The Atlantic Campaign Term paper
While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (the atlantic campaign)
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!
The Battle of the Atlantic was the most prolonged struggle of World War II. This struggle was easily the one that came the closest to ending the war in Germany s favor. It was a battle that was extremely costly in terms of men s lives as well in terms of resources that affected virtually every continent in the world. It would determine whether England could continue to fight Hitler and whether Hitler would succeed in starving out the island nation.
Britain needed to import 55,000,000 tons of goods by sea in 1939. Included in this figure are one hundred percent of Britain s oil, most of its raw materials and half its food. And every day Germany s U-boats were gnawing at England s lifeline.
The battle officially began on September 3, 1939, the day Britain and France declared war against Germany. On that day the German submarine U-30 sank the British liner Athenia, which was carrying more than 1,100 passengers. One hundred and eighteen people died, 28 of them Americans. The terror increased when the U-boat surfaced in the moonlit water and fired its deck gun at the sinking ship. Only then did the U-boat commander realize that he had attacked an unarmed liner allegedly against specific orders.
Germany denied sinking the Athenia and claimed that the British themselves had sunk her so that they could get American sympathy. Their claim was that Winston Churchill had ordered a bomb to be placed on board this vessel to further aggravate German-American relations. A poll showed that 40 percent of Americans believed the Germans. Those had to be Americans without a sense of history. For in World War I, the sinking of the Lusitania, a British passenger liner, by a German submarine had helped to propel America into war on the side of the Allies. The Lusitania toll was higher, 1,195 people died, 128 of them U.S. citizens. Now, with the sinking of the Athenia, Germany had done it again.
The commander of U-30 was sworn to secrecy; the submarine s log was destroyed, and a new one, with no torpedoing of the Athenia mentioned, was substituted. On Hitler s orders, the U-boats were to follow the protocols, at least for a time. On September 11, to demonstrate that Germany was really following the rules of so-called civilized warfare, the U-48 sank a merchantship and radioed London the exact location of the lifeboats.
Germany had only 26 seaworthy U-boats operating at the beginning of the war. Few as they were, German submarines badly hurt British shipping and naval forces. Two weeks after the war began the U-29 sank the carrier Courageous, which was on anti-submarine patrol; 519 officers and men went down with the ship including the captain. The carrier Ark Royal had a close escape from a U-boat s torpedoes, and the Royal Navy was forced to realize that using carriers and the few available destroyers in U-boat hunting groups was both useless and dangerous. Rather, the grouping of merchant ships in convoys was quickly adopted as the best means of protecting merchant ships. Still, by the end of the first month of the war the U-boats had sunk 41 merchant ships.
The following month was worse, although the average number of U-boats at sea declined to ten as the boats on patrol when the war began had to return to port for supplies and torpedoes. But in October the U-29 sank the battleship Royal Oak within the British base of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. The ship went down with her admiral and a crew of over 800.
The destruction of merchant shipping grew during the rest of 1939 and into 1940. The ships were unprotected targets through most of their voyages. The Royal Navy did not have enough destroyers to escort convoys all the way across the Atlantic. The destroyers provided protection to the merchantmen to a point about 300 miles off Ireland, after that, they were on there own. Britain bound convoys similarly crossed the Atlantic unescorted until they reached that 300-mile rally point. All this changed in the spring of 1940, when the fall of France gave the Germans U-boat bases along the western coast of France. U-boats could now easily reach the unprotected stretches of the convoys courses, and the sinking of merchantmen escalated.
The German Navy started using a "wolf pack" tactic, sending U-boats out in groups that put serious stranglehold to shipping lanes. Often the U-boats knew where the convoys were because German code-breakers had cracked British merchant shipping codes and used intercepted messages to set up wolf pack ambushes. This German intelligence led to happy times aboard Germany s U-boats.
Under a U.S. Neutrality Act dating to 1935, American companies could not export arms. Isolationists considered the legislation as the best way to keep the United States from involvement in the European war. But two days after the torpedoing of the Athenia, President Roosevelt put a sharp edge on U.S. neutrality, declaring that the United States would consider any hostile operations in U.S. territorial waters as offensive. U.S. Navy ships and aircraft began Atlantic "Neutrality Patrols" to watch for foreign warships.
The German Navy and the Luftwaffe sought to deny the Atlantic Ocean to the Allies. The German Navy had planned to primarily use surface ships to attack Allied convoys; however, the heavy German naval losses in the Denmark and Norway Campaign in 1940 put the burden of the war at sea on submarines. The sinking of the battleship Bismarck in May 1941 marked the end of German surface-ship operations in the Atlantic. To quote Admiral Donitz, The sinking of the Bismarck had shown that the enemy had improved his system of patrolling the Atlantic to such a degree that our own surface vessels could obviously no longer operate in these sea areas. Therefore, the U-boat would be the principal German weapon used in the battle.
As losses mounted, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill began working on a plan to get American aid. At the same time, Roosevelt was using all his political persuasion on Congress to get the neutrality laws eased so that U.S. help could be sent to England.
The President had already succeeded in getting Congress to revise the Neutrality Act by specifically repealing the embargo on the sale of munitions, but the deal had to be strictly cash-and-carry. In June 1940, in Britain s darkest hour, when more than 330,000 troops had been withdrawn from France in the epic evacuation of Dunkirk and her army was short on ammunition. The United States sent England so-called "surplus" ammunitions, worth about $43 million but technically not sold. Of the 39 destroyers that served in the Dunkirk evacuation, six had been sunk and 19 damaged. Britain was in desperate need of destroyers. In 1940 in an agreement between Great Britain and the United States, 50 old American destroyers were transferred to the Royal Navy.
On May 29 Germany warned all shipping that unrestricted U-boat warfare was about to begin in waters around the British Isles. There was little that a battered Royal Navy could do about it. The U-boat commanders called this "the Happy Time," as they encountered vulnerable convoys. The Luftwaffe had its own happy time, bombing ships that passed within range. From July to October 1940, U-boats sank more than one million tons of shipping.
The people of Britain were living on sharply rationed food. The British people were learning to adapt to tighter belts. The nation thought they could get by on no less than 43 million tons, and yet they learned to manage to get by about three-quarters that amount.
Churchill, meanwhile, was planning to ask Roosevelt for the loan of 50 older U.S. destroyers in exchange for the establishment of U.S. naval and air bases on British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. By the spring of 1940 Churchill knew his nation was in great peril. U-boats were cutting Britain s Atlantic lifeline and Germany was preparing to invade England in the summer of 1940. In a letter to Roosevelt, Churchill wrote: "Mr. President, with great respect I must tell you that in the long history of the world this is a thing to do now."
Eager to shore up the British against a common threat, Roosevelt was nevertheless fearful of isolationist opposition. To avoid congressional debate, he used the destroyers Churchill wanted via an executive order that not only ignored the neutrality law but also disregarded the U.S. Constitution, which puts war-making power and treaty-ratifying power in the Congress.
The first eight destroyers were given over to British crews at Halifax on September 9. The month before, the Luftwaffe was pounding England with all-out air attacks designed to wipe out the Royal Air Force and clear the way for the planned invasion. The Battle of Britain had begun with the relentless bombing of London.
The U.S. destroyers arrived in England crammed with provisions, including many items no longer seen on Royal Navy ships in wartime such as: china, silver, and tablecloths. Another prominent difference foreign to British sailors, included bunks instead of hammocks. The destroyers were given new names that were common to both countries, such as Broadway. The destroyers would prove their worth. Of the 27 U-boats sunk by surface ships during the war, former U.S. destroyers played a part in the sinking of five.
Overwhelmingly re-elected to his third term in November 1940, Roosevelt continued to whittle away at American neutrality. He pushed through Congress a law that became known as Lend-Lease. The law, which went into effect in March 1941, gave the President the power to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of" articles to any country which the President determined was vital to US security. The Lend-Lease Act provided aid to 38 countries by wars end, amounting to an estimated 48 billion dollars, of that, Britain is estimated to have received at 13.5 billion and possibly as much as 20 billion dollars.
Churchill called Lend-Lease "Hitler's death warrant," for now Britain did not stand alone. U.S. aid could pour through the Atlantic lifeline and save Britain. There was no neutrality in the Atlantic now.
On September 4, 1941, the U.S. destroyer Greer was steaming alone toward Iceland when a British aircraft alerted the destroyer to a U-boat some ten miles ahead. The destroyer went to general quarters and caught up with the submarine, the U-652. For several hours, with the help of the British aircraft, the destroyer maintained sonar contact with the U-boat and dropped depth charges. The U-boat responded by firing two torpedoes at the Greer. Both ships then broke off contact. From that date, U.S. naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison later wrote, "the United States was engaged in a de facto naval war with Germany on the Atlantic Ocean."...
MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 24 May, 2012 from
<http://essaymania.com/143705/the-atlantic-campaign>
More College Papers
Descriptive Essay essay
In the United Sates, where the population is inflated every year. The amount of space for landfills decreases every day. The need for recycling should not be asked, it should just be done out of habit. Everyone in America needs to recycle, to help the lamdfill problem, help the environment, and help
The Purposes Of Luis Valdez S essay
The Purposes of Luis Valdez s Plays
There are several purposes to the actos; one-act plays written by Luis Valdez such as the play Los Vendidos. The main purpose of Luis Valdez s plays is to educate farmers and the general public. Valdez s plays were a means to get migrants to organize into a viabl
The Constitution essay
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of Religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, this Amendment is the most important part of the constitution. Without free speech, we the people of the United States would not be able to speak openly