NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 111, 12 May 1945, Page 6

NOTES ON THE WAR

WORST ENEMY

ALLIES AND THE U-BOAT

Last on the list to surrender to the Allies, but first in priority of concern to the Allies, particularly Britain, throughout the war, the worst enemy, the U-boat, is surfacing singly over the wide ocean and narrow seas it threatened to dominate and, meekly enough, making for Allied ports to yield. Thus ends a menace to Britain. Rightly, Hitler regarded it as his most formidable weapon for countering the plans of the maritime Powers, Britain and America, to carry iheir war to the mainland of Europe, and rightly Churchill gave it priority No. 1 in the grand strategy of the Allies. If the U-boat had succeeded—and at times it seemed within sight of success—in cutting Britain's vital sea lines of communication, it might have starved Britain into submission; certainly there would have been no "second front' in Europe. If the sinking of the Athenia on September 4, 1939, was the first hostile act of the Germans against Britain in the war, so the sinking of the Avondale Park, on May 8, 1945 (last Tuesday) is probably the last. Between these dates, covering a period of five years, eight months, the U-boat has never ceased to be a problem, a nuisance at the best, and a most deadly peril at the worst. Even now Allied shipping is still crossing the Atlantic in escorted convoy in case a U-boat "wolf pack" or a lone hunter, still ignorant of the armistice and surrender, should attack. Pacts Not Yet Disclosed. The broad aspects of U-boat warfare and its objects, the isolation and blockade of Britain, and the countermeasures taken by the Allies to 'check and control its activities, were fully discussed in a special article in "The Post's" YE issue on Tuesday, and need not be repeated here. Few factual details are available yet, as the campaign against the U-boat had to be conducted with the utmost secrecy in order not to appHse the enemy headquarters of the successes or failures, the gains and losses, of the U-boat in action. For a time Allied losses in tonnage were announced periodically, but when, with the entry of the United States into the war at the end of 1941, the depredations of the U-boats on American shipping lines in the Caribbean Sea and off the Atlantic Coast rose to dangerous heights, a curtain of "security silence" fell on the scene, and the world was treated only to the references by Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt, and they gave some idea of the' seriousness of the situation in 1942 and 1943. After this the Allies succeeded in gaming a measure of control which, stage by stage, reduced the U-boat to a nuisance rather than a deadly danger. Allies' Heavy Losses. The full extent of the depredations of the U-boat through the years ol war has not yet been revealed, but the losses are believed to have run. into millions of tons and thousands of lives, men of the Navy, men of the Merchant Marine, and men, women, and children among the passengers ot the ships torpedoed. Of long voyages of survivors in open boats there have been many stories, both sad and stirring, displaying human fortitude and endurance to the highest degree. From these accounts the imagination can readily picture the dark and dreadful character of submarine warfare. This warfare was waged more relentlessly and more ruthlessly even thauby the U-boats of the last war. The U-boats themselves were far more deadly in their speed and equipment, and in tne battle of wits between the U-boats and their pursuers human inventiveness reached, perhaps, its highest peak m this war. Unsleeping' Vigilance. But it was probably more by unsleeping vigilance, constantly on tne alert, by quick action and often by self-sacrifice of units to save the larger group of transports than by mere mechanical means that Allied seamen and airmen finally succeeded m keeping the U-boat at a fairly safe distance. It was never, of course, entirely conquered, and. there was always a danger of recrudescence of the menace, when the Germans, by mass production of parts, assembled new fleets, trained new crews, and invented new tactics to baffle their pursuers. But the U-boat, though in a far better position to inflict damage than m the last war, having bases on the Atlantic coast of Europe from the North Cape to the Biscayan shores, of France, against a Britain deprived of the use of the southern and western coasts pt Ireland, never came as near as in 1917-18 to the starvation of Britain and could not' stop the invasion of Europe. Perilous Voyages. The toll of Allied tonnage _ carrying precious war material to Britain, the Mediterranean, and to Russia must have been very great. It was not only the U-boat under the water but landbased aircraft aloft also that did the damage. This was particularly the fact on the Murmansk run to Russia where the greatest losses of the war were probably sustained, certainly the most serious from Russia's need for the precious cargoes. It was the risk of the Murmansk run that put a premium on the use of the Persian Gulf route to Russia, which carried an enormous volume of supplies. The Atlantic from Europe to America, east and west, and from the Arctic, to the Equator, north and south, was more dangerous for periods than ih the last war, but on the whole the Mediterranean saw fewer losses by submarine, though air attack took a tremendous toll. In the Pacific war the Japanese submarine has been a virtual fiasco. It is the Allies who have done the hunting in the China Seas and the Western Pacific, in the Bay of Bengal, and the Indian Ocean near the East Indies, and succeeded in cutting lines of communication where Germany failed. Here, as in the waters of the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea, it is, in the last analysis, the quality of the men who handle them rather than the machines themselves that tells. The Allies and their cause of freedom have nowhere been better served than by the men of the sea and air who put the U-boat in its proper place. -