German navy
I have just watched a 45 minute documentary film on the Battles of the Atlantic. It uses mainly German film from the archives. I was astounded to discover how small the German surface fleet was and how little action their battleships were involved in. I shudder to think what havoc the submarines would have caused if they had been supported properly.
Labels: Atlantic battles
posted by Boabbie at 8:13 pm
2 Comments:
Boabbie -
It appeared to me at the time that this was mainly due to the RAF keeping the Tirpitz in Norway and the Scharnhosrt - Gneisgnau - Hipper et al locked up in Brest - should they have tried it on like the Bismarck who knows what would have happened !
As I remember it, the Battle of the Atlantic was the one battle Winston Churchill knew that could not be lost. If it had been lost, the war would have been lost.
Several of the stories I posted to the "People's War" project were related to the Battle of the Atlantic. Several families I know lost kinfolk in the Merchant Navy. Many of the German submarine crews also perished, including the submarine 'Ace' Günther Prien (the 'Bull of Scapa Flow') captain of U-47.
I gather Günther Prien had been in the Merchant Navy himself as a younger man. I don't feel what he did as a U-Boat Captain was anything personal against the Allied Seamen. It was war and a large part of it led to many deaths.
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