NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 35, 10 August 1944, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR

ATLANTIC PORTS

U.S. DRIVE AND U-BOATS

The French battle front still dominates the war scene in Europe. The Americans are in and beyond Le Mans between the Orne and the Loire, and the British and Canadians are pounding their way through heavy defence zones south of Caen- towards Falaise, helped by the British flank attack across the Orne at Thury-Harcourt. The U.S. forces in Brittany are closing round the defended ports of St. Malo, Lorient, and Brest, the two iatter important U-boat bases for attacks on Allied shipping in the Bay of Biscay, the Atlantic, and the Channel. There is little fresh news from the Eastern Front and Italy.

An interesting sidelight on a significant aspect of the American Brittany campaign, apt to be overlooked in concentration on land operations further east, is furnished by a naval correspondent, who notes that the swift sweep of American armoured forces across Brittany has effectively cut the back-door approaches to the principal Atlantic operational bases of the German U-boat forces, and no doubt caused great consternation in the councils of Grand-Admiral Doemtz and his staff. The loss of Brest, Lorient. St. Nazaire, and other ports will compel them to write off their Bay of Biscay bases, and the U-boats operating in the Atlantic and further afield will be homeless outside of Norwegian waters and the Baltic and North Sea ports. Factor in Choice of Landing. There can be little doubt that the prospect of an early elimination of the U-boat bases in the Bay of Biscay was a considerable factor in the United Nations' choice of the Normandy coastal area for the great invasion. The defeat and collapse of France in May-June, 1940, was described by Mr Churchill at the time as a "colossal military disaster." It certainly was. It gave the Germans complete control of the French coast in the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay and they quickly turned the considerable facilities of every port to advantage in an intensified campaign against British merchant shipping. Dunkirk and Cherbourg in the Channel and Brest and Lorient in the Bay of Biscay were important French naval bases and St. Nazaire was the principal shipbuilding centre of France. All these ports and a number of others were well equipped with docks and engineering facilities for the maintenance and refit of warships and merchant vessels. The terms of the armistice imposed by Germany upon France put the whole of the Channel and Bay of Biscay ports within the zone, of occupation for the very good reason that they were stategically well placed for naval operations in the Atlantic. Hitherto the U-boats and other commerce raiders had operated from Germany's North Sea and Baltic bases, which involved considerable steaming to and from the areas of active operations. Now Germany was possessed of first-class bases in the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay closely flanking all the west Atlantic approaches _to Britain, and she lost no time in making the fullest use of them. Admiral Doenitz, chief of the U-boat command, established his headquarters in France and quickly organised his rapidlygrowing flotillas for an "all-out" campaign against British and Allied merchant shipping. He was confident— and had good reason to be so—that his U-boats, 'by the overwhelming destruction of shipping, would, this time, quickly gain for Germany the victory that had been denied them in 1917-18. Britain's Greatest Peril.

British and Allied merchant shipping losses increased alarmingly. After June, 1940, they were three to four times greater than previously. They far outstripped Britain's capacity to replace the sunken tonnage. The Nazis were exultant. Their eager expectations were expressed by a leading newspaper, which said: "The development of submarine warfare in both attack and defence is gathering momentum and is now approaching the stage of a final decision. ... It is becoming clearer every day that the war at sea serves the purpose of wearing down and undermining the enemy .. ." Mr. Churchill stated in the House of Commons that the depredations of the U-boats at sea were infinitely more perilous to Britain than all the damage wrought by the German bombing raids. These losses at sea, he said, "cannot continue indefinitely without affecting our war effort and our means of subsistence." On another occasion he rated the Üboat danger as "still the greatest we have to face."

Not only were the Bay of Biscay ports the permanent bases of the Üboat flotillas, but they also accommodated destroyers, E-boats, minesweepers, and patrol craft. It was to and from these ports also that the enemy blockade-runners to the Far East operated, and they were also used by the German ships on the Spanish iron-ore trade. Despite heavy bombing the port of Brest accommodated the' Scharnhorst and Gneisenau for many months. The cruiser Prinz Eugen sheltered there for a long time, and the Bismarck was running for Brest when she was overtaken and destroyed. Advantages to Enemy. The advantages accruing to Germany in her U-boat warfare from her, four years' occupation of the Bay of Biscay cannot be over-estimated. No longer, as in the last war, did the submarines have to work through the Strait of Dover and the English Channel or round the north of Scotland oh every patrol. Once they were in the Atlantic, they were able to use the permanent first-class bases in the Bay of Biscay, which saved them much time and increased their offensive potential. Germany's U-boat operations have been carried on on the greatest possible scale, greatly helped by the possession of Atlantic bases. They have involved great losses of shipping and an immense effort to combat them. During the last twelve months that effort has been rewarded by a large measure of success, due to many factors. In recent months the United Nations' anti-submarine forces have destroyed more U-boats than the number of merchant ships sunk. In 1943 U-boats sank but 40 per cent, of the merchant tonnage that they sank in 1942. „ .„

The denial to the enemy of the Bay of Biscay bases will be a knockout blow to his U-boats. Conversely, the Allied occupation of these ports will solve many of the problems of supply of the invasion forces. .