VICTORY OVER U-BOATS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25239, 31 May 1943, Page 3

VICTORY OVER U-BOATS

THE ATLANTIC SAFER EFFICIENCY OF DEVICES iLONDON, May 28. The Allies have won a great victory against the U-boats in the vital Battle of the Atlantic in recent weeks. More Allied ships crossed the Atlantic this month than in any other equivalent period of the war, and more }enemy submarines have been destroyed. The Admiralty’s policy hitherto has allowed only generalised statements, but it can now be stated that the Axis submarines have suffered a defeat from which they and the German morale will find it hard to recover. The naval writer of the Russian newspaper Red Fleet expresses the opinion that the turning point has been reached in the Battle of the Atlantic. The German and Italian submarines, in spite of all efforts, can no longer offer an attacking force commensurate with the growing volume of Allied shipping and the growing efficiency of the antisubmarine devices. The enemy, to achieve telling results under these new conditions, must intensify his blows against Allied shipping in the same measure as its volume grows. He has little chance of doing this. The Germans cannot keep pace with Allied building, and the blows the AngloAmerican air forces are dealing to the German shipyards and aircraft factories have further reduced Germany’s offensive power. The score board for U-boat destruction in the last four weeks shows that the Atlantic menace will be eliminated within four to six months, declared Mr James Forrestal, Under-secretary of the American Navy, when christening six destroyer escorts at Philadelphia. Mr Forrestal revealed that half the fighting ships completed in May will be such vessels, and next year this will become the largest single class of warships in the American Navy. Escort vessels are built in half the time and for half thd cost of destroyers, and are designed for the single purpose of smashing the submarine blockade. The dogged British and American efforts to destroy the U-boats by using new defensive devices and by increasing the naval and air escorts may succeed temporarily in keeping down the sinkings or even baffling the U-boats for a time, but they cannot affect the total result, said a German naval spokesman, Lieutenant-commander Rudolf Krohne. The German leadersffiad deliberately concentrated on the U-boat warfare, and U-boat attacks were now being carried out throughout the vastness of the oceans according to a single plan,