The Grand Alliance (104 page)

Prime Minister to General Ismay, for C.O.S.

Committee

23 Nov. 41

This report by General Embick on the British
defence system proceeds on the assumptions of the
strength of invasion which has been adopted here as a
basis for our preparations. These were no doubt
imparted to General Embick, but I must make it clear
that though these data may be accepted in order to
keep our defence up to the mark, they do not rest on
any solid basis other than that of prudent apprehension….

The great fault of this paper, as of many studies
about invasion, is that it ignores the time-sequence of
events. An invasion on so vast a scale could not be
prepared without detection. Not only eight hundred
alleged landing-craft, but many other vessels and large
ships, would have to be assembled in the river-mouths
and harbours. Aerial photography would reveal this
process, and the air force would subject them to the
heaviest bombing during what might well be a fortnight
or more. From Dunkirk to Dieppe our air strength is now

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sufficient to enable us to make daylight attacks under
fighter air cover. When the difficulties of embarkation
have been surmounted, it will still be necessary to
marshal these ships and bring them across the sea. By
that time it is reasonable to expect that naval resistance
will be available in a very high form. General Embick
assumes that there will be no warning, and that all our
small craft will be engaged in the Battle of the Atlantic.

But this is incorrect, once the scale of the invasion is
raised above the level of heavy raids. Let me have a
time-table (on one sheet of paper) of what the Navy will
do on each day from the “Alert” on Day 1 to Day 20,
and what forces will be in hand.

The whole of this preliminary but indispensable
phase plays no part in General Embick’s thought, yet in
it is comprised the main and proved defence of the
Island from invasion. Wishing to train our Army and
keep it keen, we have, naturally, stressed what
happens after the enemy lands, but the Royal Navy and
Royal Air Force are responsible for shattering the
assembly of the armada and for striking into it
decisively in passage. There must be no lifting of this
obligation off these two Services.

We could as the year 1941 drew to its end – and unforeseeable climax – also survey the course of the mortal U-boat war with solid reassurance. The favourable tendencies which I had unfolded in secret session in Parliament at the end of June had become more plain with every week. Our resources were mounting. By July we had been able to institute continuous, if slender, escort for our convoys throughout the North Atlantic, and on the route to Freetown. While Germany was straining every nerve to multiply her U-boats, active co-operation by the United States was becoming a reality. Our new weapons, though still in their infancy, and the effective tactical combination of The Grand Alliance

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our sea and air forces in the task of killing U-boats, were improving. The seagoing radar equipment on which so much depended had been put into production, not without risk of failure, straight from the drawing-board. We still had to rely on evasion at sea as our principal means of defence.

The day when we could court attack was still far ahead.

On September 4 the United States destroyer
Greer
was unsuccessfully attacked by a U-boat while proceeding independently to Iceland. A week later, on September 11, the President issued his “shoot first” order. In a broadcast he said: “From now on, if German or Italian vessels of war enter the waters the protection of which is necessary for American defence, they do so at their own peril. The orders I have given as Commander-in-Chief to the United States Army and Navy are to carry out that policy at once.” On September 16, for the first time, direct protection was given to our Halifax convoys by American escorts. This brought instant relief to our hard-pressed flotillas. But two months elapsed before the President succeeded in freeing his hands from the neutrality laws, by which American ships could not carry goods to Britain nor even arm themselves in their own defence.

I kept General Smuts informed.

Prime Minister to

14 Sept. 41

General Smuts

I am content with President’s action, which can only
be judged in relation to actual naval movements concerted at our meeting. His line runs from North Pole
down tenth meridian to about Faroes, then trends away
southwest to twenty-sixth meridian, which is followed to
the equator. He will attack any Axis ship found in this
vast area. Sixteen U-boats have cut up one of our
convoys in last few days off the tip of Greenland, nearly
a thousand miles inside the prohibited zone. When I
asked that American destroyers should be sent from

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Iceland to help our escorts, they went yesterday at
once, and, had the U-boats not vanished meanwhile,
Anglo-American forces would have been in action
together against them. United States assumption of
responsibility for all fast British convoys other than troop
convoys between America and Iceland should enable
Admiralty to withdraw perhaps forty of the fifty-two
destroyers and corvettes we now keep based on
Halifax and concentrate them in home waters. This
invaluable reinforcement should make killing by hunting
groups other than escorts possible for the first time.

Hitler will have to choose between losing the Battle of
the Atlantic or coming into frequent collision with United
States ships and warships. We know that he attaches
more importance to starving us out than to invasion.

American public have accepted the “shoot at sight”

declaration without knowing the vast area to which it is
to be applied, and in my opinion they will support the
President in fuller and further application of this principle, out of which at any moment war may come. All the
above is for your own most secret information.

Although five times as many U-boats were now operating as in 1940, our shipping losses were greatly reduced. No merchant ship in the fast Halifax convoys was sunk between July and November. The slow convoys sailing from Sydney, Cape Breton Island, for which British and Canadian escorts remained solely responsible throughout the voyage, were also free from attack in July and August.

In September however there was the seven days’ combat from Greenland to Iceland, mentioned in my cable to General Smuts, with a pack of over a dozen U-boats.

Sixteen ships out of sixty-four in the convoy were sunk, and two U-boats. On October 31 the immunity of the Halifax convoys from attack was at last broken, and the American destroyer
Reuben James
was torpedoed and sunk with The Grand Alliance

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severe loss of life. This was the first loss suffered by the United States Navy in the still undeclared war. In August the limits on the number of ships sailing in any one convoy were removed. The fast and slow convoys were often combined for part of their voyage, and on August 9 a combined convoy comprising a hundred ships came safely in. For the three months up to the end of September the weekly average of imports was nearly a million tons, an increase of about eighty thousand tons a week.

Our air patrols watching the German cruisers in Brest noticed that the U-boats based on Biscay ports normally made the passage to and from these bases on the surface and along fairly well denned routes across the Bay of Biscay. Here was an opportunity for our Coastal Command, but to make full use of it, two needs had to be met. The first was the problem of identification. Although our airborne radar was now yielding modest results, we had no means of identifying targets at night until, a little later, the development of an aircraft searchlight solved the problem.

The second need was an airborne weapon which would sink a U-boat. The bomb and the depth charge with which our aircraft were armed were not sufficiently accurate or deadly for the fleeting opportunities of attack which offered.

Nevertheless, during the three months ending with November twenty-eight attacks were made. By December the enemy was forced to cross the dangerous area of the bay either in darkness or under water. Thus the time during which a U-boat could hunt was reduced by about five days.

In August a Hudson aircraft of Coastal Command attacked a U-boat with depth charges in the western approaches.

The U-boat was injured and unable to dive, and the crew attempted to man their gun; but the Hudson with her own machine guns drove them below, and for the first time in war a submarine hoisted the white flag and surrendered to

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an aeroplane. A heavy sea was running and no surface vessel was near, but the Hudson maintained relentless watch over her prize. Aid was summoned, and the next day the U-boat was towed by a trawler to Iceland. She was later commissioned into the Royal Navy. The incident is unique.

A new burden was now laid upon the British Navy. The need to aid Russia focused attention upon the sea routes to Archangel and Murmansk. Towards the end of July, Vian –

now an Admiral – had been ordered to reconnoitre Spitzbergen. He landed a force to demolish the coal dumps and rescue the few Norwegians who had been pressed into German service. Three loaded German colliers were also captured in this neatly executed operation. About the same time fifty-six aircraft from the carriers
Furious
and
Victorious
gallantly attacked German shipping in the ports of Petsamo and Kirkenes at the top of the North Cape. Some damage was done, but sixteen of our planes were lost, and the operation was not repeated.