Commander, Royal Navy

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and most hard-fought campaign of the Second World War - and the only one that lasted for the entirety of the conflict against Germany. Although only officially starting with the declaration of war on Germany by France and Britain on 3rd September 1939, it can be argued, with some justification, that it started in the last half of August 1939, when the German Surface Fleet moved from their anchorages at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven to locations that would put them in a position to attack at a moment's notice. Two of these ships included the Graff Spee, which headed for the South Atlantic, and the Schleswig-Holstein, which moved to Danzig (modern day Gdansk). It would be the Schleswig-Holstein that would fire the first shots of the Second World War when it opened fire on the Polish Military Transit Depot. This was of great surprise to all who witnessed this in Danzig, as the Schleswig-Holstein was reportedly visiting Danzig on a goodwill gesture. It was no surprise to the Captain of Schleswig-Holstein though, as he had been given orders to take up war positions, knowing full well that a full-scale invasion was going to be mounted on Poland.

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The next major action in the Battle of the Atlantic concerned the Graff Spee, under the command of Kapitan-fur-See Hans Langsdorff. For a period of two weeks following the declaration of war, no ships were sunk, due to the then head of the German Navy, Grossadmiral Erick Raeder, not being convinced that France and Britain were being serious about declaring war on Germany. But on 26th September 1939, Langsdorff received orders to sink any merchant vessels that were thought to be supplying the British War Effort. The Graff Spee sunk it's first ship, the merchant ship Clement on 30th September. As was testified later, Langsdorff was a very humane captain who hated making acts of aggression on merchant ships (even confiding to one of the Merchant Navy Captains he had captured that he "really hated making war on civilians, as it was the civilians who were suffering the most in the war" (at that point)). Over 7-8 October, the Graff Spee sunk the merchant ships Ashlea and Newton Beach, bringing on board the Captains and some of the Officers, with the rest of the crew being permitted to get into lifeboats and directed to the nearest coastline. On the night of the 17th October, the Graff Spee sank the cargo ship Huntsman, although it had been captured some days previous and used to temporarily house prisoners. Before Langsdorff gave the order to sink the Huntsman, he made sure that every single prisoner had been safely transferred to Graff Spee's supply ship, the Altmark. On the 22nd October, the Graff Spee encountered and sank the steamship Trevanion, but as with all other sinkings, ensuring all the crew were permitted to get into the lifeboats and get away from the vessel before the Graff Spee would send it to the bottom. After sailing round to the South of Madagascar into the Indian Ocean, having covered some 30,000 nautical miles since leaving port, the Graff Spee encountered and sank the small tanker Africa Shell in the Mozambique Channel (which was at the time Portuguese Territorial Waters, meaning that for the only time in his career that Langsdorff had broken any rules), taking it's captain, Captain Patrick Dove, prisoner, with the rest of the crew safely making it to shore a mere three miles away. As shipping was poor in the Indian Ocean, the Graff Spee returned to the South Atlantic to where there was a fertile hunting ground of merchant ships for it to pursue and possibly sink. By this time, the Graff Spee's crew were experts at what we would now call a replenishment at sea (or in Naval talk a RAS), so another refuel and replenishment from the Altmark would not be a problem for the Graff Spee's crew. To keep the British and French Navies guessing as to where he was, Langsdorff used a copy of the Jane's Ships Book (in a similar way to what the Royal Navy did to identify vessels) to inform his decisions as to what disguise to adopt, with a French Cruiser being chosen. This disguise was able to help Langsdorff achieve an extra few minutes of surprise (travelling at 20 knots) before the Graff Spee got too close to the Merchant ship and the ploy was discovered. Proof that the disguise worked came on 2nd December, when the Graff Spee encountered and sank the cargo ship Doric Star after boarding her and removing 19 bars of silver from the cargo. Due to the haste at which the search was conducted (brought on by Graff Spee's spotter plane breaking down), the fresh meat and other food stuffs on board were not found. Due to the radio operator on board the Doric Star, two other merchant vessels in the area increased their speed and managed to avoid being discovered by the Graff Spee, so were able to reach port with their cargo. The following day, the Graff Spee encountered and sank the steamer Tairoa. The Graff Spee encountered her last victim on 7th December, when it encountered the freighter Streonshalh. Among the items taken from the Streonshalh was a set of secret documents containing shipping route information. Based on that information, Langsdorff decided to head for the seas off Montevideo, Uruguay. On 12th December, the ship's Arado 196 broke down and could not be repaired, depriving Graf Spee of her aerial reconnaissance. The ship's disguise was removed, so it would not hinder the ship in battle. In all, the Graff Spee accounted for 50,000 tons of shipping before being caught by three cruisers of the Royal Navy's South American Cruiser Squadron (consisting of the Cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Cumberland, HMNZS Achillies, HMS Exeter and HMS Salvador), under the command of Commodore (later Admiral Sir) Henry Harwood. Following what would become known as the Battle of the River Plate, the Graff Spee entered Montevideo Harbour, and after offloading the crew and all prisoners still on board, Langsdorff scuttled the Graff Spee by the outer roadstead of Montevideo Harbour on 18th December 1939. Three days later, Kapitan-fur-See Hans Langsdorff, who everyone who met him referred to as "The Gentleman Captain of the German Navy" committed suicide in his room in a Buenos Aires hotel, dressed in his full dress uniform while lying on the Graff Spee's battle ensign. He was buried with full military honours and his funeral was attended by some of those who had been prisoners on board the Graff Spee - and even some Royal Navy officers. The German ambassador in Argentina was forced to admit that he had not seen such a level of respect for a Naval Officer by their enemies before.

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Due to the damage inflicted upon it during the Battle, HMS Exeter would not be in a position to return to full service until March 1941. Both Ajax and Achillies were damaged as well, but not to the same degree as Exeter, so were able to return to full service sooner. Ajax and Achillies both survived the war, but Exeter was lost during the Second Battle of the Java Sea on 1st March 1942, when it was sunk by Japanese warships. Despite the wreck having a level of legal protection, the remains of HMS Exeter (and the remains of those who were lost when she sank) had been destroyed and been illegally removed by illegal scrap metal salvagers in 2016. There is now no trace of the wreck of HMS Exeter.

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The defeat of the Graff Spee was the first significant victory achieved by British Forces during the Second World War. It would not be until the Royal Navy's routing of the bulk of the German Surface Fleet during the Norwegian campaign of May 1940 that another significant success would be achieved. In the slaughter (initiated by the British Minelaying Task Force, later joined by the Royal Navy's Home Fleet from Scapa Flow and the 2nd Submarine Flotilla (Home Fleet Submarines)), the German Surface Fleet had 3 cruisers, 10 destroyers and 3 U-Boats sunk, with 2 cruisers and a pocket battleship badly damaged. Of major significance was the sinking of the 10 destroyers, which left the German Navy without any sensible ships left to escort any potential invasion force that would be directed towards the British coastline. With a Surface fleet now reduced to one incomplete (and never to be completed) aircraft carrier, two battleships, one pocket battleship, two battlecruisers and 6 other vessels that were not Motor Torpedo Boats, the German Navy was incapable at best of carrying out any serious naval engagements by using it's surface fleet alone. It was from the Norwegian campaign onwards that the German Navy mostly focused on the Submarine as its primary weapon of warfare, whereas virtually every other naval power had a substantial Surface Fleet and a much smaller submarine fleet. 

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It would be the actions of two U-Boats in the early stages of the war that would cast the spotlight of glamour onto the U-Boats - a spotlight that would last for the duration of the war. The first warning came on the 13th September, when HMS Ark Royal, the newest aircraft carrier in service with the Royal Navy narrowly avoided being torpedoed by a U-Boat while out on an anti-submarine patrol. Disaster would strike four days later when HMS Courageous was sunk by U-39 roughly 250nm SSW off the coast of Eire with the loss of 500 of her crew, including the Commanding Officer, Captain William Makeig-Jones. This would be the first time that a British Aircraft Carrier would be lost to enemy action. This action, as wildly celebrated as it was in Germany at the time, would be eclipsed a month later, when U-47, commanded by Gunther Prien, slipped through the blockships obstructing the approaches to Royal Navy's wartime anchorage at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, and sank the battleship HMS Royal Oak, resulting in the loss 835 of those on board, including Rear-Admiral Henry Blagrove, the Flag Officer Commanding Second Battle Squadron, of which the Royal Oak was the flagship. It was not only a tragedy in terms of number of lives lost, but it was also due to 134 of those lost being boy seamen (that is to say, seamen under the age of 18), which to this day remains the largest loss of boy seamen in a single action by the Royal Navy.

 

The sinking of these two warships greatly affected the morale of the Royal Navy until the defeat of the Graff Spee, with morale not fully recovering until the slaughtering of the German Surface Fleet at Norway. The German Navy, the Kriegsmarine, had with it's significantly reduced resources, was now unable to mount any large-scale action against British Forces. From time-to-time, they were able to mount "hit-and-run" missions (like the sortie of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau into the Atlantic, where they sank 22 merchant ships, accounting for 115,000 tons), but these had to be few and far between. Given the split in the Kriegsmarine High Command as to whether the battleship or the U-Boat should be made the primary weapon to knock Britain out of the war, it should have been clear from the outset that the U-Boat was the right choice. U-Boats only required a small crew (no more than 70), were able to slip in and out of areas with a much reduced chance of detection and were able to attack with little or no warning.

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The period of time between May and October 1940 would be known to the U-Boat crews as "The First Happy Time", during which 606 Allied merchant ships (total over 2,331,000 tons) were lost in the North Atlantic alone, for the loss of only nine U-Boats. Statistics like this read for very sorry reading by the Admiralty, who rushed to try and find a solution. This was done by various means and with the co-operation of various different organisations, but it would take a stroke of luck and bravado by the crew of HMS Bulldog to really give the Royal Navy a chance of winning the Battle of the Atlantic. When HMS Bulldog attacked U-110 and forced it to the surface, three sailors went aboard the submarine to try and gather as many secrets as possible from the sinking submarine. Although only one of the three got out, they were able to capture a German encoding machine called Enigma. It was this that would enable the experts (like those in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army) at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park to finally crack the Enigma codes used by the Kriegsmarine. The breaking of the Enigma Cypher was the greatest thing that aided the Allies in winning the Second World War.

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The first sign that the Battle of the Atlantic wasn't going to be an easy ride for the Germans was when in March 1941, they lost their three leading Submarine Commanders: Gunther Prien, the man who had sunk HMS Royal Oak, was depth charged in U-47 and killed along with the rest of the crew. Joachim Schepke was crushed between his periscope and the bow of HMS Vanoc, which rammed and sank Schepke's submarine, U-100. Otto Kretschmer, the Wolf of the Atlantic, was depth charged to the surface and was forced to abandon his submarine, U-99, and was taken prisoner along with the rest of the crew. The best captains had gone, leaving the others relatively unprepared for taking the lead in the offensive. Some showed promise, but the vast majority would not last longer than a year before being killed or captured.