Black May (66 page)

24
. David K. Brown, “Atlantic Escorts, 1939–45,” in Howarth and Law,
Battle of the Atlantic,
p. 462.

25
. Willem Hackmann,
Seek & Strike: Sonar, Anti-submarine Warfare and the Royal Navy 1914–54
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1984), p. 281 and n.46. For asdic technology the writer has relied on this volume throughout. See pp. 216, 279, 281, 283, 296, 337, and 279–280 on the “Q Attachment” for holding contact with deep-diving boats. See Hessler,
U-Boat War,
Vol. II, p. 47.

26
. PRO, ADM 186/808, “Interrogation of U-Boat Survivors, Cumulative Edition,” June 1944, Chapter IX, “Diving,” f. 299.

27
. Middlebrook,
Convoy,
p. 69; Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet, K.B.E., C.B., D.S.O., D.S.C.,
Electronics and Sea Power
(New York: Stein and Day, 1975), p. 229; Hackmann,
Seek & Strike,
p. 280 and n.44.

28
. PRO, ADM 186/808, “Interrogation of U-Boat Survivors,” f. 295; Hackmann,
Seek
&
Strike,
p. 321.

29
. Beesly,
Special Intelligence,
pp. 20–21, 116; Kahn,
Seizing the Enigma,
pp. 144–145.

30
. NARA, RG 457, SRH 149, Lawrence F. Safford, “A Brief History of Communications Intelligence in the United States, March 1952; SRH 305, Safford, “History of Radio Intelligence: The Undeclared War,” November 1943; War Diary, Eastern Sea Frontier, July 1942, p. 30.

31
. NARA, RG 38, Box 14, Collection of Memoranda on Operations of SIS, Intercept Activities and Dissemination, 1942–45, “Report of Technical Mission to England,” 11 April 1941.

32
.
Kathleen Broome Williams, Secret Weapon: U.S. High-Frequency Direction Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996), passim; Rohwer, Convoy Battles, p. 21.

33
. Jürgen Rohwer states that by spring 1943
B-Dienst
had amassed “clear proof” that Allied surface escorts carried HF/DF (
Kurzwellenpeilerj.
He reproduces
X-B-Bericht
(cryptographic service report) No. 16/43, dated 22 April 1943, to this effect. Distribution of the proof included Dönitz’s Operational and Signals staffs, where apparently it was ignored. From a house near Algeciras in Spain, German photographers of British warships anchored in the roads of Gibraltar recorded the six-sided basket or birdcagelike Adcock HF/DF antennas on the aftermasts of certain ships, but these were interpreted by analysts as being connected to radar. Furthermore, since June 1942, when U
-94
(Obit. z.S. Otto Ites) reported being depth-charged after making a HF transmission, Commanders had frequently voiced their suspicions about the matter. Rohwer,
Convoy Battles
, pp. 199–200 and photographs between pp. 192–193. Axel Niestlé states that the Kriegsmarine became aware of shipborne HF/DF in June 1944; “German Technical and Electronic Development,” in Howarth and Law, eds.,
Battle of the Atlantic,
p. 438.

34
. NARA, Action Report, Box 855, Serial 026, USS
Bogue
(CVE-9), Report of Operations of Hunter-Killer Group built around U.S.S.
Bogue
furnishing air cover for Convoy ON-184 from Iceland area to Argentia area; from Commander, Sixth Escort Group, to Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches, 29 May, p. 3.

35
.
Hezlet, Electronics, p. 189.

36
. Hessler,
U-Boat War,
Vol. II, p. 75; Charles M. Sternhell and Alan M. Thorndike,
Antisubmarine Warfare in World War II,
Report No. 51 of the Operations Evaluation Group (Washington, D.C.: Navy Department, 1946), p. 41; Syrett,
Defeat of the German U-Boats,
p. 12.

37
. PRO, ADM 237/113, Convoy ONS.5, Appendix G, HF/DF Report, H.M.S.
Duncan
24/4/43–515/43; HF/DF Report H.M.S.
Tay,
24/4/43–7/5/43.

38
. Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Gretton, K.C.B., D.S.O., O.B.E., D.S.C.,
Convoy Escort Commander
(London: Cassell & Company Ltd., 1964), p. 157.

39
. NARA, KTB-BdU, “Final Survey of Convoy No. 41 [SC.130],” 20 May 1943.

40
.
Rohwer, Convoy Battles, p. 198.

41
. Ibid., pp. 49, 196–197. Rohwer’s findings, based on studies of sea and air escort action reports, conflict with those represented in Table 10.4, p. 239 in Hackmann,
Seek & Strike,
where reliance is on the Admiralty’s Monthly Anti-Submarine Reports.

42
.
Robert Buderi, The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), chap. 4, “A Line in the Ether,” pp. 77–97.

43
. P. M. S. Blackett,
Studies of War: Nuclear and Conventional
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), p. 221.

44
. James Phinney Baxter III,
Scientists Against Time
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), p. 142. Besides the magnetron, the Tizard mission brought new weapons hardware and specifications; see Ronald W. Clark,
The Rise of the Boffins
(London: Phoenix House, Ltd., 1962), pp. 138–139.

45
. PRO, AIR 41/47, Captain D. V. Peyton Ward, R.N., “The R.A.F. in Maritime War” [typescript], Vol. Ill, ff. 485, 534; Clay Blair,
Hitlers U-Boat War: The Hunters 1939–1942
(New York: Random House, 1996), p. 319; Alfred Price,
Aircraft versus Submarine: The Evolution of the Anti-Submarine Aircraft, 1912 to 1980
(London: Jane’s Publishing Company, Ltd., 1980), p. 146. Also see
Terraine,
U-Boat Wars,
pp. 428–429. In Bomber Command’s favor, it does appear that bombing of U-boat yards did prevent widespread introduction of the U-boat Type XXI, which could have altered the course of the war at sea in 1945.

46
. Price,
Aircraft versus Submarine
, pp. 54–58, 78; Derek Howse,
Radar at Sea: The Royal Navy in World War 2
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), passim.

47
. Winston S. Churchill,
The Grand Alliance,
vol. 6 of
The Second World War
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950), p. 127.

C
HAPTER 3

1
. NARA, Box 108, CINCLANT, King to CNO Harold R. Stark, U.S.S.
Augusta,
Flagship, undated but after 14 December referred to in the message and before 30 December, when King left
Augusta
to become Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet (COMINCH).

2
. The story of Drumbeat is given in Gannon,
Operation Drumbeat.
The messages referred to are described on pp. 211–212, and one message, together with U.S. Navy Daily Situation Maps, is reproduced between pp. 330 and 331. The documents and maps confirming U.S. Navy receipt of Winn’s updated information, as well as the messages themselves, are readily accessible in: PRO, ADM 223/103, “F” Series, Admiralty Signal Messages, October 1941-February 1942, DEFE-3 [hereafter cited PRO, DEFE-3], 2 and 10 January 1942; NARA, RG 457, National Security Agency, “German Navy/U-Boat Messages Translations and Summaries,” Box 7, SRGN 5514–6196, 9 January [German Time] 1942; NARA, SRMN-033 (Part I), COMINCH File of Messages on U-Boat Estimates and Situation Reports, October 1941-September 1942, Naval Message 121716, 12 January 1942; NARA [from the Operational Archives, Naval Historical Center], U.S. Navy Daily Situation Maps, 12–15 January 1942.

3
.
Montgomery C. Meigs, Slide Rules and Submarines: American Scientists and Subsurface Warfare in World War II (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1990), pp. 46–51, 92.

4
. Blair contends that this writer’s criticism of King for sending or holding his destroyers for other missions instead is not justified, because King sent or held his destroyers for other missions instead(!);
U-Boat War,
pp. 465–466. The point is that ASW was
the
mission of the moment. The Royal Navy, in the same circumstance, one is confident, would have sent out every ship
available—“More of the Dunkirk spirit, ‘throw in everything you have,’ “ Samuel Eliot Morison wrote in another context—if only to
force the U-boats down and out of the hunt.
This was one of the many lessons the British had learned that King and his subordinates chose not to heed. U
—123
was sitting on the surface off Coney Island while seven U.S. destroyers stood inert in New York Harbor. Had the destroyers fulfilled the primary mission for which King had assembled them, the U.S. Navy might well have achieved a
Paukenschlag
in reverse, and possibly have saved the massive expenditure of flesh and steel it went on to lose, as shown below. The mission given most of the destroyers instead was escort of American troopships to Iceland and Northern Ireland. In a new book, British historian Peter Padfield rightfully questions why in early 1942
that
was the emergency, Peter Padfield,
War Beneath the Sea: Submarine Conflict 1939–1945
(London:
BCA,
1995), p. 532,
n.61.
See Gannon,
Drumbeat,
pp. 238–240, 412–414.

5
. NARA, KTB-BdU, 17 January 1942.

6
. Quoted in Roskill,
War at Sea,
Vol. II, p. 99.

7
. Dönitz,
Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1959), p. 219; Beesly,
Special Intelligence,
p. 120. Of its 700 tons of fuel, a U-tanker would have to reserve about 100 for its own operations. The replenishment contacts of each U-tanker during the war are given in Rössler,
U-Boat,
pp. 166–167. The boats’ armament was limited to one 37mm gun and two 20mm anti-aircraft guns. Ungainly and slow to dive, none of the tanker Types XIV and XV survived the war.

8
. NARA [from the Naval Historical Center], War Diary, Eastern Sea Frontier [hereafter ESF], March 1942, p. 231. The point is one that has been missed by some naval writers who think that after March 1942 the Army continued to share this responsibility with the Navy.

9
. NARA, ESF, November 1943, pp. 31–32.

10
. Ibid., pp. 32, 37, 38;
Miami Herald,
8 July 1942.

11
. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King,
U.S. Navy at War 1941–1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy
(Washington, D.C.: United States Navy Department, 1946), p. 80.

12
. Gannon,
Drumbeat,
pp. 382–384.

13
. Roskill,
War at Sea,
Vol. II, p. 97; Robert William Love, Jr., “Ernest Joseph King, 26 March 1942–15 December 1945,” in Love, ed.,
The Chiefs of Naval Operations
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980), p. 154.

14
. Terraine,
U-Boat Wars,
pp. 92, 413; Rear Admiral William Sowden Sims, U.S.N.,
The Victory at Sea
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page and
Company, 1921), chap. 3, “The Adoption of the Convoy,” pp. 88–117.

15
. Beesly,
Special Intelligence
, pp. 113–115; and interview with Beesly, Lymington, England, 9 July 1986.

16
. Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill,
Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1952), p. 457. Sir John Slessor argues that King erred even in his conversion statement—“proved wrong … as much by King’s carriers in mid-Atlantic as by Coastal Command in the Bay [of Biscay].”
The Central Blue: The Autobiography of Sir John Slessor, Marshal of the RAF
(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1957), p. 492.

17
. George C. Marshall Research Library, Lexington, Virginia, Marshall Papers, Box 73, Folder 12, “King, Ernest J. 1942 May-1942 August,” Marshall to King, 19 June 1942.

18
. Gerhard L. Weinberg,
A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 378. The argument has been made by U.S. Navy historians Dean C. Allard and Robert W. Love, Jr., and repeated in Blair,
U-Boat War
(p. 692), that the defeat on the American littoral was offset by the “naval victory” achieved by USN warships in safely transporting American troops across the Atlantic to Iceland, Northern Ireland, and the British Isles during January-August 1942. The U.S. Navy’s escort of troopships was successful throughout the war, and certainly deserves commendation. But the argument of offsetting victory assumes that because the Navy performed properly in one responsibility it need not be held accountable in another. That principle was not accepted in naval doctrine at the time. Furthermore, it should be noted that during the period cited, the U-boat presence in the transatlantic transport lanes was greatly diminished (Blair himself says that “all available Atlantic submarines including medium-range Type VIIs” were sent to the American coastal campaign; p. 693) and only three small U-boat packs (
Hecbt
in May,
Endrass
in June, and
Wolf ‘in
July) could be formed. “Naval victories” are usually won against an enemy at his strength. The argument also assumes that King was “forced to choose” between escorting troopships and escorting merchant ships, Blair,
U-Boat War,
p. 693. That was a false choice in mid-January, when the sailing of a troopship convoy could easily have been delayed in order to take care of
Paukenschlag’s
appearance, as such troopship movements were frequently delayed thereafter in Operation Bolero. Blair worries about the possible “wrath of the American Army” (p. 466), should the troopships be delayed; but who, knowing anything about him, seriously believes that the gun-metal eyes of Ernest J. King ever blinked at the emotions of the Army? (Blair states that troopship escorts were, after all,
passing through Canadian waters, “where there were by far the greatest number of Drumbeat boats”; p. 466. There were two Drumbeat boats in Canadian waters at the time, U-/09 and U
-130;
there were three off New York to Hat-teras,
U-123, U-66,
and U
-124)
It was a false choice later as well, when other available destroyers, together with multiple small craft, made convoying possible and effective, as demonstrated woefully late in May.