1 the World War and the Atlantic Campaign 1
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Notes 1 The World War and the Atlantic Campaign 1. There were also a number of Italian submarines which played a subsidiary part until 1943. 2. See p. 5 below. 3. It is an interesting reflection of the time that a common mock definition of strategy was 'tactics talked through a brass hat;, in other words setting the definition by personal status rather than functionally. However, by 1957 when the first of a number of similarly titled volumes appeared, the term 'grand strategy' at least was reasonably well known. 4. Directorate of Naval Staff Duties, The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine (London, HMSO, 1995), 42-3, 47. 5. See p. 2 above on human scales. 6. Here were also some Japanese submarines which reached the Atlantic, but only to transport relatively small quantities of scarce raw materials. 7. See Alberto Santoni, 'The Italian Submarine Campaign', in Howarth and Law (eds), The Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1945: The 50th Anniversary International Naval Conference (London, Greenhill Books, 1994), Chapter 18. 8. Paul Sutcliffe has suggested privately that when employed in the less demanding areas, they were no less competent than the Germans carrying out similar tasks. 9. A relatively rare example of such a perspective in English is that of N. M. Naumov, 'The Soviet View', in Howarth and Law, 554-66, although this is largely a review of the Soviet-era historiography of the Battle. 10. Because of the combined problems of weather, long daylight hours in summer (which favoured German aircraft particularly) and enemy activity, most Arctic convoys took place in the winter. 11. Attention might also be drawn to the relative quantities of material reach- ing the USSR by other routes such as the Soviet Far East and through the Persian Gulf route. 12. It is approximately 600 miles from Cape Sable to Cape Race, a considerable proportion of the cross-Atlantic distance. 13. See William Glover 'Manning and Training the Allied Navies', in Howarth and Law, Chapter 10 and David Zimmerman, The Great Naval Battle of Ottawa (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1989). The wartime/peace- time expansion ratio of the RCN was in the order of 50:1, well above any of the other significant maritime nations. Sir Peter Gretton, in his foreword to Marc Milner, North Atlantic Run: the Royal Canadian Navy and the Battle for the Convoys (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1985). 14. The battleship Tirpitz only entered service after the outbreak of war but her existence was known about from the outset. 15. PRO ADM 234/322 BR1736(3/50), Battle summary No. 5, Chase and Sinking of German Battleship Bismarck, 23-27 May 1941. 219 220 Notes to pp. 1-16 16. S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea (London, HMSO, 1961), Volume III, Part 2, Appendix ZZ Table I. 17. See E. N. Poland, The Torpedomen (1993, no place or publisher given), espe- cially Chapters 7, 8 and 10. 18. Less than 3 million tons to the submarines' 14 million. 19. PRO ADM 234/579, Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping (hereafter Barley and Waters), Volume IB, Plan 43 gives figures by quarter for numbers of ships sunk in British home waters and the North Atlantic (without distinguishing the two areas). 20. Some accounts of the German advances on the Eastern Front make an oceanic analogy about progress on the featureless steppe. 21. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975), 1174. However, it does include the sea meaning, perhaps making the point that it was the advent of steam propulsion which allowed the setting of non-weather-determined courses and thus introducing the concept to ship- ping of the shortest route also being the fastest. 22. The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine, 235. 23. See above, p. 27. 24. Convoy battles, especially latterly, tended to involve both sea and air forces on one, or sometimes even both, sides. 25. See Chapter 3 for a fuller treatment. 26. Preceding by a short head the actions in the Pacific War - many of which took place in any case fairly close to land. A further post-Cold War reflection might be that oceanic warfare was not so much an advance as a high-water mark, with the stress from the 1990s onwards being on expedi- tionary warfare in littoral areas - for those nations whose strategic vision is that far advanced. 27. Howarth and Law, 596-601. 28. A different viewpoint based on the chronology of the secondary literature is given in W. J. R. Gardner, 'An Allied Perspective', in Howarth and Law, 528-32. 29. Jiirgen Rohwer, The Critical Convoy Battles of March 1943: the Battle for HX229/SC122 (Shepperton, Ian Allan, 1977); Martin Middlebrook, Convoy: the Battle for Convoys SC122 and HX229 (London, Allen Lane, 1976); David Syrett, 'Prelude to Victory: the Battle for Convoy HX231, 4-7 April 1943', in Historical Research, Vol. 70, No. 1 (February 1997), 99-109. 30. No examples are known to this author. 31. Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: the Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-boat Attacks along the American Coast in World War II (New York, Harper Perennial, 1991) and the same author's Black May: the Epic Story of the Allies' Defeat of the German U-boats in May 1943 (New York, HarperCollins, 1998). 32. Robert Stern, Type VII U-Boats (London, Arms and Armour, 1991); Willem Hackman, Seek and Strike: Sonar, Anti-submarine Warfare and the Royal Navy 1914-1954, (London, HMSO, 1984); Richard Baker, The Terror of Tobermory: Vice-Admiral Sir Gilbert Stephenson KBE, CBE, CMG (London, W. H. Allen, 1972). 33. S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea (London, HMSO, 1954-61); S. E. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Boston, Little, Notes to pp. 17-33 221 Brown, 1947-62); John Terraine, Business in Great Waters: the U-Boat Wars 1916-1945 (London, Leo Cooper, 1989); and Dan Van der Vat, The Atlantic Campaign (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1988) are all examples. General surveys may also be approached through aggregation of specialised studies, for example, Howarth and Law. 34. A man wandering in a street at night with his eyes fixed firmly on the ground is asked what he is doing. 'I have lost my wallet/ he replies. He is further asked if this place, under the lamppost, is where the wallet was lost. 'No; he responds, 'but this is where the light is.; 35. C. B. A. Behrens, Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War (London, HMSO, 1955) and Kevin Smith, Conflict over Convoys: Anglo-American Logistics Diplomacy in the Second World War (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996) are separated by some 40 years with very little of substance in between. 36. Marc Milner, 'The Battle of the Atlantic' in The Journal of Strategic Studies (March 1990), 45-66. 37. Not just because of Ultra but for many other reasons, as this work will bring out. 38. Donald McLachlan, Room 39: Naval Intelligence in Action 1939-1945 (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968). This was not the only instance but it was by far the most blatant. 39. Roskill, The War at Sea, Vol. II, 208. Roskill's wartime knowledge was in- disputable as he had served as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence. 40. F. W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974). Winterbotham was not an assiduous researcher and had little to do with the Battle of the Atlantic but the work's importance lies in opening the gates to the historical study of Ultra. 41. For examples, see Chapter 8, pp. 171-5: 'The million ton myth'. 42. F. H. Hinsley et al, British Intelligence in the Second World War (London, HMSO, 1979-88), 3 volumes in 4. There were further volumes but these are not germane to the subject under study. 43. Alluded to in Gannon, Black May, 55 and W. J. R. Gardner, 'The Battle of the Atlantic, 1941 - the First Turning Point?' in Geoffrey Till (ed), Seapower: Theory and Practice (Ilford, Frank Cass, 1994), 121. 44. It is invidious to select, but the work of Jiirgen Rohwer, Ralph Erskine and David Syrett deserves especially to be noted. 2 Chronology, Time and Measurement 1. 'Chronology n. (pi. -ies) 1 science of determining dates. 2 a arrangement of events etc. in order of occurrence, b table or document displaying this. (Greek khronos time, *-logy).' Definition in the Pocket Oxford Dictionary 1994. 2. S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea (London, HMSO, 1954-61), 3 volumes in 4, and S. E. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Boston, Little, Brown, 1947-1962) (especially, vols I and X). 3. J. Rohwer and G. Hummlechen, Chronology of the War at Sea: The Naval History of World War Two, (London, Greenhill Books, 1992). 4. PRO ADM 234/578 and /579 Defeat of the Enemy attack on Shipping (here- after Barley and Waters) (now published in an edited single volume edition, 222 Notes to pp. 17-33 1998, the Navy Records Society). Professor Rohwer's similar classification has appeared in a number of places, including Les Marines de Guerre du Dreadnought au Nucleaire (Chateau de Vincennes, Service historique de la Marine, 1988), 297-330. Barley and Waters identify specific dates whereas Rohwer uses months; the latter approach is adopted here. 5. The notion that there was no intention to have a convoy system (as occurred during much of the First World War) cannot be supported, but resources were very scarce. 6. There was a bias towards independents at the beginning of the period and convoy shipping towards the end.