
my daddy was a u-boat captain who survived
I’ll always be proud of my Canadian brothers and sisters who died crossing and protecting the crossing I myself am joining the navy this July
Thanks for serving. Give me a fast ship as I intend to go in harms way.
So you're in boot right now. Stay motivated. It's a mindset and you just gotta adopt it. You may even need to lie to yourself about it. False motivation is better than no motivation
Lol Canada is greater India now 😂
As a Writer and Historian in Aruba for the last 26 years, permit me to say that the little island of Aruba, the Lago Oil Refinery and its employees played an important role during WWII. The refinery was suplying out of every 12 gallons of the 100 octane Aviation gasoline used by the Allies, one gallon was from the Lago refinery. No wonder the Germans sent U-boats U-156 and U-502 to destroy the refinery, the lake tankers which were brining the Lake Maracaibo cude oil. One February 16, 1942, @1:31am Aruba was schocked when U-156, with its Captain Werner Hartenstein sent his first torpedo (in the Western Hemisphere) on the SS Pedernales, destryoed it partially, did ot sink, but two minutes later torpedoed the other lake tanker SS Oranjestad which sank half hour later. Eight victims on the SS Pedernales and 15 on the SS Oranjestad. The U-502 sank SS San Nicolas, SS Tia Juana from the Lago refinery. 17 victims on the SS San Nicolas and 7 on the SS Tia Juana. I wrote nine books, four on the WWII. The story is long.
Thank you for the information on a slice of the war not covered by anyone else apart from you.
what are the books called? I remember reading a novel about someone on those islands when I was little
@@dave_h_8742 This slice of the war is very well known and very well covered. don't be ignorant.
Aruba? I had no idea!
Very interesting side piece of history. So many WW2 victims, especially civilian workers, don't get their stories told. Thank you.
The casualty rate of the submarine service of the Kreigsmarine was not just worse than any other branch in WW2, it was probably worse than any other force in history over an extended conflict.
You were likely to survive in some concentration camps than in a submarine.
...how does it compare to Bomber Command? I heard it suffered hideous losses over the war. Btw that’s an earnest inquiry, not arguing.
@@mikereger1186 Wikipedia says 44.4%. Far more sorties than the U-boats as well so the odds of surviving a single sortie were much higher.
@@mikereger1186Doing a tour as a tail gunner in a heavy bomber was probably the next worst position you could be in. Probably around 50% casualties.
But when you were hit there was a *chance* you might be able to parachute out, and if you survived your 30 missions then you were finished.
Whereas you were 99.9% a goner if you got depth charged and - like with the rest of the German forces - you'd just keep being sent on missions until you didn't come back.
@@mikereger1186If U Boats were number 1 in casualty rates, then Bomber Command would be number 2 with a fatality rate of 44%
For Bomber Command, both the British and Americans had loss rates for planes that generally ran between 15-30%. Depending on exactly which period of the war you were talking about and the target.
US and UK Bomber Command crew losses were likewise high, and varied by position and platform. But in general the number I’ve seen quoted was the chances of an individual bomber crewman becoming a casualty (KIA/WIA/POW) was about 35% over the course of their service.
The German U-Boat crew losses in absolute numbers were lower, but as a proportion were catastrophic. Germany lost 75% of their U-Boats and their crews during the war. Very, very few crewmen survived the sinking of their subs but it sometimes happened. The chance of a German submariner surviving more than a handful of patrols was basically zero.
Thank you merchant navy sailors. The true unsung heroes of WW2
I cannot imagine knowing that my ship was going through the freezing waters of the North Sea to Russia with subs and German battleships in the way.
@@recoil53 How about even a convoy to North Africa or Italy in 1943? U-Boats were literally everywhere, and until the September capitulation, you also had to possibly deal with the Italian Navy, with its own three large battleships.
I agree. 36,749 British, 9,521 American and 1,600 Canadian merchant seamen died in ww2
A major element in the allies controlling the North Atalnatic Gap was Chuchill's brilliant manouvere to invoke the 1373 Anglo-Portugese Treaty of Military Alliance. This led to an agreement for Great Britain to consrtuct an airfield on the Azores which allowed the RAF Coastal Command to finally get the air coverage they needed.
A humorous incident occurred when Franco and Salazar (the Spanish and Portuguese dictators) met with Hitler. Salazar detested Hitler, when Hitler raised the possibility of Germany basing submarines in the Azores, Salazar (apparently with a straight face) "reluctantly" declined, citing the 1373 Treaty of Windsor. Hitler apparently nearly choked. He later remarked of the meeting "I would prefer to have a root-canal than go through that again".
@@rogerbeesley-lo5tj That last quote I'm pretty sure was when Hitler meet Franco.
@@ChrisCrossClash I may be in error as to whether Salazar ever met Hitler. He did however respond to German requests to base submarines in the Azores as I described above. You are correct; the root canal comment was made after a conference with Franco.
Allied civilian sailors were the unsung heroes of WW2. Without their sacrifice, the USSR and UK would have been incapable to resist Nazi Germany.
The adage that "War is won by Logistics". Early on it was thanks only to the Lend Lease that kept the UK afloat at all really otherwise the Battle of Britain may very well have been lost. Similar goes for what the Soviets were receiving which propped them up just enough while they rebuilt or just plain built industry that was destroyed//non-existent West of the Volga onto the East side...just out of reach of the Germans.
It wasn't until the fifties that the government was forced to recognize their sacrifice and provide for widows and their families.
not to diminish their heroism, but Atlantic was only one route of supply
going through Persia/India or even just through Pacific Ocean was possible and took most of the throughput
Eh, historians agree that the supplies sent to the USSR saved thousands of lives but that the USSR would have still won without them. The war would have raged on for many more years though.
These sailors saved a lot of lives.
@@michimatsch5862 it's a politically charged question, so historians' answer highly depends on specific historians
we'll see in a hundred years whose opinion prevails
My father-in-law fought that battle, flying in the belly of PBYs out of Iceland hunting U-boats. He said they would take bets on the way back to base on how many planes had slid off the icy runways. Truly the Greatest Generation.
It's hard to imagine that for every four sailors serving in the uboat arm, three of them did not make it to the end of the war. Absolutely brutal
Justice comes swiftly and harshly to those most deserving.
Overall, a great video that gives a good summation of the stages of the lengthy and hard fought Battle of the Atlantic. However, I take some issue with a couple of aspects.
The first is, although you show the Canadian blue ensign in the video (which was not the national flag of Canada during WWII by the way, just the Naval Jack), you never mention the Royal Canadian Navy and its essential role on the Battle of the Atlantic. Canadian warships made up approximately 40% of all the escorts during the battle (Canada launched as many Flower Class corvettes as the Royal Navy) and arguably the battle would have been lost without Canada's contribution along with those of Britain and the USA. Rear Admiral Murray of the RCN was the operational commander of the western Atlantic Ocean, commanding from St. John's, Newfoundland.
My second issue is that you gloss over the responsibility Ernest King held for the dismal record of sunken merchant ships in the first half of 1942. It wasn't merely that the US was unprepared and overly committed in the Pacific. King LOATHED the Royal Navy and so refused to follow any advice or suggestions offered by the Navy that had been fighting the Kriegsmarine for over three years already, no matter how logical or necessary. He REFUSED to force coastal cities to have blackouts, thus making darkened Allied ships easily silhouetted against those same city lights for U-boats to aim at. American ships talked openly on their radios in plain English, often revealing ship movements to listening U-boats. US ships didn't zigzag, the most effective defence against from being torpedoed and American patrols kept to a strict schedule that the German submarines quickly learned and thus avoided.
And most egregious of all, he refused to organise the merchant ships into convoys, as the British suggested. The Royal Navy had made this mistake in WWI, preferring to go a-hunting for German U-boats, not realising that by using convoys the U-boats were forced to come to them. Britain was on the point of starvation in 1917 before the First Sea Lord decided to institute the convoy system. In WWII, the British started using convoys from day one, having learned the lesson well from the previous war.
King's other issue was that he had no faith in Naval intelligence, even that provided by his own Navy. And since most of the intelligence he was receiving came from the British, he dismissed it out of hand, despite how important it often was.
However, he was very good at blaming his subordinates for his own shortcomings and it was because of all of this that FDR had to finally step in and force him to do his job properly.
He was apparently horrible to work for as well - his own daughter is reputed to have said once, "My father is the most even-tempered man I have ever met. He's in a constant rage."
While all of those ships were being sunk along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. there was complete disregarding of the proof of convoy system by King ignoring the fact a Canadian navy escorted convoy from South America up that same coastline did not lose one ship during the worst period of those 360 sunk unescorted ships.
A disappointing video for both reasons. Apparently the creator is as disinclined to give due credit to the Royal Canadian Navy as King was.
That last statement was tongue in cheek but good job trying to pass it as fact. But yeah aside from Montgomery he was really hated by all sides of the allies.
@brustar5152 more uneducated dribble. There was no disregard of convoy system. Alot of those ships sunk were in ports not in transit. Also so you have a slightest clue how big the US is? From the ports of New Orleans to New York, there was not enough ships or planes to cover the entire sea board. Maybe if the US hadn't been shipping the British and other allies so many aircraft and other defense weapons systems as part of lend lease there would have been more planes available to do ASW work
@@Matt-mt2vi I'd be careful accusing others of "uneducated dribble", mate. Perhaps you should take a look at the maps showing where the ship sinkings took place. Unless a lot of those ports were hundreds of miles east of the shoreline, you are rather mistaken.
Also, the majority of the "defense systems" were older US Coast Guard cutters and vintage WWI destroyers, neither particularly well suited to anti-submarine work. That's why Canada had to give the USN our Flower Class corvettes as a stop gap while US yards scrambled to build suitable anti-submarine warships, many of which were the British-designed River Class frigates..
The numbers of ships and submarines built and destroyed in WWII is just staggering! Building those submarines and huge ships was not an easy task, yet they cranked out thousands and lost hundreds
ships and boats back then were certainly a lot simpler than what we have now, plus, ww2 saw all major combatants mobilize enormous resources to fight this war, this is very much total war and gearing your country for waging war
@@justit1074 simpler is relative. They were state of the art back in the day.
@@obvious-troll of course
The major economies of the world at full capacity are truly massive
And in recent decades, a cruiser being sunk makes headlines all over the world (Belgrano in the Falklands and Moskva in the Russia-Ukraine War). I have to chuckle about it a bit considering that whole aircraft carriers sinking was the norm in the World War II. Literally EVERY modern war looks small compared to it.
Gee, this may come as a shock folks but the Royal Canadian Navy played a very big part of the North Atlantic battle against the U-Boats...Oh, don't forget Canada was at war 10 Sept.39 so we sorta had a head start. Our little corvettes were the terror of the U-Boat boys.
typical american view of things.
The Canadians were the third largest navy in the world by number of ships (almost entirely destroyers and corvettes) by the end of the war.
@@hanzzel6086 true
@@hanzzel6086 tbf there wasnt really much competition for third place.
@@obvious-troll True, but keep in mind the Canadians started the war with 2 rusty old protected cruisers and a handful of equally terrible destroyers. And yes, a lot of those ships were U.S AND UK built, but a fair few (especially the Flowers) were home built.
The Battle of the Atlantic by the start of 1943 seemed to be another slugfest after 1942, but then by May it suddenly all but over. It's not exactly like that, but the switch up in balance of power was quite brief.
Yeah , it takes time to build the parts that go into factories that make the parts. A lot of people don't appreciate the whole unseen supply side of the economy.
Once the designs were done, the factories reconfigured, and they made production efficient it was just an impossible battle for the Axis. I think the US alone built 17 Essex carriers, almost 100 escort carriers, and several hundred destroyers just during the war. The US trained 435K pilots & air crew alone.
The Axis HAD to win a quick war, but a sucker punch like Pearl Harbor meant the US population would be angry enough for a long, drawn out war.
May 1943 was the decisive month - the Germans lost 41 U-boats, an unsustainable rate of attrition.
Cover some unheard modern conflicts as well please like the Sino Vietnamese and the Indo Pak wars
the Indo Pak war was just covered by Operations Room
Or mabey the Sri lankan civil war?
Angolan Bush war 🤔
Never stormed a beach, never drove a tank, never took an inch of land nor liberated any citys. But enableling it all while sitting on a silver plate for wolfs to come and eat them whole surrounded by stormy ice cold water.
O7
This is something people don't understand when they think all the major battles happened on the Eastern Front. You have to get soldiers, vehicles, and materiel to Europe to fight Germany and in the way of that are the deadly U-Boats
Correct. The unconscious brain takes what is as just existing. It takes conscious, deliberate thought, which is prompted by direct experience, to be consciously aware of the chain of events that must occur for, say, a Sherman tank to end up in northern France at the D-Day landings, along with a full supply of fuel, ammunition, spare parts and a trained crew. A person who doesn't do this intentional thought can easily, mindlessly assume it "just happens".
360 allied merchant ships sunken in Atlantic waters? That’s bloody disastrous
Admrial king was a a bad Anglophobia, his hate of the english made him ignore all advice from the royal navy about naval escorting costing countless lives, he should of been shot for treason
Still only a small piece of all the shipping that arrived unharmed
Yeah ww2 was massive 😮
Never heard of liberty ships?
But less so if during that same space of time the allies have built 370 merchant ships. U-Boats sunk vs U-Boats launched is also important.
In a war of logistics whoever has an attrition of matériel is losing - by about May 1943 that was the U-Boats. More merchants to make up losses and then some. More advanced warships with latest detection gear and weaponry, better training facilities etc etc. More warships means ample convoy protection but also allows for hunter-killer groups sweeping ahead and not tethered to the convoy, and with the resources to find, fix and kill a u-boat.
If Donitz and German industry couldn’t compete with that, if they couldn’t churn out more U-boats than they lost and with better technology, then the outcome was basically inevitable.
This straight up is one of the best and most interesting videos I have ever seen! 👍
Kinda sad this video doesn’t really mention the Royal Canadian navy who played a major roll in the battle of the Atlantic and convoy escort during the war…
he says allied
For anyone who's watching this, you're obviously interested in this period. You should check out the movie Greyhound with Tom Hanks. Absolutely stunning short movie about a crossing of the Atlantic for a convoy protection battleship. It was pure gripping action the entire time(about an hour and 10-20 minutes). I've watched it 3 times and each time, I'm on the edge of my seat.
One should not forget the contribution made by physicist Luis Alvarez, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Airborne Allied radars were giving advanced warning to German U-boats. When the aircraft approached, the U-boats simply submerged. Radar could not track them when submerged. Radar power weakens as the inverse SQUARE of the distance. Because there are TWO paths for reflected signals, radar RETURN signals decreased as the inverse FOURTH power of the distance. Alvarez's brilliant idea: Have the radars adjust energy to the THIRD power of the distance. The result was that radar signal strength received by the U-boats DECREASED as the aircraft approached. Hence, the U-boat captains were tricked into staying on the surface even while Allied patrol planes approached. However, the return signal INCREASED as the planes approached. By the time the U-boat captains realized that they had been tricked, it was too late, their boats could not evade allied weaponry. Nobody in the Kriegsmarine had the foggiest idea that they were being tricked, because the captains who had figured it out were dead.
God Ernest King was such a bellend
🙄
I think my favourite of all the battles in WWII
Glad that someone realises how important this was
It was arguably the most important battle/theatre of the war, but definitely the most important one that the average person on the street has never heard of.
I always consider the greatest land battle in the entire war was at Stalingrad. Both sides had enormous losses but it showed the chink in the German armor; the Soviets developed a fighting spirit and destroyed the myth of the unbeatable German army. Hitler, never a good tactician, exposed his armies to unnecessary losses by refusing to allow any retreat.
A measure of how desperate things were on the US side early in the war was the creation of the Civil Air Patrol, volunteer civilian pilots with quasi-military status flying U-boat recon patrols in civilian aircraft painted bright yellow. As the regular forces ramped up, their job later became pilot training and air search and rescue, and they still exist today.
An unfathomable effort.
Allied engineering during wartimes was incredible ultimately winning the war
Indeed - people get obsessed about big tanks and V-weapons, but an allied destroyer or Liberator probably had far more state-of-the-art, and actually effective, tech on it than just about anything Germany created during the war.
@@bighamster2 but muh underwaffen! /s
In effect, the Allies, with the exception of the Soviet Union, were soundly defeated.
The Allies lost a huge commercial zone in Eastern Europe and East Asia.
Western colonies were liberated by Japan and disappeared.
Communist guerrillas in the USSR and China were victorious, the rest of the world was a defeated nation
4:04 Just an FYI, the Canadian Red Ensign, was not blue. It was red, hence the name. This whole video is unbelievable though. Never in my life have I watched a documentary about the Battle of the Atlantic with not one single mention of the RCN or RCAF. The entirety of Canada's contribution, according to this documentary, is the wrong colour flag. Pretty offensive.
I think Roosevelt asked Eisenhower what was the quickest way to win the war in Europe, he repiled "shoot King"🤣
US admiral Ernest King's stubborn refusal to employ convoy tactics against the u-boats had be be one of the most catastrophically stupid decisions made by any commander during WW2. His mind boggling negligence cost the allies millions of tons of cargo, and thousands of sailors.
That was not the case at all, and King was never ordered by FDR to start convoys. King had been conducting convoys in the Atlantic since early 1941. Don't be mislead.
Admiral King was not just "slow" to realize the value of convoys, he outright rejected it simply because it was a British solution to the U-Boats. King was a well known Anglo hater and he cost hundreds of sailors their lives because of his ignorance and stubbornness.
why did he hate the brits so much? I’ve heard he was a complete asshat but don’t know why he was
@@chicagotypewriter2094 He didnt like Admiral Beatty in WW1
Admiral King stated in January 1942 that the only way to protect merchant shipping was the use of ESCORTED CONVOYS. King and the U.S. Navy declined to use UNESCORTED CONVOYS. When the Navy had the suitable ships and crews, they began ESCORTED COASTAL CONVOYS in the spring of 1942. King didn't hate the British. That is a myth. He didn't trust them, but that's not the same thing. King got along fine with Churchill, his Royal Navy counterpart Admiral Pound and the rest of the British General Staff.
That is simply revisionist history. Why was there the "Second Happy Time" as the U-boat commanders called it then? Because U.S freighters were unescorted. Do some research and you will find that King has been noted by numerous creditable historians as anglophobe. @@dukeford
Admiral King was a great leader - except for his near hatred for the British. He flatly refused to do anything that the British did. He did eventually wake up. But many seamen were lost for nothing.
That does not sound like a great leader.
King didn't hate the British, and didn't flatly refuse their advise. Please. Where do you get these ideas?
My dad was stuck on the Azores off the coast of Spain . Deeply involved in the U boat war but thought he was missing the action . An airbase on the island killing U boats ... TOO bad he cannot see the history of what he was really doing ...
My dad the same. Radioman 'stuck' on the east coast doing experimental radio stuff. After the war, he found out he was on the ground floor of radio detection used in anti-sub action.
King, like many other high ranking officers, were anglophobes. They refused point blank to listen to what the Royal Navy and Army had learned the hard way during two years of war. Their arrogance and belief in their own superiority, caused the deaths of thousands. Changing that mindset took far too long, and cost even more lives. Even towards the end of the war, their arrogance and refusal to listen to those with far more experience, continued to cost lives. Unfortunately, even today, not much has changed.
How much merchant shipping did the Brits lose the first two years? How many combatant ships? (answer: a shitload) The Royal Navy had hardly covered itself in glory the first two years of the war, the sole exception being the Bismarck pursuit. The U.S. Navy was under no obligation to take ANY British naval advice at face value.
Ridiculous, basically everything you said is historically inaccurate. The only more ridiculous is the term anglophobe, which is about as dumb as those who use Russophobia.
The 2nd happy time was only 6 months, not your ridiculous 2 years. Convoy escorts from the US to Britain were happening over 6 months before the US entered the war. Do yiu have the slightest clue how big the US is? The US didn't have active Navy size it eventually had, to cover all that territory.
Maybe instead of giving the British and other all that lend lease, maybe they would have better protection and aircraft.
One early partial solution was to move the US coastal shipping to the existing and also urgently improved inland channels, i.e. between the islands and the main coast line. If you have a good map, you can see how amazingly long this navigation route really is, and how challenging it would be for U-boats to try interceptions there. Of corse that only served US domestic shipping.
Dont forget allan turin ' he decifered the emigma codes ' closing the black gap 😁 so we knew wear the uboats were at any given time ' this was the beggining of the end of the wolf pack '
Admiral King bears a lot of responsibility for the U boats second “happy time”.
I agree. Should King have been fired for his poor judgement and lack of preparation?
Heh, heh! What would that self described SOB have done with a subordinate who failed so spectacularly?
Do tell. Let me guess, you think he hated the British so much he sacrificed sailors? Even though he well known to hate everyone.
Or was he not to force the coastal lights out, an act he didn't have the authority to do. That was a civilian matter or Army issue, Navy authority ended at docks.
Or maybe because he didn't have enough ships to cover both the Atlantic and Pacific main Naval operations to also cover convoys from one US port to another before getting into the main convoy.
If King was so bad, why didn't FDR fire him?
@SeattlePioneer how about you then? Give an example of something he had control of that should have gotten him fired.
@@dukeford8893 Earlier posts:
>
Your post:
You can't explain how the battle of the Atlantic played out in 10 minue.... oh , you did ... er..well done , carry on . :)
For a great account of this on the micro-level, read the novel The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monserrat. The film made of it is also very good, but the book is magnificent and very moving.
A lot of these cargo-ships sunk off the US Eastern Board would've survived if the Federal authorities had ordered a blackout of the coastal towns and cities as many of the ships were sunk at night because the lights in the background created a sillouette that the U-boats could track and target.
King rejected the idea of convoys. It wasn't that he merely had not learned about them.
He rejected them for a year or more.
American merchantmen lost their lives because of that idiot's stubbornness.
not just americans
@@obvious-troll Very true.
King stated, right at the start of the war, that the only method of protecting merchant shipping was via ESCORTED CONVOYS. The U.S. Navy rejected the British method of convoys without escorts as being useless, and had the data to back it up. The Navy started running ESCORTED convoys as soon as they had enough ships to do so, in limited use by April 1942. That's not a year, is it? Your argument is totally without merit.
@@dukeford8893 need a source
@@dukeford8893 Could be. I have read several times that it was King that PERSONALLY rejected convoys.
Also, we had transferred over to Britain a large number of destroyers.
Were those the ships WE needed to protect convoys??
Are you sure King said that convoys were the only way to protect merchant ships??
if so, that is counter to everything I have read.
BUT -- "facts" that are "well known" and cited in books can turn out to be false. Case in point -- The Chieftain fully debunked many "facts" that stated the Sherman tank was crap. He showed with excellent citing of sources how wrong those "facts" were.
So, I am fully willing to update my knowledge -- when I need to.
Lovely but your graphic at the start totally downplayed the contribution of the RCN in crewing a substantial percentage of the naval escorts operating on the North Atlantic, it is not the UK and the USA versus the Kreigsmarine UnterseeBoot Service but all of the various Allied navies who contributed ships from the Royal Norwegian Naval Service and the Free French to the Dutch sailors who stayed to fight for their homeland.
I thought Britian did the funni against the French navy in Mers El Kebir
The RCN had the 3rd largest Navy at the end of the war, but there was no real competition left for the 3rd spot.. And I believe the majority of it was the very small Coverttes, which made it too small for the Hedgehog. It's great for assisting in locating the subs.
As for the number of Uboats sunk, the British sank over 400, the US sank 150 plus, and Canada sank about 30. This includes uboats sank by planes, not just ships.
Just because they didn't sink that many didn't mean the warships in that convoy didn't play a part in defense of the convoy
@@Matt-mt2vi Canada switched to building mainly frigates by 1942. They built so many corvettes at the start because they could build them at ship yards throughout the Great Lakes, corvettes being small enough to pass through the canal into the St. Lawrence. The corvette was a very capable submarine hunter killer with the type sinking many u-boats. The RCN sank fewer u-boats due to lack of opportunity given they covered the western Atlantic where uboats were much harder to locate then say the Bay of Biscay. By 1942, 50% of all transatlantic convoys were being escorted by the RCN. By the end of the war the RCN was considered to be the best anti-submarine navy in the world, a distinction it held throughout the Cold War.
@@nickgooderham2389 "By the end of the war the RCN was considered to be the best anti-submarine navy in the world"
according to who?
@@obvious-troll That claim does not stand scrutiny - the RCN played a significant role in the Atlantic, often overlooked - but by 1945 the Royal Navy was the leading anti submarine navy with people like Johnny Walker and Donald MacIntyre in the forefront - the former credited with 20 U-boats sinkings.
The Americans had a habit of not listening to those who went before them. Pershing did the same thing in WWI, there was no way that the Brits and French were going to advise him, even though they had been fighting for year. The Americans wound up having to learn the hard way.
One of the best history channels out there. Alongside operations room and epic history channel.
Incredible!
Admiral King hated the english and all of their advice- so no convoys, he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands of merchant men. Early Canadian convoys had few escorts with them, so lack of escorts was not an answer. Just personal mailce.
King's alleged hatred of the British has no basis in fact, and the very idea that a senior commander would sacrifice men because of some personal bias is ridiculous.
You failed to mention that the cracking of the enigma code have a tremendous advantage as u boats routinely gave away there position in radio messages to high command
when he said codebreakers i kinda put two and two together
If Dönitz had, had it his way with a lot more u-boats Brittain might have been seriously threatened but, with the actual numbers that were available for the German forces, never!
Germany should used the steel and craftsmanship for building u-boats instead of capital warships.
Luckily they didn't.
The Eighth air force suffered about half of the U.S. Army Air Force's casualties (47,483 out of 115,332), including more than 26,000 dead. The Eighth's brave men earned 17 Medals of Honor, 220 Distinguished Service Crosses, and 442,000 Air Medals. so it is the allied equivalent
Bombers were really a lethal enviroment in WW2. RAF Bomber Command suffered 63,976 casualties out of a force of 125,000, including 55,573 killed. I think 22 VCs were awarded to Bomber Command in WW2.
For comparison, Fighter Command "only" suffered 4905 casualties with 3,690 killed. Coastal command was slsightly higher with 5,866 killed in action.
In terms of casualty rates RAF bomber command was probably the Allied equivalent of the German U-boat arm. That being said all western allied bomber forces suffered heavier than average losses.
Technological advancement, lessons learned from bloodshed, and a lot of anti sub bombs. That’s my best guess.
One anecdote I just want to add is that of the absolute legend Johnny Walker.
At the beginning of the war he was seen as an old and tired officer in the Royal Navy, some what past his prime.
But by the end of the war he was largely responsible for anti submarine taskforces and should be given a lot of credit for the maneuvers used.
Empire of the deep (a brilliant read) devotes a lot of content to him and I'd strongly recommend looking him up.
He often goes unmentioned, unremembered and is also passed off as unremarkable. But my guy spent his war playing mad lad British tunes over the loudspeakers as he rammed subs.
What a legend!
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_John_Walker
In the periode of October 1942 - March 1943, it looked as if the Allies were going to lose the battle of the Atlantic. One British officer at the Western Approaches HQ in Liverpool said in january 1943: "We have lost the war. We have enough fuel for the whole country, for two weeks. We are staring defeat in the face."
Obviously, he was mistaken…
@@peterwebb8732 Fortunately for us....
Yeah, that seems false.. the 2nd happy time was several months before. Even then oil tankers from the US were fast enough to travel on thier own. Not to mention US oil workers had nearly 80 well drilled in England by that point.
Admiral King's daughter said he was a most even tempered man "he was always in a rage".
It’s often overshadowed, overlooked, or ignored. But the Battle of the Atlantic was the longest battle fought in the war. It may not have been fought with grand armies, but rather fought with intelligence agencies, navies, merchant vessels, and aerial craft. The Battle of the Atlantic secured the Allied victory by allowing them to be able to land supplies. Godspeed to those who perished. Requiescant in pace in aquis Atlantici.
And to Historgraph, a very well made video. Superbly detailed and designed. Godspeed to you.
I heard that the one service that received the biggest casualties were the U-Boat service.
This was an excellent synopsis of the war in the Atlantic.
Except he missed the fact most convoy protection was done by the Royal Canadian Navy.
I had the privilege several years ago of serving a massive dinner for some of the crew members on those merchant ships. I hated the job because of the snooty people we usually served, but that was a night where I thought everything needed to be perfect for them.
I heard that one battle that worried Churchill the most just happened to the Battle of the Atlantic.
I fished a couple of liberty ships off the coast of Florida. Some were sunk in sight of land
Good video. My father in law joined the Navy on 12/8/41 at 16. By early 1942 he was a torpedo man in the destroyer escort fleet, doing convoy duty in the North Atlantic. He also made 37 trips through the Panama Canal seeing Naval combat in both the Atlantic & Pacific theaters. I was fortunate enough to hear some of these stories first hand, when he realized that I too am a Navy vet. Not only did I hear his but I also hear some of my brothers father in law (USMC WWII). I will never forget those men or their stories, we miss you Brownie & Norm. Thanks to all now serving, Including or British allies, those who have, and those who will in the future. FLY NAVY!!!
US Navy #1
Q: How were the U-boats beaten?
A: Alan Turing and Co. (Bletchley Park).
I hate how all history of WWII portray the United States as the end all and be all. The Royal Canadian Navy did most of the work.
I didn't know there were any other countries. Just the 50 states, some territories, and regions currently in negotiations to become territories.
Yes, interesting figures, but it would have been nice and more interesting to hear about convoy battle tactics
Nice
This was excellent. Particularly interesting the bit about the convoys benefiting the Soviets too, which one doesn't often realize. (Only thing I was hoping to see was a shot of a PBY-5A.) Thank you for this.
Riddle me this, if the ultimate destination for much of the goods funneled through the Atlantic was the USSR, why were these not transported via Alaska? Even with Manchuria in war, there was still plenty of room north for safe passage.
Frozen ocean and ice bergs
Because logistics.
Riddle me this:
How are you going to bring millions of tons of supplies through mountainous terrain, virtually no roads or mud roads at best, and freezing temperatures and terrible weather.
And that's not even Siberia. Which is that but worse, and is about 50x larger than Alaska.
Remember this when hearing WW2. This isn't hoi4, you can't do the things you do in that game in real life.
Think my comment got hidden so I'll repost.
Basically, they do, but since the ships had to be inspected by the japanese, and thus had to be Soviet flagged and without war materiel, it was of less importance.
Besides, it only somewhat makes sense for the western states, because the Pacific and Siberia are really big. Search for Pacific Route.
It probability did not make sense logistically or tactically. To get from Vladivostok to Moscow, it would take a week on the train (using the infrastructure of today), and that without any interruptions and damage caused by the war. So it would take at least 2 weeks to have the supplies even close to the front. Whereas the train journey from Murmansk to Moscow is 1.5 days today (so closer to 3 or 4 depending on how bombed out the railway was)
This is also ignoring that most of Russia's major ports in that part of the world are in close vicinity to Japan, which would slow the supplies again.
It also prevents the use of the Royal Navy (RN). The RN had undisputed control of the surfaces around GB and the Atlantic. The RN was based out of Scapa Flow at the time, which is extremely close to all the shipping lanes and ensured that any major german surface threat would not be left alone for long, whilst being a great logistical hub for any allied vessels.
We're need to address that the US-UK Lend lease programme saw thousands of merchant ships cross the pond anyway, which had the infrastructure and organisation to defend again U-boats, which the RN and RAF was more experienced in doing
Overall, it made more logistical and tactical sense to to via the UK and not Alaska
Come on mate, doesn't take that much brains to figure this one out does it?
Great video!
Bro why did you gloss over Canada's part within the Atlantic so much aside from one mention of it being 1 of the 3 allied navies fighting there. I mean Canada's biggest contribution to the war which is VERY OVERLOOKED is it's contribution of military supplies and food as well as training to the common wealth and allies. Heck even Churchill called Canada the aerodrome of democracy. Canada produced nearly 900,000 trucks only beaten by the USA in WW2 in that regard. Canada also created 50,000 tanks, 40,000 anti aircraft naval gun, and 1.7 million small arms which a large chunk of went to the Soviet Union. Please could you at least when talking about Canada in this topic at least acknowledge us considering how much we contributed in this sense.
@@obvious-troll voting, everything is predetermined and don’t tell me you don’t suspect that to be the case, look at our nations.
To be fair, this is just a 10 minute video on how the allies won the battle of Atlantic. Understandable to some being upset for Canada's role being forgotten that includes me but adding Canadian contribution during the battle of Atlantic would be better off in a separate video because like you said Canada's contribution and role is actually huge and crucial to the war effort and should never be forgotten.
A good source for Canada's role is "Battle of the Atlantic Gauntlet to Victory" by Ted Barris. Enough of ignoring Canada's contribution.
If any comfort, my grandad sailed on T-2 tankers from spring ‘42 to ‘46. The standout from Bayonne after loading was terrifying. Reaching Halifax, they came under Royal Canadian Navy escort and he always maintained the skills of those Canadian escorts was why he survived the war.
Who?
1917 At first, the British Admiralty failed to respond effectively to the German offensive. Despite the proven success of troop convoys earlier in the war, the Channel convoys between England and France, and the Dutch, French, and Scandinavian convoys in the North Sea, they initially refused to consider widespread convoying or escorting. Convoying imposed severe delays on shipping, and was believed to be counterproductive, amounting to a loss of carrying capacity greater than the loss inflicted by the U-boats. It was disliked by both merchant and naval captains, and derided as a defensive measure. It was not until 27 April that the Admiralty endorsed the convoy system, the first convoy sailing from Gibraltar on 10 May.[40]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-boat_campaign#Allied_response
2:18: FDR never ordered King to institute a convoy system. It took 6 months to put together suitable escort ships and crews. When the Navy had the resources, they began escorted convoys.
The argument the sources I read made was that the navy *did* have suitable resources, but that King prioritised destroyers for the pacific theatre at a time when they were not as badly needed as in the atlantic
King was the head of the US Navy. Should he really have needed a politician's help, when the wisdom of convoys had been clearly demonstrated late in WW1 and in the first part of WW2?
The US Navy certainly did have the resourses. Look at the Order of Battle of the US Atlantic Fleet in January, 1942. In particular, look at the number of destroyers.
Wow ignored canada did you in the Battle of the Atlantic?
3:53 Canada is mentioned right there mate. Did you watch the video first?
@@obvious-troll Mentioned? You call saying 3 navies were involved "mentioned" Canada was integral to victory in the battle. By the end of the war, Canada had the 4th largest navy in the world, almost all of it involved in convoy escort duties. Halifax and St. John's were the western termini of the convoys until the U.S. got their shit together.
@@obvious-troll Pff! A MENTION..!? Not by name, he didn't. "Three allied navies...". And in the first minute he referred to the "American and Royal Navies". Bullsh!t. Canada was a full member of that battle! How many good Canadian boys went to the bottom of the sea having given their all?
Naw, but we're used to it. The film "The Longest Day" mentions Juno Beach briefly as a subtitle before switching back to the "real" action among the US and Brits. We had one of the 5 beaches, and not a single Canadian character in the film. Not even a mention by name in a sh!tty YT doc like this one. Just a blue naval ensign which nobody today can recognize.
@@Great_Sandwich Calm down ffs.
Its called the Royal Canadian Navy. Its a Royal Navy but Canadian. There is nothing wrong with what OP said.
Whats wrong with using the Canadian ensign? Thats like not using the Reichskriegsflagge to represent the Kriegsmarine in WW2. He shouldnt dumb the content down for the audience
@@obvious-troll We weren't the Royal Navy, genius. We were independent of GB. Is it correct to call the Australians or Kiwis "British"?
Admiral King has been faulted for not having merchant ships in convoys at the beginning of WW2. He said that sinking ships in coastal convoys at the time would be like shooting shooting 🔫 fish in a barrel. This was because the USA lacked escort ships and aircraft to defend them adequately. The US was arming civilian ships and aircraft 2:10 o fill this gap! Here are the reasons were that FDR had used, given, sold, and lent the British patrol aircraft including 12 B 17s, of which the US Army had at the time only 24, medium bombers, fighters, and escort ships (50 destroyers) to protect them. Another reason was that since the destruction of the American battleship fleet in Pearl Harbor, King put stopping the Japanese military expansion in the Pacific, his immediate priority. King needed destroyers to protect his remaining capital ships from subs
I wish I knew who started this smear on a great man's reputation and ĥow it started. King knew the value of convoys because the US had used convoys in WW1. Those stupid Yanks must have forgotten.
And the Americans were too prideful to take British advice to do convoys early.
It was more Ernest King's anglophobia tbh
@@dukeford8893 Oooopsy! If they didn't have enough ships; why then mention the fact that one of those larger North Atlantic convoys had only ONE escort ship but still convoyed. Why also mention that American naval ships patrolling the coastline were still using no radio discipline at all? Pfisht! The U.S. had as many ships available to them as did the Commonwealth navies when they commenced convoy escorting. Lame excuses aren't reasons for the apparent rampant stupidity.
King and the Atlantic Fleet were running convoys a year before Pearl Harbor. With the Brits and the Canadians. The advise he rejected was operating UNESCORTED convoys.
@@obvious-troll A myth.
I was stationed on aWWII destroyer from 1968-1971 but recently there is a good movie GREYHOUND that shows the battle in the Atlantic Ocean and destroyers were single mount and more able to change directions than my double mount guns on my destroyer that was used at longer distance targets
First minute: "American and Royal Navy..."
NO MENTION OF CANADA'S ROLE. That's when I bailed out of this poorly researched doc.
Ridiculous comment. Listen to it again - "American and Royal Navies" - its plural for a reason.
And not only that, there is literally a canadian flag and visual on screen at that same moment- it could not be clearer
@@historigraph thank you, so many people fail to watch videos first and just rage comment instantly
@@historigraph "Royal Navies"..!? What the hell does that mean to anyone!? WE WEREN'T PART OF THE ROYAL NAVY, "historian"! We were in the Royal CANADIAN Navy, and full members of that battle. Do you really think you can save face by mentioning a blue Canadian naval ensign that you display for a few brief seconds? Who today would even recognize that? You made a "documentary" without mentioning one of the three full participants on the Allied side. Poorly done on your part. Do better next time.
@@obvious-troll Read the comments, troll. Say, maybe next time they can do one on the Gallipoli campaign and refer to the Aussies as being one of the British armies.
@@Great_Sandwich "We were in the Royal CANADIAN Navy"
Which is a Royal Navy. Whats the point of this comment again?
You mention American and Royal navy. What about the Royal Canadian Navy? The Battle of the Atlantic was in large part was won by the efforts of the Canadians. They had their own navy and many Canadians lost their lives fighting this battle.
My grandfather was on convoy duty in the Atlantic. One night 6 ships were sunk around his!!! My grandmother told me that when he came home he would have night terrors and she would have to change the sheets nightly because he would sweat so bad at night. Their both long since passed away but seeing this made me think of them. Miss them both.😢
2,000 Men and 50,000 tonnes of Steel
And upon the North Atlantic
Lies the silence of the sea
And on the quietest night in the darkest hour
The Kriegsmarine appear
Above the surface it seems quiet and calm
Deep down below the wolfpack lurks
Admiral King was an anglophobe, if the Brits were in favor of it he wouldn't be.
Churchill said after the war that the battle of the North Atlantic was what concerned him most through out the course of the conflict
which animal do you think would pee?
They failed to adapt quick enough and paid the ultimate price. Chosing flak guns over diving? Hard pass. A U-boat rarely won that fight. Just get the hell under. A submarine is without a doubt thee worst AA platform one could use. There is a reason other sub forces never trained for that as a first option, only if diving wasn't an option. That said, our boats could detect an aircraft beyond the horizon and dive before it ever got to the subs position. That is far more survivable than trying to shoot it out. Just finished Iron Coffins(usually read on Pacific and Mediterranean) and so many U-boats fell to duels with aircraft. Radar detectors that didn't work often caused the U-boats to get caught with their pants down more often than not. Especially at night. At first the Germans didn't have enough U-boats and then when they had enough it wasn't enough at all. The irony.
Another great video! Well done! Perfect as always, keep up the great work!
Regarding Adm. King, Eisenhower wrote in his diary that one way to win the war would be to find someone to shoot him (King). Or something similar.
Eisenhower changed his tune throughout the war. Ernie King was a big Ike supporter.
Imagine having higher casualties rate than kamikaze units 💀
My dad was in the Canadian Merchant Navy, the Germans sunk the Newfoundland ferry in oct 41, the old man said it took Halifax command 2 weeks to send a destroyer to chase them out of the area.
At low tide in Louisbourg NS you can see the large concrete blocks that held the sub nets down in the mouth of the harbour.
2 things killed the German U boats- surface running, and the breaking of the enigma machine, one thing that would have went a long way to prolonging the campaign, ..the Snorkel.
I’d love another in-depth covering of a land battle like you did with Narvik for example!
The mustach man made a mistake prioritizing surface ships while neglecting uboats. The materials used for sharnhorst and bismarck class battleships, and hipper class heavy cruisers would have been far more useful invested in Uboat production.
I heartily recommend: ‘The Fighting Captain’ - about Frederick Walker RN - whose ship (HMS STARLING) sank 14 U-boats.
My father was a submariner in the Koninklijke Marine, Dutch Royal Navy , tought me that even in war to respect your enemy.
my heart goes out to all who lost family or friends in this terrible war..
Let's not forget that it would take 12-21 months to build a U-boat vs an average of around 30 *days* to build a Liberty Ship plus the crew training requirements for the Liberty Ships would be less... In a war of attrition, this makes a big difference...
King, " I'm not going to take advice from them damned limeys" so for over a year ships exploded and men died.
Bad time to be a merchant seaman too.
It wasn't like that, and it wasn't that simple.
The Subs came out of Norway. I will never understand why we did not occupy Norway or at least destroy the sub bases there.
@kevinstreeter6943: That was after D-Day when the allies had captured most of the French ports that the Germans had been using. Their U-Boats were transferred to Bergen (Norway) but by that time they could only operate (mostly) in British coastal waters as the Atlantic had been secured.
Very well done, and great detail. There are some points I would like to add. First, the US 10th Fleet was a major contributing factor, despite have no ships. It was an array of radio direction finders spread from Greenland to South America that allowed the allies to track the uboats by their radio communications with their command.
Also, another factor in the early high shipping losses was the US failure to black out coastal cities. U-boats literally used the city lights in the background to target merchant ships.
And do not take these points as criticisms at all. Any video can get bogged down with details, I only mention those because so few know about either.
Can we appreciate the industrail might of the US of putting aircraft carriers in the Atlantic just to hunt submarines? While at the same time pumping out carriers for the Pacific War, its main theaters for carriers.
I think they were mostly british carriers
So many salty morons in these comments saying “but the Canadian navy”, mf he literally always highlights Canada, UK and US on the map as the allies, meaning it is always acknowledged of the Canadian navy. You guys are just salty because he’s not glorifying Canada alone constantly with exaggerated lies. Why can’t we just accept the allies were powerful together and that the war was impossible without the contribution of all.