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00:00The Atlantic, Britain's lifeline.
00:17Treacherous enough in peacetime, in war, black with menace.
00:26New boat packs stalk through the night, knowing the danger.
00:30Their victims still plow on.
00:56Ships and cargoes go down.
01:08Their crews, some of them, survive.
01:10But early in 1943, it is Britain's survival and the Allied hopes for victory over Germany
01:15which are in doubt.
02:16When war began, Britain saw Germany's big ships as the main threat to her sea trade.
02:23So did the Germans.
02:38Germany's surface raiders would savage the merchant fleet on which Britain depended for
02:42much of her food, most of her raw materials and all of her oil.
02:55Germany's U-boats were to operate in coastal waters, sweeping up anything left by the battleships.
03:04Both Britain and Germany were wrong.
03:06The real naval menace was to be the U-boat.
03:10At least one man knew this, Karl Dönitz, chief of the U-boat arm.
03:15He could have been wrong too, if Hitler had delayed his war with Britain until all the
03:19battleships planned for the German navy had been built.
03:24As it was, Dönitz was certain that with enough submarines, he could win the war at sea.
03:31He had proved it to himself 20 years before.
03:34In October 1918, I was a captain of a submarine in the Mediterranean near Malta.
03:45In the dark night, I met a British convoy with cruisers and destroyers.
03:54And I attacked and I sank a ship.
03:59But the chance would have been very much greater if there had been a lot of submarines.
04:06That's why the idea of a wolf pack, to put the submarines together, that they could attack
04:17together, was very impressive.
04:21And that's why in all the years from 1918 until the year 1935, where we had the first
04:33submarines again in the German navy, I never had forgotten this idea.
04:40Underwater, the 1939 U-boat was slow.
04:47On the surface, it was faster than any convoy of merchant ships.
04:51With its low silhouette, it could not be seen easily, especially at night.
05:03But its targets were outlined clearly against the sky.
05:10And with radio, the U-boats could quickly assemble into hunting packs.
05:24Dönitz knew Britain would try to protect her essential Atlantic trade by a system of
05:28convoys escorted by warships.
05:31To attack these convoys, Dönitz wanted 300 U-boats.
05:35When the war started, he had only 26.
05:38And these boats had long, dangerous voyages from base before they could reach their targets.
05:45When France fell, Dönitz gained new bases much nearer the shipping routes.
05:54His sea wolves returned to these French ports as heroes.
06:01One special hero was Otto Kretschmer.
06:03In all, Kretschmer sank over a quarter of a million tonnes of British shipping.
06:07In October 1940, he joined the first real wolf pack.
06:12I remember that there was a signal that a convoy was coming in from America to England,
06:20and that its position was not known.
06:24And that Dönitz ordered all the submarines there to the west of Ireland to form a sort
06:32of recce line, stationary recce line, to let the convoy pass through.
06:40And when the first submarine was sighted, the convoy made a signal, its contact signal.
06:47This recce line was dissolved automatically, and every boat was free to go in for the attack.
06:55Convoy SC-7, on the night of the 17th of October, 1940, was passing Rockall.
07:02Thirty-four merchantmen, four small escort ships.
07:06Seven new boats attacked on the surface.
07:08The attack took the same form as that we were used to, which was a single ship being struck.
07:18Very shortly after that, a second one was struck.
07:21And then, within a matter of five to ten minutes, further ships were struck.
07:30I tried to get through the escorts into the convoy, which was my own peculiarity of attacking,
07:40and failed for the first time.
07:43They saw me and shot starshells so that I had to draw away again.
07:49But for the second time, I succeeded and was inside the convoy, going up and down the lanes
07:54and looking for the most important, valuable ships,
07:59and had the opportunity to expand all torpedoes.
08:02I had twelve in all.
08:06I could see ships in various stages of sinking.
08:12A Dutch ship had stopped and was attempting to pick up survivors.
08:18And whilst I actually watched her doing this and was considering what to do about it,
08:23she also herself was torpedoed.
08:27This, along with another torpedoing, set the whole place ablaze.
08:35That night, seventeen merchantmen, exactly half the convoy, were sunk.
08:40The escorts had not been able to damage a single U-boat.
08:43I don't think I'd ever seen more than one ship sunk at a time before.
08:48And this was something very different indeed.
08:51This really was the first time that this tactics could be experienced by all of us,
09:00and also by Doenitz himself, who of course knew it only from our peacetime training.
09:06And the whole night, I think, was a success.
09:09It was called the Night of the Long Knives because so many ships were sunk.
09:16In the first nine months of the war,
09:20Britain and her allies lost over two million tonnes of merchant shipping.
09:26In the next six months, with the U-boats operating from France,
09:30nearly two and a half million tonnes more went down.
09:41There were medals galore.
09:46All men and women, all men and women,
09:50We are proud of you.
09:54We are proud of you.
09:57U-boat crews called this the happy time.
10:01I saw the ship going up, the stern going underwater,
10:03and she upended right up on end and went backwards.
10:06And I went down with her.
10:08After a bit, I came to the surface, and I was still sitting on to the overturned bridgeboat,
10:12and there's all the submarine servicing.
10:15He went down and started picking up cases out of the water,
10:18general cargo, possibly spirits, food, stuff and so forth.
10:24They looked at us and circled around for a bit.
10:27They laughed at us and went away to the northeast.
10:29They never asked if we had any water, if we had any damages or anything else.
10:33And we were left floating amongst wreckage with one boat.
10:37We were halfway between Brazil and North Africa.
10:41The only thing I could think about was trying to get to the land as near as possible,
10:46so I shut the course as near as I could to the northeast.
10:49All we had was the one lifeboat, which was made for 48 people.
10:54We picked up 58.
10:56There wasn't really room enough for anybody to sit down.
11:00The boat was leaking badly through being on the chocks for some time.
11:06You had quite a bit of trouble getting the crew to move so you could bail,
11:10and you bailed for nearly two days until the wood of the boat started to swell and to tighten up.
11:17After that, it wasn't so bad.
11:20The worst days, of course, were when there was no wind.
11:25Absolutely becalmed.
11:28The sun was terrific.
11:30So we started off by giving four ounces of water,
11:33two ounces in the morning and two ounces at night, and one biscuit.
11:37When there was a lot of noise in the boat, there were Chinese,
11:40and I said, what's all the bobbery?
11:42Which is a lot of talky-talky, you know?
11:44He said, I think number one fireman go crazy.
11:49So eventually he jumped over the side with the life jacket on,
11:54and after a wee while, we got him back again.
11:59And later that night in the darkness, he jumped again.
12:04We didn't get him back because the sharks got him.
12:08On the morning of the 13th, I used to sit on the water barrel to make sure nobody could help themselves.
12:14And somebody shook me up and said, hey, Captain, we see lights, green lights.
12:18Oh, I said, you're dreaming, you're dreaming.
12:21And I looked around and I saw some green lights,
12:24which looked to me like New Brighton Pier.
12:26I couldn't make it out.
12:28So I said, well, burn a flare.
12:30They burned a flare.
12:32I said, burn another flare.
12:34They burned another flare.
12:36And after a bit, I saw the green lights getting closer, more visible.
12:41Then after a bit, I saw a red light above the green.
12:44And then it dawned on me that it was a hospital ship.
12:50The U-boats had eyes in the air.
12:52Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft could range 1,000 miles out to sea to scout for convoys.
13:02When used to bomb shipping, the Condors sank 30 ships in two months.
13:07Luckily for Britain, this partnership with the U-boat was never properly exploited.
13:16But Dönitz did exploit the fact that German naval intelligence had broken the British codes.
13:24We were aware that the intelligence, for some reason, was good.
13:28But I myself put this down to very superior hydrophone equipment that the submarines had,
13:35that the U-boats had in their boats,
13:38probably being able to pick up the noise of a convoy's propellers up to 80 or even 100 miles.
13:45But in addition, I know that they would place their U-boats in a line across at right angles
13:53to the expected line of the convoy.
13:56And this line for, say, five U-boats could be 100 miles from end to end.
14:02And so with good hydrophones, very little disguise of the position of a convoy could be affected.
14:10It was only after the war that we knew that they were breaking the codes
14:14and that they knew very well the time of leaving port that the convoys had
14:19and how many escorts were there and how many merchant ships in each convoy.
14:26The Royal Navy, searching for U-boats underwater, had pinned its faith on ASDIC, an echo-sounding device.
14:56But U-boats were attacking convoys on the surface. The Navy was not prepared for this.
15:11Convoy defence is not a very glamorous affair.
15:13And between the wars, I think rather naturally,
15:16the Navy were inclined to concentrate more on more glamorous activities
15:20like great mass torpedo attacks and that sort of thing.
15:24All the information about the lessons of World War I were available.
15:29And for those who wanted to read them, all the lessons were there.
15:33But I'm afraid no one bothered.
15:35And as a result, trade defence as a whole was very badly neglected.
15:40The neglect continued.
15:42In the early days, convoys could only be escorted for about 300 miles from each Atlantic coast.
15:53There just weren't enough escort ships.
15:56Those available lacked endurance and their crews were virtually untrained.
16:00My officers were three R&VR officers.
16:04One who was a civil engineer by profession.
16:08The other two were Canadian sabre lieutenants,
16:13both of the age of between 20 and 21,
16:19who would come from Canada as passengers.
16:22And that was their sea-going experience.
16:26The heads of department were regulars.
16:30Some of them had retired and called back.
16:33And there were two or three seamen who were of the pucker service.
16:38And the rest were straight in.
16:42Air cover was to prove all-important.
16:46But surprisingly, the Navy's carriers did not at first supply it.
16:50That task went to the RAF, although coastal command was ill-prepared.
16:54With the exception of the Sunderland flying boats, a very small number,
16:59all the other aircraft, except the Anson, were lash-ups.
17:02They were borrowed from international airlines.
17:08They were borrowed from entirely dissimilar functions
17:12in order to do this job in coastal command.
17:15Secondly, the navigation aids were not there.
17:18It was entirely dead-reckoning navigation.
17:21And whereas an experienced navigator can look at the sea
17:24and estimate the wind and where he's likely to be in an hour's time,
17:27this is very difficult for a new boy.
17:30And since the point to be navigated to, the convoy,
17:33was often equally at error,
17:36it was no wonder that we failed to meet many convoys.
17:39So lack of equipment, lack of training, and unsuitable aircraft
17:43were certainly severe handicaps at the beginning of the war.
17:47What is more, cooperation between the Navy and the Air Force
17:50in the field, as well as at sea, was very bad indeed,
17:54mainly due to stupid quarrels between senior officers in Whitehall.
18:00It took nearly 2 years before we had anything like the right sort of cooperation
18:05between ships and aircraft.
18:07It was a disgrace and a tragedy that so many ships were sunk
18:11and so many lives were lost unnecessarily during those first few years.
18:15So, Seaman suffered from quarrels in Whitehall,
18:19from the U-boats, and from the sea.
18:22Now, by popular request of the Seaman's Mess Deck,
18:25the Western approaches signature tune.
18:27Someone's rocking my dreamboat
18:32Someone's invading my dreams
18:36We were sailing along
18:39It went wrong
18:42Suddenly something went wrong
18:46It's very, very hard to describe to someone on the land
18:50after a tough convoy.
18:53By tough, I mean bad weather, especially in the wintertime.
18:58What just over two weeks at sea is,
19:01living on corned beef and hard tack.
19:03And this is, you know, it's not a fallacy.
19:06We used to do this quite often when the seas come in
19:09and put the galley fires out.
19:11You couldn't just cook anything hot.
19:14The lucky ones had hammocks
19:16and the unfortunate ones had to lie on the lockers.
19:19And it was very discomforting.
19:21You'd get chaps coming down from the middle watch at 4 o'clock,
19:25wet through, just clambering on the locker.
19:28Poor chap who was already trying to get some sleep would get soaked.
19:31There was no hygiene there.
19:34You really started smelling after about a week if you didn't watch it.
19:38We had a feeling that it was a necessary job.
19:41I'm not so sure that we realized that it was all that important.
19:44To us it was a very boring job.
19:46We were on lookout for anything that might come up.
19:50And it was bitterly cold.
19:52It was an open bridge, open to all weathers.
19:55And it was a bit more, really, trying to keep warm,
20:00trying to keep the cold out, trying to keep dry,
20:04rather than realize that we were doing an important job.
20:08But they were doing an important job.
20:14They brought the cargoes without which Britain could not have kept going.
20:21Then you sit down in camp, and that's when you really think,
20:25now we're in the open sea, we can catch a pack at any moment.
20:33There were many times when we saw little lights in the water
20:36and we assumed that these were survivors,
20:38but we couldn't stop and pick them up.
20:43The normal comparison that seamen made with their wage
20:46for the hours that they worked
20:48was with the ammunition workers,
20:50who were making a fabulous amount of money
20:53with no more risks than the housewives left at home.
21:01We lost one out of every three men.
21:04And without them, this nation wouldn't have survived
21:07more than three or four months.
21:11But the Germans were still celebrating.
21:14In the first half of 1941,
21:16they sank nearly three million tons of shipping.
21:19Ships were harder to replace than cargoes.
21:22If they could be sunk faster than they could be built,
21:26Britain would starve.
21:35But now the Canadian navy, tiny at the outbreak of war,
21:39was expanding to 50 times its original size.
21:42It would take over nearly half the burden
21:45of convoy escort in the North Atlantic.
22:00More and more convoys were leaving Canada,
22:03decks laden with tanks,
22:05holds full of supplies
22:07from the neutral United States under Lise Len.
22:13Alarmed at continuing losses,
22:15the British War Cabinet set up a new Western Approaches Command
22:19to reorganise convoy defence.
22:21For the first time,
22:23the RAF and the navy worked closely together.
22:32And in March 1941,
22:34Dönitz lost three of his ablest men.
22:38Gunter Prien, who had sunk the Royal Oak at Scarpa Flow,
22:44depth-charged and killed.
22:47Joachim Schepke, rammed and drowned.
22:54And Kretschmer, depth-charged to the surface.
23:00And in March 1941,
23:02Dönitz lost three of his ablest men.
23:08And taken prisoner.
23:15Only one-third of Dönitz's fleet
23:17could be on patrol at any one time.
23:20His best captains had suddenly gone.
23:23Now he could only keep some half-dozen U-boats at sea.
23:27With this small number of U-boats,
23:30of course, any decisive success
23:33in the Battle of the Atlantic
23:36was not possible.
23:38That's why it was necessary
23:41for the building of submarines
23:44to get first place in the German armament plan.
23:50But this was not done
23:53in spite of all the requests
23:56made by Admiral Raeder,
23:59who then was chief of the German navy.
24:03Worse was to come for him.
24:05The United States was still officially neutral.
24:08General quarters, general quarters, on the double.
24:13But after Churchill's Atlantic meeting with Roosevelt in September 1941,
24:17America announced that she would protect ships of any nationality
24:21plying between her shores and Iceland.
24:25There would now be enough warships
24:27to provide continuous escort across the Atlantic.
24:30It was time to counterattack.
24:32I got hold of a number of escort commanders
24:36who, I asked the question,
24:39when a U-boat is known to be attacking a convoy,
24:43as they do now by night,
24:46I asked them what they did.
24:49They said,
24:51I asked them what they did,
24:54and the answer in most cases was,
24:57well, what can you do?
24:59It's a very tiny little thing and we can't see them.
25:02Radar, of course, in those days was very elementary
25:05and we had very few sets.
25:08But in fact, there was one escort commander
25:12who had the idea,
25:15which is still absolutely relevant,
25:18that when an attack, of which there is no warning,
25:22takes place, that all of the escort
25:26should do the same sort of thing on a planned line
25:30at exactly the same time,
25:33so that it has the maximum effect
25:36over the broad ocean around that convoy.
25:39And this, of course, was the then Commander Walker.
25:43Although he did not survive the war,
25:46Walker was to sink more U-boats than anyone else.
25:49At the end of 1941, he set a new style for convoy defense.
25:53The convoy was HG-76.
25:56In it were 36 merchantmen from all parts of the world.
25:59They assembled in Gibraltar for the trudge to Britain.
26:11The Navy knew there were at least 6 U-boats on the convoy's route.
26:15Signals had been picked up by the Admiralty.
26:20When HG-76 sailed on 14 December 1941,
26:24it had an exceptionally large escort,
26:2717 ships commanded by Walker.
26:30Among them, for the first time,
26:33an auxiliary aircraft carrier, the Audacity.
26:38Three days out, Audacity's plane spotted U-131.
26:46The escorts quickly sank her.
26:57Dönitz homed five more U-boats on the convoy.
27:04Walker's team soon sank one.
27:07But that night, the U-boats attacked again.
27:12An escort and a merchant ship were sunk.
27:15Walker counterattacked.
27:30Walker's own ship rammed and sank U-574.
27:34In the air, Audacity's fighters harried the German condors.
27:39One was destroyed. Others were damaged.
27:45But some of the escorts were running out of fuel.
27:48They had to leave.
27:50A U-boat penetrated the gap.
27:53Audacity was the next victim.
28:00Another hectic night followed.
28:03The convoy lost one more ship.
28:05At Endras, another U-boat ace was sunk in U-567.
28:09Next day, for the first time,
28:11a long-range liberator appeared and attacked.
28:17Dönitz decided he must withdraw.
28:23Walker had justified his tactics.
28:26Aircraft had proved their worth.
28:30Four U-boats had been sunk.
28:33But Dönitz was about to be given his greatest opportunity.
28:43In December 1941, the United States came fully into the war,
28:47but left her peacetime lights off.
29:03Dönitz's U-boats never had it so good.
29:09This was the second happy time.
29:15The Americans did not have enough warships available for offshore escort,
29:19so there were no convoys there.
29:22Many ships were convoyed safely across the ocean
29:25to be torpedoed alone and unescorted offshore.
29:34The slaughter went on.
29:36In the second half of 1941,
29:38nearly 1.5 million tons of shipping were lost.
29:41In the first half of 1942,
29:44over 4 million tons of shipping were lost,
29:471,000 ships.
29:51At this rate, the Allies would lose the war.
29:55We had to sink as many ships as possible
30:00before our Anglo-American opponent
30:04could develop an effective anti-submarine defence
30:10and could replace the merchant ships which had been sunk.
30:20But most of Germany's U-boats were not in the Atlantic.
30:23They were patrolling off Norway,
30:25on Germany's supply lines or confined in the Mediterranean.
30:29These dispositions infuriated Dönitz.
30:34He had no doubts where the U-boats ought to be.
30:37The German submarines must not be used for any other purposes.
30:43Their main strategic purpose was
30:46to sink as many ships as possible in the Atlantic.
30:52But Hitler and the high command would not listen.
31:10Although preoccupied with the Pacific,
31:13the U.S. naval staff were now willing to rethink Atlantic tactics.
31:19They finally established a system of offshore convoys.
31:28Sinkings of merchant men dropped off.
31:31Sinkings of U-boats began.
31:41Dönitz now switched his boats to the Caribbean,
31:44where many ships were still sailing independently.
31:54Fire!
32:07In two months, 78 ships were sunk,
32:11more than half of them oil tankers.
32:14It's a very long time ago, but I can see it now.
32:17The people that lived aft, running around on fire
32:21and throwing themselves straight over the side
32:24into the oil which was on fire all round.
32:27In the meantime, I'd shouted to the remaining people in the boat
32:31to get the oilers out and try and push her off from the ship's side
32:34because the rivets of the ship's side had burst out and they were on fire.
32:38We rode around for a wee while and we heard some screams for help.
32:42And we pulled out of the water a fireman, or greaser as we call him,
32:48and he was terribly burnt, so much so that when we pulled him in,
32:53the skin of his body and arms came off in the hands like gloves.
32:57We set sail and course for Trinidad, where I had a rough idea where it might be.
33:03And so we tidied up the boat and set off,
33:07but shortly after that, the greaser, who'd been in terrible agony all night,
33:12he died, and we laid him on the thwart for a wee while.
33:17And then shortly after that, the palmer told me that the third steward had died too.
33:22So I went to have a look at him, and he was wrapped up in a blanket.
33:28And I took the blanket away, and the whole of his stomach was severely damaged and hanging out.
33:34He'd been very patient during the night, and the only thing he complained of was cold.
33:39So we laid him on the thwart and covered him with the blanket.
33:43And for about an hour, because I wanted to really make sure that they were dead,
33:48because we had nothing to indicate, everything I did indicated that they were so,
33:54eventually, after about an hour, we committed them to the deep.
33:59Morale in the boat at this time was very low, because these were all young boys, 17, 18, 19, 22.
34:08And by this time, it was a boatload of miseries, pain and death.
34:15Only eight men survived from the San Emiliano's crew of 40.
34:21To Allied seamen, the U-boat crews were heartless killers.
34:27But the Germans were brave men, too.
34:30They needed all their courage when depth charges exploded round them,
34:34sometimes for 12 hours at a stretch.
34:40Eight of every ten U-boat crewmen were to die in action.
34:50EXPLOSION
35:08They called their U-boats iron coffins.
35:12The destroyer I met had radar, so he had me on his screen
35:19and with full speed ahead, he rammed me for the first time.
35:27And when I saw him, it was too late to dive.
35:31I tried to torpedo him, but the distance, 150 yards roundabout,
35:39was too close, so the torpedo wouldn't explode.
35:45So I tried to get a bigger, to have a bigger distance
35:50between the destroyer and the boat.
35:52And he was shooting during one hour or two hours with machine guns.
35:58An officer next to me was dead,
36:02and another officer, he had got a bullet through his throat,
36:06and I had got a bullet in my chest,
36:09and I had some 30 shell splinters in arm and leg
36:15and a bullet in my head.
36:17After one hour of stress, the sailors were very anxious,
36:22and one of the petty officers, he lost his nerves and said,
36:27Oh, this madman, and why don't we surrender?
36:31But this was the only one.
36:33But the time was coming when courage was no longer enough.
36:40Radio had remained essential to Wolfpack operations,
36:44but new Allied direction-finding equipment
36:47could pick up German signals and plot where they came from.
37:10With short-wave radar,
37:12escorts could now locate a U-boat on the surface,
37:17often sighting the U-boat before her crew could see them.
37:23The low silhouette was no longer such an advantage.
37:29Stop!
37:36Light cut off.
37:39Aztec equipment, too, was improving.
37:42Escort ships could track a submerged U-boat
37:45as she twisted and turned at low underwater speed.
37:50There were new weapons, like the hedgehog, for the kill.
38:13The Germans did not realize the extreme danger
38:17The Germans did not realize the extent
38:19of British and American technical advances,
38:21nor did they match them.
38:23The Germans had some very high-class scientists indeed,
38:26and some excellent engineers,
38:28but they didn't achieve the results they ought to have done.
38:31First, I think, because they were mucked around,
38:34and the Germans kept altering the priorities.
38:37And secondly, and most important,
38:39because I don't believe they were ever allowed
38:42to take any interest in the operational side,
38:45as opposed to what happened with us,
38:47where the scientists were made to feel
38:50full members of the operational team.
38:52And I believe this, much more than the question
38:55of weapons and devices, was the reason
38:58why the Germans fell so far astern in technological matters.
39:02The Allies themselves were still behind
39:04in using what was to prove
39:06the most effective counter to the U-boat,
39:09aircraft with radar.
39:16Convoys could seldom be given
39:19continuous long-range air cover.
39:24When they were, losses were reduced
39:27and U-boat kills increased.
39:39The problem was range.
39:41Planes now flew to the convoys from North America,
39:44from Iceland, from the United Kingdom.
39:48But there was a vast gap in mid-Atlantic
39:51which these escort planes could not reach.
39:54The U-boats could and did.
40:00In the second half of 1942,
40:02over 3.5 million tonnes went down,
40:04nearly 700 ships, many of them in the Atlantic gap.
40:10To close this gap, escort carriers were needed
40:13to sail with the convoys.
40:19But few were yet available.
40:23Or very long-range planes like the Liberator.
40:26But in 1942, the Americans needed most of these in the Pacific.
40:31Or Lancaster bombers.
40:33But despite admiralty appeals,
40:35the RAF kept them all bombing Germany,
40:38although they did release other aircraft.
40:42Bomber command diverted six squadrons to coastal command.
40:46If you'd said it would have been better if they'd made that ten,
40:49yes, it would, but the line had to be drawn somewhere.
40:52And as a coastal type,
40:54I would have liked to have seen a few more squadrons in coastal,
40:57but bomber command were pitifully short of airplanes too
41:00for the job they had to do.
41:02Surely, if there had been more Liberators allocated from America,
41:06then we could have improved the situation much earlier
41:09and have saved the lives of a lot of seamen.
41:16More and more, the war effort depended on the United States.
41:29Merchant ships and escorts were mass-produced
41:32to carry the material and men for the invasion of Europe.
41:36Unless the Atlantic was secure, all else could fall apart.
41:40In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill decreed
41:44that the defeat of the U-boat be given top priority.
41:51Improved escort vessels were built.
41:58There were now enough of these to go over to the attack.
42:03But also in January 1943,
42:05Dönitz took over as chief of the German navy.
42:08He paid off most of the big ships
42:10and released their crews for the submarine service.
42:20At last, he could have U-boats mass-produced.
42:2317 new U-boats were commissioned each month.
42:33By early spring 1943, Dönitz had over 400 U-boats in service.
42:42Once again, the convoys might be overwhelmed.
42:51In May came what was to prove the decisive battle around convoy ONS 5.
42:57ONS 5 was a rather small,
43:01very slow and, of course, unladen, empty convoy.
43:06And we had a lot of trouble.
43:09The weather was very bad.
43:11The ships got disorganised.
43:13And south of Iceland, after three or four days,
43:17we had several attacks by submarines,
43:20most of which we drove off successfully,
43:23and only had one ship sunk.
43:25Then after a spell,
43:27we had a long series of very bad gales indeed,
43:31combined with a little nip into the ice pack off Greenland.
43:36And at this stage, my ship was running short of fuel.
43:41I couldn't fill from the tanker because of the weather,
43:44and I had to leave.
43:46I got the signal from Gretton
43:48that he had to push off to Newfoundland to get fuel,
43:53and would I come back and take over the escort?
43:56I didn't say would I, I said, you're in charge.
44:00May 3rd.
44:02Four escort ships have left to refuel.
44:05In bad weather, ten merchant ships have lost contact.
44:08A line of U-boats is waiting.
44:10As they move in on 4th May,
44:12aircraft from Canada sink one and damage another.
44:15At about half-past four or five o'clock in the afternoon,
44:19the torpedoing started.
44:23I torpedoed two ships, each with two torpedoes,
44:28and one of the ships, well, it didn't explode,
44:34but after the explosion of the torpedoes,
44:38another big explosion happened.
44:40I looked back and I saw the captain,
44:42I would suggest the bridge was probably, oh, 10 or 15 feet,
44:47might be a little more off the water,
44:49when he jumped off the wing of the bridge into the sea,
44:52and there was a life raft nearby, I know that.
44:54Well, I couldn't stop and pick him up.
44:57And, well, it was in, oh, I suppose a matter of half a minute
45:03that I got one myself.
45:05Once more I was lucky by slipping through
45:08into a gap between two of the escort vessels
45:12and closing in to the port column of the convoy,
45:17and I fired the two torpedoes,
45:20and both torpedoes hit the target ship.
45:24May 5th.
45:26The U-boats make 25 attacks in 8 hours.
45:30More ships are sunk.
45:32The outlook for the convoy is grim
45:34as Dönitz orders in still more U-boats.
45:38We picked up quite a lot of signals from other submarines
45:42also getting contact to this convoy,
45:46and so we thought that this convoy would be absolutely dead
45:51during the next night.
45:53Somewhere in the region of 10 o'clock the attacks started,
45:58and they became fast and furious.
46:02Suddenly dense fog came up,
46:06and so it was nearly impossible to find the convoy again.
46:11I tried to do it, but we couldn't find the ships again.
46:16Escorts were reporting submarines coming in,
46:21not ships being torpedoed,
46:25and this, of course, was absolutely,
46:29well, it was the first time it had ever happened, certainly to me.
46:32Staying on the surface during the dark time now in the dense fog,
46:38of course it was very dangerous.
46:41They were coming up all the time saying that a submarine
46:44was bearing so-and-so on radar,
46:46and then the next thing you've got a submarine close alongside,
46:50another one, a submarine just ahead of me, I'm ramming,
46:55and this one went on all night.
46:57I got a very firm ASDIC contact
47:00about 800 yards from the nearest ship in the convoy.
47:04My immediate reaction, which I think was the correct one,
47:08in fact I know was the correct one,
47:10was to increase speed and give it a five-charge pattern straight away
47:14to keep the chap's head down
47:16so he would put him off his stroke if he was going to fire torpedoes.
47:20But I was short of depth charges at that stage,
47:24and I thought the conditions were perfect.
47:27The night was relatively calm, a bit of fog,
47:30perfect for a deliberate attack.
47:33And so I decided to do a deliberate attack
47:37with our forward-throwing weapon, the hedgehog.
47:40We saw two distinct flashes
47:43a few seconds after the hedgehog bombs hit the water,
47:47and as we passed over the position
47:50where our hedgehog bombs had hit the water,
47:53we were virtually, our bow was virtually lifted from the water
47:58as a result of the U-boat breaking apart
48:02and escaping air.
48:04And there was great exhilaration on the bridge
48:07because this was our first kill.
48:09We had no feelings at the time, I'm afraid,
48:13of destroying 70-odd people.
48:16One's emotions, one had control of one's emotions by then,
48:20after three years of war,
48:22and it was just the thought that it's us or them,
48:25and on that occasion it was them.
48:27May the 6th.
48:29Although 11 merchantmen have been lost,
48:31the escorts have beaten off the largest wolfpack
48:34Dernet's consent against them.
48:36Seven U-boats have been sunk, others damaged.
48:39Demoralised by their failure to destroy the convoy
48:42with the odds so much on their side, the U-boats withdraw.
48:46I think we really felt that at last
48:49our training and technology had got on top of the U-boats.
48:54We sailed for the next convoy, SC-130,
48:58on the top of the Wave,
49:00and despite the fact we had a very heavy battle
49:04with about 20 U-boats,
49:06we sank three of them and didn't lose one single ship.
49:18That month, May 1943, 41 U-boats were sunk.
49:24One of them, Dernet's lost his younger son.
49:28In May 1943, the German submarines
49:33had lost the operational and tactical quality
49:38of surface manoeuvrability.
49:42They never regained it.
49:44Unable to range freely on the surface,
49:47the wolfpacks were beaten.
49:50It was time to celebrate a victory
49:52in North Africa and in the Atlantic.
49:55More than 30 U-boats were certainly destroyed
49:59in the month of May,
50:01foundering in many cases with their crews
50:04into the dark depths of the seas.
50:07Staggered by these deadly losses,
50:10the U-boats have recoiled
50:12to lick their wounds and mourn their dead.
50:17Our Atlantic convoys came safely through.
50:21Now, as a result of the May victory
50:24and the massacre of U-boats,
50:26we have had in June the best month from every point of view
50:31we have ever known in the whole 46 months of the war.
50:38The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.
51:16The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.
51:21The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.
51:26The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.
51:31The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.
51:36The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.
51:41The Atlantic lifeline was, at last, secure.