U-BOAT TACTICS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 253, 25 September 1939, Page 7

U-BOAT TACTICS.

STRAIN ON THE GREY’S

OPERATIONS OF, PATROLS.

(British Official Wireless.)

Received September 25, 11.20 a.m. RUGBY, Sept. 24. Twenty-eight days at sea, and haunted all the time by the knowledge that every man’s hand as well as the sea itself is against you. That is to-day the situation of the German U-boats on the trade routes of the •Atlantic, stated the evening bulletin of the Ministry of Information. Twenty-eight days of ceaseless strain in cramped quarters must tend to sap the morale of the young submarine crews. The available resources of trained German submarine personnel are limited. The strain on the U-boats' crews must have beeri great, for the German submarine warfare has been answered in no uncertain terms by the anti-submarine craft of the Koval i\avy. The moral effect of depth ciiarges on U-boat crews is intensified by the. knowledge from bitter experience that the Royal Navy can detect and hunt them with an efficiency never dreamt of in the last war. It is when a submarine—with the thought of her vital supplies of torpedoes, fuel, food, and fresh water—tries to get home that the vitality of her crew is at its lowest. It is then the U-boat faces its greatest ordeal. Not 'bnly does the . Koyal Navy harass U-boats on their hunting grounds on the ocean trade routes, but it is busily engaged in closing routes to their ‘‘boltholes.” The operations of our patrols make the entrances to the North Sea exceedingly hazardous to enemy submines, while the passage homeward, once in the North Sea, is made more dangerous by our patrolling surface vessels and aircraft.