The Subs Are Still Coming

U.S. bombers from Britain last week raided the German submarine bases at Lorient and St. Nazaire on the Bay of Biscay. At the cost of ten Fortresses and Liberators shot down and several others damaged, they bagged more than 20 Nazi fighters and got "a fair percentage of hits" on the thick-walled concrete pens where submarines refuel and refit for sea.

But there was no jubilation in the announcement of the results. One reason may have been that the ratio of U.S. losses was mounting. Another was that the air phase of the Battle of the Atlantic had turned out to be a slow and difficult process of attrition.

R.A.F. and U.S. raids on the factories and yards where submarines are built have not appreciably reduced the Germans' fleet of 250 to 300 U-boats. (Of these, part are usually at their bases, part en route to or from target areas, about one-third are actually prowling for Allied ships.) The home pens along the coasts of Europe have taken pounding after pounding from the air, yet the submarines still use them.*

A report from Germany said that Hitler had fired his chief of submarine construction, Dr. Walther Neubell. But the reasons testified more to internal troubles in Germany than to the direct effect of air raids: Neubell had quarreled with the Navy and with Labor Boss Fritz Sauckel, complaining that his supply of metals and skilled labor was too low to meet the Navy's demands. If the German Navy was dissatisfied with the rate of submarine construction, Berlin was nevertheless able to claim last week that Nazi subs in 1942 sank 7,586,500 tons of Allied shipping (1,208 vessels). The claim was probably exaggerated, but the submarine was still a foe to be met and defeated at sea.

*A German broadcast last week announced that "blastproof walls" must be erected around all key factories, indicating that this form of protection has been at least partly effective.

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