U-Boats Offshore by Edwin P. Hoyt

Author:Edwin P. Hoyt [Hoyt, Edwin P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-07-10T19:58:55+00:00

A MATTER OF INFORMATION

The daylight or half-convoy system seemed to have solved all the problems of defense along the Eastern Sea Frontier, and some of the defenders began to congratulate themselves on having eliminated the U-boat menace. The number of sinkings was down, but Naval Intelligence knew that the real reason was Doenitz’s dispatch of most of the U-boats to the Caribbean and Florida waters.

The result was an unreal quiet in the north. On May 30, a large convoy, headed south from New York to Delaware, was protected from harm by her escorts but by only one airship, ZNP-K-7. But all day long, the airship floated over the convoy and saw nothing at all, and that evening, when the ships arrived off Overfalls lightship at dusk, they met a northbound convoy whose experience had been almost precisely the same.

The two convoys stopped here for the night. They waited at the lightship for pilots to come out and take them into the safe inshore waters.

They waited, and they waited. Thirty ships lay drifting about, barely keeping way, in danger of collision, in danger of submarine attack beyond the ability of the escorts to protect them, while one single small launch went scurrying about, carrying pilots to one ship after another.

The convoy captains complained about the danger, but eight days later, the situation was as bad as ever. H.M.S. Arctic Explorer (one of the trawlers) was escorting a convoy up the coast, and her British captain, wise in the ways of war, saw with dismay his ships stranded just outside a port entrance for three hours, perfect targets for U-boats. He reported the matter to Admiral Andrews, and Andrews chided those involved, but nothing much happened. Andrews had finally gotten enough ships together to make a defense, but he still had to perfect an organization.

One problem was an official overconfidence at the Washington level that distorted the reality of the war at sea. In Washington, on June 10, Secretary Knox gave another of his press conferences, at which he spoke vaguely of the “progress” being made in combating the submarines. Across town, on Capitol Hill, Senator Harry Truman came much closer to the point when he warned the public that the navy did not have enough ships to protect both oceans. And sandwiched between was a United Press report that day that gave the truth, although in a careful, low-key way: “The latest sinking (of two New England fishing vessels) brought to 266 the total of vessels lost in the Western Atlantic area by axis submarine action since mid-January.” There were other tales in the news, all carefully edited, for Winston Churchill’s warnings had finally struck home, and care was being taken not to give information to the enemy about sinkings.

But one result of this program was a curious hiatus, a breakdown in caution on the part of the defenders.

Merchant captains complained that the navy people did not hold presailing conferences to tell the civilians what was expected of them. They also said the navy patrol craft stopped them wherever they pleased, without regard to safety.

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