WORLD WAR II: Battle of the Atlantic

Almirante Erich Raeder, 3 de septiembre de 1939, Berlín.#GGC11C

"No podemos soñar con presentar batalla a la flota británica para aniquilarla. Nuestra única oportunidad reside en el ataque de las comunicaciones comerciales del enemigo, para lo cual los submarinos constituyen nuestra arma más eficaz. En consecuencia, tenemos necesidad de submarinos y más submarinos"

Background: World War I

During World War II, the formidable fleet of German war gave enough trouble to the British Admiralty. However, British concerns seemed not matter, since most of these ships, except for an occasional excursion to the North Sea (Battle of Jutland), remained in their ports throughout the war. But this did not mean that British ships were out of danger, as a new weapon had appeared on the scene: the submarine.

Rudel "wolf pack"

Dönitz's plan was to disperse all U-Bootes the routes used by convoys. When a submersible detected one, communicate by radio to the other, and all submarines in the area at the same time intercept the convoy at night. Dönitz's enthusiasm spread to Hitler almost immediately.

German Fleet

Germany had 3 pocket battleships, 2 battlecruisers, 8 cruisers and 21 destroyers. Of the 57 submarines available to Doenitz, only 22 were oceanic type VII and could operate in the Atlantic.

The start of naval warfare

On September 3, 1939 the top submarine commander (known as U-Boot), the German Untersee-Boot, underwater ship. Day 1 September 1939, Admiral Karl Doenitz then sent to the German Naval High Command his last memorandum, which emphasizes the insufficient development of the submarine weapon. On day 3, he received a dispatch from the Naval High Command where he is warned that "the UK has declared war".

According to the sailor and writer Luis de la Sierra in his book The naval war in the Atlantic (pp. 20-21) some of the ships to be built are:

Six battleships of 54,000 t of displacement, armed with eight guns of 406 mm and 12 150 mm; moved for 12 diesel engines provide a maximum speed of 30 knots and a range of 32,000 miles.

The Submarine.

With this stealthy weapon the Germans began to attack merchant ships supplying the UK, endangering the supply of the British Isles. Given the important role played by the Germans during the war submersible it was not surprising that the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany to build more ships of that class.

Enemy Fleet

The war started too early for the Kriegsmarine. The aggressive modernization plan of the German fleet (the Z plan) had just begun, and as the Germans knew Admirals, Fleet Metropolitan (Home Fleet) British was far superior in number to the German Kriegsmarine.

The ten largest Aces of the Deep

1- Kretschmer, Otto 2- Lüth, Wolfgang 3- Topp, Erich 4- Prien, Günther 5- Liebe, Heinrich 6- Schütze, Viktor 7- Lehmann-Willenbrock, Heinrich 8- Merten, Karl-Friedrich 9- Schultze, Herbert 10- Lassen, Georg

The Start

It began on September 3, 1939 and lasted until the end of the war. Aware that the German Kriegsmarine could not defeat the British Royal Navy, the German sailors tried to block the UK, destroying merchant ships that supplied resources.

Z Plan

Plan Z was the program of naval construction of the Kriegsmarine previous to World War II. In the mid-1930s, in the German high command was discussed on the program class to choose. There were two opinions at that time.

Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic, was the naval clash that took place at the Atlantic Ocean, virtually in its entirety, fought during World War II between German ships, the U-Boot commanded by Admiral Karl Doenitz and almost all of the British squad.

British Fleet

The British had at that time 15 battleships, 62 cruisers, seven aircraft carriers, destroyers and 56 submarines 178.

Tensions and misery under the sea

The Germans considered their "sea wolves" as heroes, but the reality of life in a German submarine was something completely different. In the U-Bootes they lived in a narrow, fetid world, and life was a mixture of boredom, discomfort and terror. The crews occupied places full of machinery, instruments or torpedoes, and slept on planks above the shells until they had been used against targets, leaving room for bunk beds and hammocks.

The completion of the Z Plan

The Z Plan began on January 29, 1939, with the construction of two battleships of class H. But, only four months later, Germany attacked Poland and all the works that followed the Plan Z, because of stalled the new conditions presented by the war.