By June 1943 the shipping losses fell to the lowest figure since the United States had entered the war. The convoys came through intact, and the Atlantic supply line was safe.

The struggle in these critical months is shown by the following figures:

As the defeat of the U-boats affected all subsequent events, we must here carry the story forward. The air weapon had now at last begun to attain its full stature. No longer did the British and Americans think in terms of purely naval operations, or air operations over the sea, but only of one great maritime organisation in which the two Services and the two nations worked as a team, perceiving with increasing aptitude each other’s capabilities and limitations.

Victory demanded skilful and determined leadership and Closing the Ring

26

the highest standard of training and technical efficiency in all ranks.

Closing the Ring

27

Closing the Ring

28

Closing the Ring

29

In June 1943 the beaten remnants of the U-boat fleet ceased to attack our North Atlantic convoys, and we gained a welcome respite. For a time the enemy’s activity was dispersed over the remote wastes of the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, where our defences were relatively weak but where we presented fewer targets. Our air offensive in the approaches to the U-boat bases in the Bay of Biscay continued to gather strength. In July, thirty-seven of them were sunk, thirty-one by air attack, and of these nearly half were sunk in the Bay. In the last three months of 1943, fifty-three U-boats were destroyed in sinking only forty-seven merchant ships.

Throughout a stormy autumn the U-boats struggled vainly to regain the ascendancy in the North Atlantic. Our combined sea and air defence was by that time so strong that they suffered heavy losses for small results in every convoy battle. In anti-U-boat warfare the air weapon was now an equal partner with the surface ship. Our convoys were guarded by more numerous and formidable surface escorts than ever before, reinforced with escort carriers giving close and advanced air protection. More than this, we had the means to seek out and destroy the U-boats wherever we could find them. The combination of support groups of carriers and escort vessels, aided by long-range aircraft of the Coastal Command, which now included American squadrons, proved decisive. One such group commanded by Captain F. J. Walker, R.N., our most outstanding U-boat killer, was responsible for the destruction of six U-boats in a single cruise.

The so-called merchant aircraft-carrier, or M.A.C. ship, which came out at this time, was an entirely British conception. An ordinary cargo ship or tanker was fitted with a flying-deck for naval aircraft. While preserving its Closing the Ring

30

mercantile status and carrying cargo, it helped to defend the convoy in which it sailed. There were nineteen of these vessels in all, two wearing the Dutch flag, working in the North Atlantic. Together with the catapult-aircraft merchant ships (C.A.M.S.), which had preceded them with a rather different technique, they marked a new departure in naval warfare. The merchant ship had now taken the offensive against the enemy instead of merely defending itself when attacked. The line between the combatant and non-combatant ship, already indistinct, had almost vanished.

Closing the Ring

31

Closing the Ring

32

The immense United States war production was now reaching its peak. Long-range aircraft and ships of many types, including the escort c7arriers we so greatly needed, were flowing from American yards and workshops.