Incurable Admiral

BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC (see Cover)

The battle of the Atlantic last week narrowed toward a showdown. The Allies announced a plan for a transatlantic air umbrella to protect convoys "over every mile of the route from North America to Europe." Germany spoke of a "totality of U-boat warfare, which means that German U-boat warfare is equivalent to German naval warfare as a whole."

For weeks the Nazis had been forecasting an intensified U-boat offensive, a climactic effort to throttle the Allies' offensive plans in Europe. Submarines were indeed abroad in herds, but up to this week the offensive had not attained the promised scale. Now, or never, was the time for the effort. If Germany won, an Allied second front in Europe would be indefinitely postponed. If she failed --and her time was running out -- the first great breach in the Atlantic Wall of Hit ler's Fortress Europe would be accomplished.

The outlook, after more than three and a half years of war, was still not good for the Allies. Germany was building subs faster than they were being sunk; Allied shipbuilding was just beginning to hold its own. The balance was close, and there were factors weighing heavily in Nazi Germany's favor. What Adolf Hitler could not do by land to stop the Allies' march toward Europe's borders, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, CINC of the German Navy, was working hard to do by sea in the Atlantic moat where the first defense of Europe lay.

The Weapon. Grand Admiral Doenitz had not been CINC for long. Only three months ago he replaced Erich Raeder as the head of Hitler's Navy, and the shift in command was a tip-off on the Nazis' future strategy. For Karl Doenitz was a submariner from away back. A submariner he remained, in personal command of the U-boat fleet.

Sooner than most, he had recognized that Germany's hope on the high seas, in this war as in the last, lay in the slender, lonely little craft effectively typed "torpedo carriers." When he took the supreme command, he pledged: "The entire German Navy will henceforth be put into the service of inexorable U-boat warfare." From his headquarters somewhere in Axis Europe last week, Doenitz wielded a potent weapon:

> Some 400-500 U-boats operating on a constant schedule;

> Some 150 of them out on the hunting grounds simultaneously; one-sixth of them on the way to and from their bases; one-half of them in port refitting or undergoing repairs;

> Between 20 and 30 new U-boats each month -- and this estimate may be low --being produced in German factories and assembled at bases along the German coast (see map).

Most of these submarines were in the 740-ton class or over, carried 4.1-inch guns, anti-aircraft guns and six 21-inch torpedo tubes. Fueled and armed, they could cruise up to 15,000 miles for six to eight weeks, had enough torpedoes to sink at least half a dozen ships, ammunition for their deck guns to take care of more if they found stragglers who could be sent to the bottom by shell fire.

Although his first interest and his chief strength was in submarines, Grand Admiral Doenitz also had a surface fleet which he might use to lend his spring campaign additional punch: the 40,000-plus-ton battleship Tirpitz, the 26,000-ton Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, a screen of lighter ships including two pocket battleships, the Admiral Scheer and Luetzow, two 10,000-ton cruisers of the heavily armed Admiral Hipper class, and perhaps ten destroyers.

These ships had yet to go into concerted action. Allied observers thought it possible that they might be used for a carefully coordinated air-surface-submarine campaign against the convoy lanes, or otherwise be held in readiness to strike directly at an Allied invasion armada.

They were a powerful trump in Doenitz' hand; for, even when inactive, they immobilized the greater part of Britain's Home Fleet, plus some U.S. vessels which could have been in action elsewhere.

The Weapon's Master. After World War I ended, Doenitz made himself a specialist in submarine warfare. By 1930, he was convinced that Hitler and the Nazis would have the strength to break the terms of the Versailles Treaty, which forbade U-boats to Germany, and he attached himself to them.

In 1933, he began to forge his weapon. Part by part, in dispersed and hidden shops, he and his men built a few U-boats and cached them in packing crates under the noses of Allied investigators. To train his first recruits, Doenitz established an institute which he blandly named "school for defense against submarines." When, in June 1935, Hitler's naval treaty with the British released the Reich from some of the Versailles restrictions, Doenitz was ready. By October his first flotilla was afloat. He was still bound to keep his visible U-boat fleet within limits, but by expanding his spare-parts system of construction he built far over the treaty ratio.

When his U-boats sailed out to war, Doenitz was a Vice Admiral commanding the most effective underwater force in any navy. And he knew how to apply the force. He introduced wolf-pack tactics (Rudeltaktik) for attacking convoys. He varied this technique with individual sorties, sometimes into enemy ports or rivers.

And he perfected a far-flung system of radio control, directing U-boats at sea from a central headquarters on land.

Doenitz knew the British well, and he had profound contempt for them at the war's start. In the last war, after service on a cruiser in the Mediterranean, he was transferred to U-boats, earned his own command. His UB-68 was sunk by the British off Malta in 1918. Rescued, Doenitz was taken to England as a prisoner of war. There he so successfully feigned mental illness that his captors kept him comfortably in a sanatorium.

His headquarters is a fantastic structure, designed to resemble a warship on land. His office has a few pieces of period furniture, a broad expanse of bookshelves filled with tomes on naval history. Scattered about are gaily colored, crude models of the ships which one of his U-boats sank on a successful cruise. On the wall behind him is a portrait of his revered predecessor, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who ardently advocated unrestricted U-boat warfare 26 years ago.

At 51, Doenitz is still vigorous (despite gastric ulcers). By radio, his U-boat commanders can always get in touch with him. He is frequently on the move between his headquarters, the fleet's ports and production centers, but he knows exactly what actions are taking place. When a U-boat comes into port, Doenitz is frequently there to greet the commander. He carefully studies the logs of the cruises, notes every detail of combat, and applies their lessons in future orders.

The Weapon's Men. Four years ago Doenitz wrote of his crews: "With men who have been tried in long U-boat service you can get the devil himself out of hell. They are soldiers and sailors of the best kind."

How many submarines and men the Nazi U-boat fleet has lost, only the Germans and Allied Intelligence know. According to unofficial Allied estimates, more than 12,000 trained officers and men have been lost or taken prisoner; and crews are more difficult to replace than ships. The U.S., habitually mum on the subject of U-boat sinkings, last week revealed for the first time the capture of a submarine contingent: the Coast Guard cutter Icarus last June depth-charged a U-boat, blew it to the surface, rescued 33 of the crew. The shattered sub sank into the depths which German underseamen call "God's Cellar."

Nazi U-boat crews still have the highest morale of any branch of the German armed forces. They are tough, hardened sailors, inured now to the discomforts and nerve-racking moments of life in the submarines. Doenitz labored to level the usual barriers between officers and men, and there have been no signs of the bitterness which contributed to a revolt of German crews in World War I.

The Weapon's Deeds. Doenitz knew that the convoy system licked the U-boats in World War I. When he was building his fleet for World War II, he guessed that the same tactics would be used again by the Allies, and trained his men accordingly.

Instead of one attacking U-boat cruising more or less haphazardly, he used a number of them working as a unit. The wolf pack was expanded; by last year he had the U-boats working in "echelons of divisions," patrolling in three lines or more abreast, the center line ahead of the two flanks, the U-boats strung out in a herringbone pattern astern of the leader. In perfect coordination, this array of underwater raiders lay in wait for convoys previously spotted by scouts or long-range air reconnaissance. By night, submerged, they moved under the convoy. When they came up, a few of them would draw the convoy's escort vessels off. The rest could then pick off their targets at leisure, firing by direct control from their conning towers.

Only by radio control could such coordination of the blind underwater vessels be achieved. Nerve center of this system was a great camouflaged central control somewhere in occupied Europe, probably in France. The Nazis boasted that Allied bombers frequently flew over this headquarters without recognizing it. Into and out of it flowed messages from U-boats and air reconnaissance in every theater of German naval operations. Routes of convoys were plotted there, location of submarine packs picked out and corresponding orders given for attack. Radio in code and clear was flashed out constantly: on Christmas Eve last year Doenitz himself addressed his U-boat crews all over the world to wish them Merry Christmas and good hunting.

Initial U-boat successes fell off when the British woke up to the fact that the submarine was still a grave menace, and escorted their convoys more heavily. But after the fall of France, when the U-boats had bases along the entire west coast of Europe, the wolf-pack system raised hob with Allied shipping. Of some 57,600,000 total deadweight tons of British shipping, U-boats sank at least 17,600,000 tons in three and a half years. Working in the Nazis' favor was the vast demand on Allied shipping for the supply of many distant war theaters, a list in which Britain herself had a No. 1 priority. And there were other factors which helped to reduce the Allied potential.

Tonnage available to supply Britain's vital needs was cut, in effect, by various demands and limitations to perhaps 20,800,000 tons. The additional limitations of convoy operation further reduced the effective total to some 9,600,000 tons. Result: the loss of every ship sunk on the Atlantic run was doubly felt by the Allies.

Of the 1,150 U.S. ocean-going ships afloat when America went to war, at least 700 having been unofficially reported sunk, and U.S. figures are behind the actual sinkings. Secretary Knox last week admitted that the Allies last year had a net shipping loss of about 1,000,000 tons (see p. 23).

To keep Britain alive and functioning as the Allies' European base, 700 to 800 ships must cross the Atlantic each month. Each new Allied war theater means more convoy routes, more targets for Admiral Doenitz' fleet, more dispersal of scant Allied escort ships.

The Counter-Drive. In the censored picture of the Allied countermoves against the U-boats, there were some encouraging highlights last week:

> Canada's Rear Admiral L. W. Murray was given command of a joint U.S.Canadian anti-submarine program which, dovetailing with Britain's R.A.F., would give air and naval protection to Europe-bound convoys. With a chain of bases extending from the Canadian mainland across Greenland and Iceland to Britain, Allied long-range bombers would provide mile-by-mile protection and reconnaissance. The Royal Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy had long been bearing much of the Atlantic burden; the appointment of Admiral Murray indicated that they will bear more.

> March losses were heavier than those in February or January, but the total was "much lower" in April. Secretary Knox, announcing this fact, also said that convoy-escort vessels and aircraft had been added steadily to the anti-submarine forces of the Allies. Britain also is building escorts, recently put in service a new "frigate" class of U-boat hunters (see cut).

> Admiral Emory S. Land, chairman of the U.S. Maritime Commission, said that U.S. shipyards were turning out five ships a day, would furnish nearly 19,000,000 deadweight tons this year as against just over 8,000,000 deadweight tons in 1942.

Bombing for Time. As the convoy had beaten the U-boat in World War I, air power might yet defeat it in this war. Defense of German U-boat factories in the homeland was beyond Admiral Doenitz' power. He had dispersed the factories well, from the seaports to innermost Germany and the eastern occupied countries. But in three years and a half Allied Intelligence had ferreted out most of them. Bombing them and the assembly yards was a slow process, but it was beginning to tell.

Among the bombers' most vulnerable and fruitful targets were the bases where Doenitz' raiders had to hole up for repairs and refitting. Submarines returning to base need about two weeks for overhaul and restocking before going back to sea. If the U-boat has been depth-charged, the repairs may involve weeks. Normal repairs were undoubtedly taken into account by Grand Admiral Doenitz in planning his spring campaign. What counted was unforeseen delay and repeated air attacks on St. Nazaire, Lorient, other bases had undoubtedly multiplied the delay.

Time and the Enemy. If Grand Admiral Doenitz were asked to name his greatest foe in the spring U-boat war, he might well answer: "Time." Time could give the Allies more ships, time could wear his weapon down. If he could not win now, the dockyard could defeat the submarine as surely as the Allies' growing air power could cut down its production at home.

But time was a neutral, and in the race between U-boats and an Allied second front it was also a crucial factor for the Allies. Last week Admiral Ernest J. King, always a pessimist on U-boat warfare, said: "The submarine menace ... is being dealt with. . . . We expect to bring it under control now in four to six months' time."

This was the most optimistic prediction yet made by the U.S. COMINCH, but it also showed how serious a problem the U-boats still presented to the Allies. Four to six months meant next August or October. If by that time the supplies for a second front had not been shipped across the Atlantic, it might well be too late for this year. In that case, Grand Admiral Doenitz could consider that he had won the battle of 1943.

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