Battle Of The Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, from 1939 to 1945, was the longest

continuous battle of the Second World War. Canada played a key role in

the Allied struggle for control of the North Atlantic, as German

submarines worked diligently to cripple the convoys shipping crucial

supplies to Europe.

Introduction:

September 1 1939, the German army attacked poland with a surprise,

two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany, WW2

began. With German army winning on the land, their progress in the sea

was not too optimistic. Because of the Treaty of Versailles, the

development of Nazi Germany’s navy was harshly stricted, so during the

war the German Navy didn’t use many warship, instead they used a lot

of submarines. Also known as the “U-boats”.

Admiral Graf Spee

The battle starts:

After the war is declared, British and French immediately began a

marine blockade, even though this had little immediate effect on German

industry. Also the Royal Navy quickly introduced a convoy system for the

protection of trade that gradually extended out from the British Isles,

eventually reaching as far as Panama, Bombay and Singapore. Convoys

allowed the Royal Navy to concentrate its escorts near the one place

where the U-boats were guaranteed to be found, the convoys. Each

consisting of between 30 and 70 mostly unarmed merchant ships.

Canadian and the war:

Canada declared war on Germany on September 10 1939. And

Immediately, Canada’s navy, merchant marine and air force were thrust

into the Battle of the Atlantic. During the war Canada’s duty was to

establish an escort base for the Allies at St John’s, Newfoundland. The

Canadian military was also in charge of the Newfoundland Escort Force,

which was created to improve the weakness of the Allies in escorting

convoy ships into military strongholds in Newfoundland and Iceland.

Primarily escort duty for the hundreds of convoys that gathered in Halifax

and Sydney, Nova Scotia, for the treacherous journey across the

Atlantic. At that time though the Canadian navy was very weak with only

six destroyers and about 3,500 personnel, a third of whom were

reservists. To meet its obligations, Canada embarked on a massive

shipbuilding effort, commissioning dozens of smaller warships known as

corvettes. By the end of the war, Canada was credited with sinking

nineteen German U-boats and participated in more than 200 U-boat kills.

The war made the Royal Canadian Navy grow immensely in size and

strength.

corvettes (personal opinion: exteremly useless)

The “wolf pack”:

A long time ago (WWI) the German navy were using the “Unrestricted

submarine warfare” which means that the German submarine can attack

the enemy ship without warning them,during the last few month of WWI

the German Navy found out that the cargo ship are harder and harder to

interrupt because of the convoy system .As WWII began a new type of

submarine tactic was needed to intercept the allies merchant ships.

The “wolf pack” was introduced by Karl Dönitz, the admiral of the

German navy during WWII he introduced this tactic because he was

one of the victim of the old “Unrestricted submarine warfare” tactic. The

“wolf pack” means to form a small amount of submarines into a squad ,

they will coordinate with other submarine squad and assault the enemy

fleet with the command of a higher rank commander. Using this tactic

the German u-boats were able to destroy a lot of the ally cargo ship

causing substantial destruction to the ally war effort. For example in

1942 the German u-boats destroyed 1160 ally merchant ships with a

total tonnage of 6.3million tons and the German only lost around 7% of

their total submarines. In early 1943, allies began vigorous development

long-range aircraft Liberators, radios and the development of new anti-

submarine technology. The German u-boats started to find it harder and

harder to destroy their prey, in 1943 the German u-boats only destroyed

2.4 million tons of merchant ship with the loss of 245 u-boats, and in

1944 with the allies landed at Normandy the “wolf pack” went completely

to an end.

The sinking of Bismarck:

Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for Nazi

Germany's Kriegsmarine. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck,

the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July

1936 and launched in February 1939. Work was completed in August

1940, and she was commissioned into the German fleet. As one of the

few battleships that’s being built for the Kriegsmarine. As a very short

lived Battleship(from Aug 24, 1940 to May 27, 1941), her life was bond

to be extraordinary.

Battle of the Denmark Strait:(HMS Hood sunk)

May 24, 1941 5:45 am German lookouts spotted smoke on the

horizon; this turned out to be HMS Hood (battlecruiser) and HMS Prince

of Wales (battleships), two of the newly built warships in the Royal navy

(along with two heavy cruisers and six destroyers). At 5:52am Hms Hood

opened fire the battle was on. At first, because of the bad

communication between the two battleships in the British side they were

actually shooting each other in the first two rounds of bombardment. At

5:55am both Bismarck (battleships) and Prinz Eugen (heavy cruiser)

opened fire at the HMS Hood, the British commander finally realized that

they were shooting the wrong target when the Bismarck fired her third

round of bombardment and caused a fire on the HMS Hood immediately

Vice Admiral Holland ordered the fleet to turn left and reset the target as

the German Battleship. At exactly 6 am when HMS Hood just Turned

around Bismarck fired her fifth round of bombardment and one (might be

two) shell hit one of the HMS Hood’s secondary ammo racks, the

explosion affected the main ammo rack, a huge explosion took place

HMS Hood split into two pieces and sunk quickly. Among the 1419

officers and men (including the commander: Vice Admiral Lancelot

Holland) only three people survived. HMS Prince of Wales’s bridge was

hit by a 14” shell and all crew on the bridge were killed except the

commander, the situation was almost under control, and she quit the

battlefield. The victory was costly for the Germans, Bismarck was hit by

the HMS Prince of Wales it caused Bismarck to lost a part of its speed

and 1000 tons of its oil, which eventually caused its sinking (caught up

by the Royal navy).

Chase:(Bismarck sunk)

After the battle, Bismarck split up with Prinz Eugen and heading

back to Saint-Nazaire for reparation. In the meantime, the Royal navy

assembled 42 warships, trying to destroy the Bismarck, the chasing fleet

includes two aircraft carriers, three battlecruisers, and five battleships.

Inorder to cover Prinz Eugen Bismarck changed its route and headed

towards the Royal Navy. May 25, 1942 one of the planes on HMS

Victorious hitted a torpedo on Bismarck but didn’t cause any damage.

The second day, May, 26 in order to cut Bismarck’s backup route Royal

Navy’s ordered HMS Renown (battlecruiser) and HMS Royal Ark

(aircraft carrier) to leave the Port of Gibraltar. In the evening Royal Ark

spotted Bismarck, fifteen aircrafts took off carrying torpedoes, one hitted

the Bismarck’s steering system and caused its speed to slow down

again.

The old man in the picture was the guy who flew the “sword fish” and destroyed the Bismarck's steering system

At last on May 27, 1941 HMS King George V and HMS Rodney (both

battleships) caught up with the chasing fleet, at 8am they started

shooting, after losing all its guns Bismarck stopped to resist. Finally, At

10:39 am Bismarck sunk. British commander Tovey described this battle

as the “most gallant fight”, and a major symbolic defeat of the German

navy.

Bismarck in the bottom of Atlantic

After this battle the German high rank naval officers and Hitler himself

completely lost their confidence of their battle vessels, instead they

started to produce more U-boats.

Victory:

With the allies producing more and more aircraft carriers, the German

U-boat had less and less place to hide. Until 1944 The American Navy

had 145 aircraft carriers and the Royal Navy had around 40. It caused a

massive loss to the German U-boats. Also, because of the bombing

campine on the German’s producing factory, this significantly reduced

the Germany's war effort. On 1945 May, 8 Karl Dönitz ordered all 700

German U-boats to come-up to the surface and surrender to the Britain.

The battle of Atlantic was then officially over.

Victory was costly, more than 70,000 Allied seamen, merchant

mariners and airmen lost their lives, including 4,600 Canadians.

References Documents

https://www.bilibili.comhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyGfLLsztV0https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 加拿大皇家海軍 https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=n8d8B7TOFt8https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantichttps://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-the-atlantic/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Langsdorffhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfpack_(naval_tactic)Documentry : Battlefield: Batlle of the atlantic.Trailers: World Of Warships “German Navy”(New Version Release Trailer)Documentry: Secret Service: Submarinehttps://baike.baidu.com/item/ 狼群战术 /1055461?fr=aladdin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfpack_(naval_tactic)https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%BF%BE%E6%96%AF%E9%BA%A6%E5%8F%B7%E6%88%98%E5%88%97%E8%88%B0/164923?fromtitle=%E4%BF%BE%E6%96%AF%E9%BA%A6&fromid=2225317#5_3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Denmark_Straithttps://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%A4%A7%E8%A5%BF%E6%B4%8B%E6%B5%B7%E6%88%98#2The Chronological ATLAS OF WORLD WAR II