On October 31, 1941, the U.S. Navy destroyer, USS Reuben James, was sunk after being struck by a torpedo from the German U-boat U-552 near Iceland. Of the 144 crew comprising 7 officers, 136 sailors and 1 passenger, 100 were killed and 44 rescued.
At this point in World War II, the United States was still officially a non-belligerent, but effectively sympathetic to the side of the Allies. The American destroyer was part of the force escorting the convoys carrying war materials to Iceland, with Great Britain as their final destination. The American force protected the convoys to Iceland, after which escort security passed on to the British Navy.
(Taken from Wars of the 20th Century – World War II in Europe)
The United States enters World War II At the outbreak of World War II, the isolationist United States declared its neutrality based on the U.S. Neutrality Act of 1937. However, the U.S. government, led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was greatly alarmed by Hitler’s increasingly belligerent foreign policy, and with its sympathy turned toward the European democracies, it had provided the 1937 Neutrality Act with a stipulation that the United States could sell weapons to hostile nations on a “cash and carry” basis, i.e. that the purchaser pay for the munitions in cash and transport them at its own expense and risk. This provision was intended to benefit Britain and France, as their powerful navies dominated the seas. In November 1939, the United States re-affirmed its neutrality, again with the “cash and carry” provision that favored the Allies. In June 1940, with the defeat of France, and Britain losing much of its military equipment at Dunkirk, President Roosevelt approved the sale of thousands of old U.S. Army rifles and tons of ammunition to Britain. Also, as the British Navy had lost many ships in the campaigns in Norway and France, and in the defense of the English coasts, in September 1940, the U.S. and British governments signed the “Destroyers for Bases” Agreement, where the United States transferred fifty old destroyers to Britain in exchange for the British granting to the United States 99-year leases to military bases in the Caribbean. As well, the U.S. military was granted base rights in Newfoundland (in Canada) and Bermuda.
In a major act that moved the United States away from its nominal neutrality, March 1941, the U.S. government approved the Lend-Lease Act, where the United States could give weapons and other defense materials free of charge to “any country whose defense the [U.S.] President deems vital to the defense of the U.S.” Armaments, food, and funds soon arrived in Britain (and China, and later, the Soviet Union). The next month, April 1941, the Pan-American Security Zone (established in October 1939) was extended to 22° longitude to just west of Iceland. In June 1941, following the U-boat sinking of the American vessel, the SS Robin Moor (its crew and passengers were allowed to board lifeboats beforehand), the U.S. government froze German assets in the United States, and ordered Germany (and Italy) to close their consulates, except their embassies.
Finally, on December 8, 1941, the United States entered World War II by declaring war on Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Three days later, December 11, Germany (and Italy) declared war on the United States; that same day, the latter declared war on Germany (and Italy).
The United States in the Battle of the Atlantic At the outset, the United States was unprepared to confront the U-boat threat, despite being able to draw on the British experience and itself having faced many hostile encounters with U-boats. The U.S. Navy ignored British Navy recommendations to impose a blackout of coastal areas, or that merchant ships travel in convoys, or that ships avoid regular maritime routes, and that lighthouses and other navigational aids be deactivated.
What ensued was the German U-boat fleet’s (second) “Happy Time” from January to June 1942, where for the loss of only 22 U-boats, the Allies lost 1,000 lives and 609 ships (9.1 million tons), comprising 25% of all Allied number of ships lost in World War II. This episode in the Atlantic struggle was particularly tragic, as the U.S. Navy’s apparent disregard to implement war-time measures allowed the U-boats to attack with near impunity, most notably by using the nighttime silhouette of the docked merchant ships against the backdrop of the bright city lights to torpedo the vessels. Admiral Ernest King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet, received criticism for not implementing the convoy system, which British experience had shown was less vulnerable to U-boat attacks than individual ships traveling alone. As well, he was blamed for the feeble naval defense of the American eastern seaboard, although at the outbreak of war, the U.S. Navy was severely overstretched, engaging in naval operations in Asia and providing convoy escort for Atlantic convoys. Also, the sale of 50 destroyers to Britain weakened U.S. naval strength, and the U.S. Eastern Sea Frontier, tasked to safeguard the East Coast, possessed obsolete vessels, including two 1905-vintage gunboats, three 1919-era patrol boats, four converted yachts, and four wooden submarines.
By May 1942, the U.S. Navy had assembled enough ships for convoy protection and coastal defenses. In June 1942, the convoy system was extended to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, which had seen a rise in U-boat activity. Other British recommendations, such as a coastal blackout, were enforced. In July 1940, a fleet of British trawlers, refitted for anti-submarine warfare, arrived in the United States and were manned with British Royal Navy crews, to assist in convoy escort. By August 1942, with the Western Hemisphere Atlantic coast bristling with naval defenses, Allied merchant losses dropped considerably, and the withdrawal of U-boats from the American continental coastline marked the end of the Second Happy Time.
The second half of 1942 marked the return of the U-boats to the Atlantic, with wolf pack attacks concentrated along the mid-Atlantic air gap. During this period, 575 merchant ships were sunk. Starting in November 1942, the Allies introduced many strategic and technological innovations that would finally turn the fortunes of the battle away from the Germans. Aside from escorts that remained with the convoys, naval “support groups” were deployed, which patrolled known wolf pack haunts and were tasked mainly to hunt down and destroy U-boats. Ahead-throwing weapons, such as the “hedgehog” and “squid”, were introduced against submerged U-boats, which had one vital advantage over the traditional depth charges in that these new weapons, when fired, allowed the ASDIC to maintain contact with the U-boat. The British success rate of 1.6% using depth charges rose to 17.5% using hedgehog and squid.
The “mid-Atlantic air gap” was finally closed with the long-range B-24 Liberator anti-submarine bombers. As well, Allied planes were equipped with very sensitive centimetric radars, (replacing the metric radars), which could detect surfaced U-boat towers and even periscopes from long distances. A powerful spotlight, called a Leigh Light, worked at night in conjunction with the new radar: as the Allied plane approached its target, the Leigh Light, responding to radar tracking, automatically turned on and pointed at the surfaced U-boat, which was then destroyed with the plane’s weapons.
Furthermore, merchant aircraft carriers (MAC ships) and U.S. escort carriers appeared in greater numbers and patrolled the whole range of the Atlantic, and together with their modern fighter planes equipped with powerful radars and anti-submarine weapons, made U-boat operations extremely difficult and dangerous. Direct convoy protection also increased substantially, as large numbers of American destroyer escorts (aka frigates) were introduced, largely replacing the less effective corvettes. Also in October 1942, British intelligence broke the code of the German Navy’s new Enigma network, TRITON, following the retrieval of codebooks and key settings of the advanced M4 Enigma machine from a captured U-boat at Port Said, Egypt.
These new Allied measures did not become apparent immediately, and for a time, the British actually seemed headed for defeat. Following a lull in fighting during the winter, in March 1943, Admiral Donitz, now commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine, confident of victory, unleashed virtually the whole U-boat fleet in the Atlantic. Spectacular success was achieved, with wolf packs sinking over 80 Allied merchant ships in the Atlantic, this high loss causing supplies in Britain to fall and so alarming Churchill that he considered ending the convoy system. But in April 1943, the new Allied anti-submarine measures from the previous months began to take effect: 15 U-boats were sunk for a loss of 39 merchant ships. Then in May 1943, in what is known as “Black May”, the German Navy lost a catastrophic 43 U-boats against 34 merchant ships in the Atlantic (58 worldwide). Admiral Donitz suspended all operations in the Atlantic, admitting that the war in the Atlantic was lost.
In the ensuing period until the end of the European war in May 1945, the Kriegsmarine introduced several technological measures to try and wrest back the initiative in the Atlantic. U-boats were equipped with improved radar warning systems, two types of modern torpedoes were developed: the acoustic torpedo that homed in on the enemy ship’s propeller and the FAT (Flächen-Absuch-Torpedo) that moved in a criss-cross pattern inside a convoy until it hit a ship; and sonar decoys that were launched from U-boats to generate false ASDIC readings. A small number of U-boats were modified as Flak Boats, which used their greater anti-aircraft firepower to engage (rather than avoid by submerging) enemy aircraft. The German Navy’s most notable achievement was in the improvement of the submarine itself, with the introduction of the Type XXI U-boat “Elektroboote” (“Electric boat”), whose clean hull design became the model for modern-day submarines, and which allowed it to dive faster, range farther, and move faster underwater. Only four Elektroboote submarines were completed (two of which were deployed) as a result of production deficiencies and because U-boat factories were destroyed by the advancing Allies towards the end of the war.
These German innovations ultimately were futile, because of Allied counter-measures against them, and also because of the sheer number of Allied ships, both merchant and military, in the Atlantic, because of the enormous production output from the U.S. shipbuilding industry. The elimination of the U-boat threat allowed the Allied buildup in Britain in 1943-1944, with some three million American and other Allied troops transported across the Atlantic, for the eventual launching in June 1944 of Operation Overlord, the reconquest of German-occupied Western Europe.
In the Battle of the Atlantic, the Allies lost 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships, while the Germans lost 783 U-boats.