THE GREAT PATROL

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 248, 17 July 1942, Page 4

THE GREAT PATROL

Occasionally some information is given about the destruction of an individual enemy submarine, as, for instance, when a merchant vessel well-known in New Zealand waters hit one during a combat “some-i where,” and a small Norwegian vessel sent another to the bottom of the Atlantic. But as a matter of policy the losses inflicted on the enemy .in this respect are not mentioned. Silence is an ally in this phase of sea war. It keeps the enemy guessing and it must adversely affect the personnel of enemy craft. An interesting light was thrown on the counter-measures adopted by Great Britain in a brief report published recently. The figures were impressive. The zone constantly under patrol stretches from Iceland to Gibraltar and covers a space of five and one-half million square miles of ocean. Every day aircraft fly over that area in a ceaseless hunt for enemy submarines. Probably they concentrate to some extent on the routes along which they have been .informed Allied shipping is moving, and recently these anti-submarine aircraft completed 50,000,000 miles of flying. That they have not flown in vain is indicated by the report that it is when the enemy craft are on their way to and from their bases “that they are most frequently caught.” And that is only one phase of the Allied activity. Day and night naval units are patrolling and convoying, and a signal from an aircraft finds some naval vessel speedily on the scene. If that 5,500.000 square milqs were the only zone requiring attention it would seem, to the layman, to be big enough, but it is only one of a number, and the Allied sea lanes are very long. These are the services which go on continuously, for the convoys must go through. What they achieve is seldom made known. It consists of adding to the enemy’s list of submarines missing, of making the seas safer, of keeping intact the vital communications between the Allied countries, but when the history of the great patrol comes to be written, it will be a stirring chapter in the record of this struggle.