Ultra Versus U-Boats by Roy Conyers Nesbit

Author:Roy Conyers Nesbit
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783409273
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

The Height of the Battle

The leaders of two of the Allied powers, the USA and Britain, met at Casablanca in Morocco for a conference which began on 13 January 1943, under the code name ‘Arcadia’. These were President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek of China in attendance. The Russian dictator Josef Stalin had been invited but declined. The conference lasted for ten days, with the purpose of formulating a military strategy for the remainder of the war. It was decided that the defeat of Germany must be the main priority and that the ‘unconditional surrender’ of all enemy countries would be demanded. This was a stipulation which Hitler would never accept, and it ensured that the war would continue until the Wehrmacht was completely crushed.

Both Roosevelt and Churchill were fully aware of the major threat posed by U-boats and both were determined to devote all possible resources to their destruction. Their concern partly rested on the knowledge that supplies of fuel oil in Britain had fallen to a dangerously low level. Fears were intensified when news arrived at the beginning of the conference of the fate of Convoy TM1. This consisted of nine tankers from Trinidad, escorted by one destroyer and three corvettes, destined for Gibraltar with supplies for the American forces in North-West Africa. It had had the misfortune to be intercepted on 8 January by a U-boat which sank one tanker and then called a whole group to the attack. The combined U-boats sank six more from this valuable convoy. This was one of the factors which prompted the leaders at Casablanca to make an immediate decision.

The Commander-in-Chief of the RAF’s Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, received instructions from the Air Ministry on 14 January to ‘devastate the whole area in which are located the submarines, their maintenance facilities and the services of power, light, communications, etc, and other resources upon which their operations depend’. These attacks were to take place at night and the order of priority was given as Lorient, St-Nazaire, Brest and La Pallice. Thus the system of ‘area bombing’, which Bomber Command had adopted over cities and towns in the German heartland after the destruction caused by the Luftwaffe in British residential districts, was unexpectedly extended to these four French ports.

Harris responded immediately, making four raids on Lorient with fairly small numbers of bombers before the end of the month, dropping high explosives and showers of incendiaries. The new US Eighth Air Force under the command of General Ira C. Eaker, which was already engaged on attacking U-boat ports in daylight, also received orders to attack the same targets. Eaker sent a small force of heavy bombers, B-17 Fortresses and B-24 Liberators, to Lorient on one occasion during the month. At this early stage in its formation, the Eighth was not equipped with long-range fighters and cover was provided by Spitfires of the RAF’s Fighter Command. In total, 564 bombers from both forces attacked Lorient during January, losing fourteen aircraft in the process.

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