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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 0544.PDF
MARCH I6TH, 1944 U'boat Menace Largely Discounted : Another Definite Win for the R.A.F. over the Qermans THE Rattle of the At.'ontic, thot epic struggle in which there was no " phoney " period at the opening of hostilities in 1939. Germany intended to make no mistake this time. England was to be starved of food and supplies by the constant sinking of our ships by aircraft and U-boat How near Germany came to succeeding most of us sensed at the time, but the great work of Coastal Command and the Royal Navy, especially during 1943, entirely changed the picture. The rate of loss of submarines by the German navy is greater to-day than it was at itsWorst period in the 1914-18 war when the crews refused to man the boats. This story is of one Coastal Command staVon from wfr'ch Liberators range over the whole eastern half of the North Atlantic. At any other station the men and aircraft would be different—the story would be the same. COASTAL COMMAND PILOT'S DREAM: A submarine blowing its tanks and rising to the surface under the aircraft THERE seems to be little doubt that 1943 W® g° down in history as the year in which the tremendous Battle of the Atlantic was finally decided in favour of the Allies. At times the U-boat packs hunting our convoys came near to strangling our lifeline of munitions and food across the sea. We" still do have some shipping losses, but they scarcely represent one-tenth of the losses we suffered in 1942. This despite the fact that we have many more bottoms at sea at any one time. To make up for this falling-off in results the enemy has, during the past few months, tried to supplement the efforts of his U-boats by using He 177s, Ju 290s and Fw 2003 equipped with the comparatively new radio-controlled Henschel293 glider-bombs. The chief advantage of these is that they can be released at a distance of about 6,000 yards. This enables the aircraft to keep out of range of the light A.A. gun umbrella of the convoy. Only the heavy stuff can function satisfactorily at this range. For a while these attacks were somewhat disconcerting, but our patrol aircraft, and fighters flown off the baby "flat tops," now have the measure of this rather unwieldy form of attack. How has all this been achieved? In part it is due to improved detection technique ; in part it is due t6 more atod better escort vessels, including the escort carriers. More than anything else, however, it is due to the unceasing
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