U-Boats' End

Hitler's U-boat fleet was about done. While U.S. troops pounded at the gates of Brest, Lorient and St. Nazaire, the three greatest Atlantic bases of the Unterseeboote, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill proclaimed the destruction of 500 of the sea serpents in four years and eleven months of World War II.

In four years and three months of World War I, less than 200 had been sent to the bottom. That tally was beaten in 1943 alone.

For Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, it was a time of anguish. He must get the 1st and 9th Submarine Flotillas away from Brest, the 2nd and 10th from Lorient, the 6th and 7th from St. Nazaire. But where could he send them? The only other Biscay bases were La Pallice and Bordeaux, each with facilities for only one flotilla, which already crowded the pens. Farther north were Bergen and Trondheim, with berths for a single flotilla apiece. But the Allied navies patrolled the Atlantic looking for U-boats on the escape routes and the Mediterranean was an Allied lake, closed at Gibraltar.

The Hunter Hunted. In June, the Nazis claimed to have sunk 312,000 tons of Allied shipping--a far cry from the mad March days of 1942 and 1943, when they claimed 900,000 or more. But even this relatively modest claim was a thousand percent exaggeration. In other words, sinkings actually were under 30,000 tons.

In recent months the number of U-boats sunk by Allied air and sea patrols has exceeded the number of the U-boats' victims.

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