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It is listed that 175 Allied warships are lost in the battle of the Atlantic. In lots of WW2 literature, 175 is quoted as the nbr of warships torpedoed by U-boats. But surely not al those losses are tied to the battle of the Atlantic ? All the warships sunk by german U-boats in the mediterranean will not be linked to the battle of the Atlantic ? Maybe if you look at the bigger picture you could argue that somehow the nbr of warships lost at any place affects indirectly the battle of the Atlantic, but event then ? For exemple, how would the sinking of the light cruiser Galatea by U-557 in late 1941 possibly affect the battle of the Atlantic ?
Likewise I see that on German side all destroyed surface ships are listed as victims of the battle of the Atlantic. But for exemple Blucher is sunk during the invasion of Norway and Scharnhorst is sunk during an attack on an Arctic convoy. How would you link the tonnage war of the battle of the atlantic to arctic convoys and the Norway invasion ?
Would it not be better not to mention exact numbers ? Klutserke ( talk) 21:10, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
The article gives no real mention of the Azores air gap. We just have the agreement to base Allied aircraft there appearing in the article, with no explanation of the significance. References for "the other air gap, near the Azores" include Milner, Marc. Battle of the Atlantic (p. 124). The History Press. This is also explained by Mawdsley's War of the Seas. Yet the article does not explain the significance of this arrangement. Other sources also deal with this subject. It seems to be a significant failing of the article. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 00:13, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
The article has no mention of the collaboration by French naval dockyard workers. (page numbers in following text are from Hellwinkel 2014, which is already used as a source in the article.) This was very important to the Kriegsmarine as there were limited numbers of German workers who could be moved to France to service German warships and submarines. The first French collaboration was the fitting out of fishing vessels for mine sweeping and harbour defence – installing rails for French depth charges and fitting various guns and machine guns, as well as using the ample supply of French Navy minesweeping equipment that had escaped demolition work.(p 34, ) The French Navy carried out some minesweeping activity (under the terms of the Armistice) in their Atlantic ports.(p 35) Most important, though, was the skilled dockyard workforce and the workshops that had not been destroyed.(p 40 - and other pages t.b.a.) That workforce was, by and large, back at their posts by 4 July 1940.(p 114) The German plans for staffing their Atlantic bases was, initially, totally unrealistic. For instance they requested 2,700 skilled shipyard workers to be sent from Germany. Yet the Wilhelmshaven naval shipyard only had a total workforce of around 4,000 – depleting those staff would bring shipbuilding and repair activity to a virtual standstill.(p 48) The gap was filled by the French naval dockyard workers who were a "willing workforce". Overall, without this French collaboration, the Battle of the Atlantic would have been very different.
The only balancing component of the story is the spying done by, for instance, Jean Philippon, a French Navy officer who provided important intelligence information to the Allies on German shipping movements. (Also Jacques Stosskopf who was executed by the Nazis for spying).(p. 183)
To justify this collaboration, the French dockyard workers had to support their families and otherwise had no way of earning a living.(p 152 and elsewhere)
As a postscript: For example, by February 1941 only 470 German shipyard workers had arrived at Brest, whilst the Naval Arsenal had 6,349 French workers.(p118) Though work on capital ships was generally done by Germans, French employees worked extensively on submarines and the smaller military vessels in the surface fleet. German Navy reports indicate that this was a willing workforce and that there were no incidences of sabotage. As well as working on ship repairs, the French provided a significant fire-fighting force to help negate the effect of Allied air raids. (postscript taken from Brest, France where it appears as a footnote.) ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 15:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Eric Grove (2019) ‘The Battle of the Atlantic’: A legend deconstructed, The Mariner's Mirror, 105:3, 336-339, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2019.1589123 may be a useful source. This noted maritime historian provides an overview of the whole subject and certainly presents a view which should be taken into account. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 08:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Hoi @ ThoughtIdRetired thanks for reviewing some of my edits. Related to one of these reviews with a failed verification on Blair p.38 for the following edit :
"Aircraft nor ASDIC were considered a serious threat at the time: ASDIC could not detect a surfaced submarine and its range was less than that of an elektric torpedo, aircraft could not operate at night and during day an alert U-boat could dive before the aircraft attacked"
On Blair p.38 i read on the last paragraph of the page : Dönitz thought the new ASW weapons, namely sonar and aircraft, were greatly exaggerated..[]..range of one and half mile at most .[].. could not detect a surfaced submarine..[]. elektric torpedoes had a greater range ( three miles ) .[]... aircraft did not patrol at night..[].. a keenly alert U-boat bridge watch could see or hear aircraft before it saw the u-boat. with its ability to dive quickly ( thirty seconds ) and deep, a properly alert modern U-boat could avoid attack by any known aircraft.
I think that covers well the statements I wrote for that reference, did I miss something ?
Kind Regards, Klutserke ( talk) 19:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
[Neither]] aircraft nor ASDIC were considered....) just represent the view of Dönitz. The article reads as though these were generally accepted views at the time – something which is contradicted by contemporaneous British Admiralty opinions. If the article is trying to state a general opinion, then the source does not support that, as it is just reporting the view of one person. If the article is trying just to give the opinion of Dönitz, then it should do so more clearly.
Aircraft did not yet patrol at night(bold added). From this complete quote it seems that the source wants the reader to have in mind that night-time aircraft operations were, at a later stage, important. The article could usefully follow that lead – otherwise this gives a confusing read when set alongside, for instance, the Leigh Light.
The section Shipping and U-boat sinkings each month seems to assemble a small number of views based on Max Hastings and a somewhat outdated German perspective on what happened. Overall it constructs an argument that improved radar was the major component of Allied success. The graphs, in particular, are highly misleading.
Looking to a more recent source,(Overy, War for the Seas, 2019) we find a much more all-encompassing summary of the growth of Allied success. This could be summarised as a coming together of:
Whilst centimetric radar is clearly part of the story, it is a very Dönitz-centred view that it is the explanation for the failure of the U-boat campaign.
Re-writing of this section, together with removal of the graphs, would be a significant improvement of the article. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 15:28, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Battle of the Atlantic article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5Auto-archiving period: 90 days |
Battle of the Atlantic was one of the History good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Current status: Delisted good article |
This
level-4 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is listed that 175 Allied warships are lost in the battle of the Atlantic. In lots of WW2 literature, 175 is quoted as the nbr of warships torpedoed by U-boats. But surely not al those losses are tied to the battle of the Atlantic ? All the warships sunk by german U-boats in the mediterranean will not be linked to the battle of the Atlantic ? Maybe if you look at the bigger picture you could argue that somehow the nbr of warships lost at any place affects indirectly the battle of the Atlantic, but event then ? For exemple, how would the sinking of the light cruiser Galatea by U-557 in late 1941 possibly affect the battle of the Atlantic ?
Likewise I see that on German side all destroyed surface ships are listed as victims of the battle of the Atlantic. But for exemple Blucher is sunk during the invasion of Norway and Scharnhorst is sunk during an attack on an Arctic convoy. How would you link the tonnage war of the battle of the atlantic to arctic convoys and the Norway invasion ?
Would it not be better not to mention exact numbers ? Klutserke ( talk) 21:10, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
The article gives no real mention of the Azores air gap. We just have the agreement to base Allied aircraft there appearing in the article, with no explanation of the significance. References for "the other air gap, near the Azores" include Milner, Marc. Battle of the Atlantic (p. 124). The History Press. This is also explained by Mawdsley's War of the Seas. Yet the article does not explain the significance of this arrangement. Other sources also deal with this subject. It seems to be a significant failing of the article. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 00:13, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
The article has no mention of the collaboration by French naval dockyard workers. (page numbers in following text are from Hellwinkel 2014, which is already used as a source in the article.) This was very important to the Kriegsmarine as there were limited numbers of German workers who could be moved to France to service German warships and submarines. The first French collaboration was the fitting out of fishing vessels for mine sweeping and harbour defence – installing rails for French depth charges and fitting various guns and machine guns, as well as using the ample supply of French Navy minesweeping equipment that had escaped demolition work.(p 34, ) The French Navy carried out some minesweeping activity (under the terms of the Armistice) in their Atlantic ports.(p 35) Most important, though, was the skilled dockyard workforce and the workshops that had not been destroyed.(p 40 - and other pages t.b.a.) That workforce was, by and large, back at their posts by 4 July 1940.(p 114) The German plans for staffing their Atlantic bases was, initially, totally unrealistic. For instance they requested 2,700 skilled shipyard workers to be sent from Germany. Yet the Wilhelmshaven naval shipyard only had a total workforce of around 4,000 – depleting those staff would bring shipbuilding and repair activity to a virtual standstill.(p 48) The gap was filled by the French naval dockyard workers who were a "willing workforce". Overall, without this French collaboration, the Battle of the Atlantic would have been very different.
The only balancing component of the story is the spying done by, for instance, Jean Philippon, a French Navy officer who provided important intelligence information to the Allies on German shipping movements. (Also Jacques Stosskopf who was executed by the Nazis for spying).(p. 183)
To justify this collaboration, the French dockyard workers had to support their families and otherwise had no way of earning a living.(p 152 and elsewhere)
As a postscript: For example, by February 1941 only 470 German shipyard workers had arrived at Brest, whilst the Naval Arsenal had 6,349 French workers.(p118) Though work on capital ships was generally done by Germans, French employees worked extensively on submarines and the smaller military vessels in the surface fleet. German Navy reports indicate that this was a willing workforce and that there were no incidences of sabotage. As well as working on ship repairs, the French provided a significant fire-fighting force to help negate the effect of Allied air raids. (postscript taken from Brest, France where it appears as a footnote.) ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 15:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
Eric Grove (2019) ‘The Battle of the Atlantic’: A legend deconstructed, The Mariner's Mirror, 105:3, 336-339, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.2019.1589123 may be a useful source. This noted maritime historian provides an overview of the whole subject and certainly presents a view which should be taken into account. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 08:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Hoi @ ThoughtIdRetired thanks for reviewing some of my edits. Related to one of these reviews with a failed verification on Blair p.38 for the following edit :
"Aircraft nor ASDIC were considered a serious threat at the time: ASDIC could not detect a surfaced submarine and its range was less than that of an elektric torpedo, aircraft could not operate at night and during day an alert U-boat could dive before the aircraft attacked"
On Blair p.38 i read on the last paragraph of the page : Dönitz thought the new ASW weapons, namely sonar and aircraft, were greatly exaggerated..[]..range of one and half mile at most .[].. could not detect a surfaced submarine..[]. elektric torpedoes had a greater range ( three miles ) .[]... aircraft did not patrol at night..[].. a keenly alert U-boat bridge watch could see or hear aircraft before it saw the u-boat. with its ability to dive quickly ( thirty seconds ) and deep, a properly alert modern U-boat could avoid attack by any known aircraft.
I think that covers well the statements I wrote for that reference, did I miss something ?
Kind Regards, Klutserke ( talk) 19:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
[Neither]] aircraft nor ASDIC were considered....) just represent the view of Dönitz. The article reads as though these were generally accepted views at the time – something which is contradicted by contemporaneous British Admiralty opinions. If the article is trying to state a general opinion, then the source does not support that, as it is just reporting the view of one person. If the article is trying just to give the opinion of Dönitz, then it should do so more clearly.
Aircraft did not yet patrol at night(bold added). From this complete quote it seems that the source wants the reader to have in mind that night-time aircraft operations were, at a later stage, important. The article could usefully follow that lead – otherwise this gives a confusing read when set alongside, for instance, the Leigh Light.
The section Shipping and U-boat sinkings each month seems to assemble a small number of views based on Max Hastings and a somewhat outdated German perspective on what happened. Overall it constructs an argument that improved radar was the major component of Allied success. The graphs, in particular, are highly misleading.
Looking to a more recent source,(Overy, War for the Seas, 2019) we find a much more all-encompassing summary of the growth of Allied success. This could be summarised as a coming together of:
Whilst centimetric radar is clearly part of the story, it is a very Dönitz-centred view that it is the explanation for the failure of the U-boat campaign.
Re-writing of this section, together with removal of the graphs, would be a significant improvement of the article. ThoughtIdRetired ( talk) 15:28, 6 April 2024 (UTC)