Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

GOLDEN EGGS...called “American Waters”: the Atlantic west of the 40thMeridian, and the Caribbean. U-boat successes there for sixconsecutive months were largely responsible for an alarminglysharp rise in the monthly rate of Allied merchant shiplosses, especially of oil tankers. When, in the late summer of1942, the U-boats turned once more against the Atlanticconvoys, these losses were to reach unprecedented levels.This second loss of the ability to decrypt top-secretGerman naval signals brought Britain’s food and war materialslifeline almost to a halt. For Churchill, as for those inthe know about the full extent of the sinkings and thefailure to read Enigma, this was a grave worry. On theevening of 18 November, Churchill presided at the firstmeeting of the newly established Anti-U-boat WarfareCommittee, charged with finding some means to meet therelentless challenge of German submarine successes.In October that same year, U-boats had sunk twentynineAllied ships in convoy and fifty-four ships sailingindependently. In November the figure rose to thirty-nineships in convoy, and seventy ships sailing independently.The total tonnage of Allied shipping lost to U-boat attackin November 1942 was 721,700 tons, the highest figure forany month of the war.Turning the TideThe reason for these U-boat successes was Bletchley’sinability to read the German Enigma key used in its U-boatcommunications. Then, on 30 October 1942, Britishdestroyers attacked the German submarine U-559 on thesurface in the Eastern Mediterranean, seventy miles off theEgyptian coast. While U-559 was sinking, two Royal Navymen, Lieutenant Tony Fasson and Able Seaman ColinGrazier, from the destroyer Petard, seized two vital Enigmacodebooks. Unable to escape the sinking submarine, theymanaged to pass the codebooks to Canteen AssistantTommy Brown. For their actions, Fasson and Grazier wereeach awarded the George Cross; Brown received the GeorgeMedal, the medal’s youngest recipient; it was discoveredthat he had been under age when he enlisted. 34It took three weeks for the codebooks to reachBletchley Park. When they did, the effect was dramatic. On13 December 1942, a Sunday, the codebreakers in Hut 8worked with as much intensity as they had ever worked totry to crack the M4 “Shark” cypher used by the AdmiralDönitz to communicate with his U-boats in the Atlantic.By midday, solutions of the four-rotor Enigma U-boat keybegan to emerge. During the afternoon, Hut 8 telephonedthe Submarine Tracking Room at the Admiralty to reportthe breakthrough. Within an hour of this news, the firstintercept came through: making known the position offifteen U-boats in the Atlantic. Other intercepts arrived in acontinuous stream until the early hours of the nextmorning. The Admiralty’s Submarine Tracking Room wasRoyal Navy BagSUNK WITH INTELLIGENCE,thanks to Enigma decrypts, werethe battleships Bismarck (upperleft), May 1941; Scharnhorst(above), December 1943; andTirpitz (left), November 1944;once more able to route British convoys away from GermanU-boat concentrations.As a result of this triumph of cryptography, inDecember 1942, the number of Allied vessels sunk by theU-boats fell to nineteen in convoy and twenty-five sailingindividually. In January 1943 the figures had dropped tofifteen in convoy and eighteen independently, as a result ofsuccessful evasive routing of the known and located dangers.In the Battle of the Atlantic, after a disastrous year, thefortunes of war had turned decisively in favour of the Allies.On 2 May 1943, Bletchley decrypted a telegram fromGeneral Oshima, the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin,reporting to Tokyo that Hitler, while hopeful of a renewedU-boat offensive, had complained to him that because thewar had started too soon, “we have been unable to dominatethe seas.” 35 Two days later, in a lengthy battle, twoU-boat packs attacked and sank twelve merchant ships inconvoy (there were forty-one U-boats in the two packs,seventy merchant ships in the convoy).This German success, the last on such a scale, wasonly achieved with the loss of seven of the U-boats. Notonly did Enigma decrypts in the coming days confirm thisloss, but also gave evidence of the growing U-boat fearsboth of Allied aircraft and of surface escorts.Studying the Enigma decrypts relating to theMediterranean, Churchill learned from German sources ofthe success of Bomber Command attacks on the Port ofTunis. Using the word “Boniface” to imply an Allied agentrather than Germany’s own top-secret signalling system,Churchill telegraphed to Air Marshal Tedder on May 2nd:“Boniface shows the decisive reactions produced upon theenemy, and that the little enemy ships are also important.” 36These “little ships” were those in which, as theEnigma decrypts showed, supplies of fuel and ammunitionwere still reaching Tunis. Larger ships, being more visiblefrom the air, were finding it impossible to get through.In the Mediterranean on May 4th, as a result of anEnigma decrypt, British destroyers sank the Campobasso offCape Bon, and on the following day, also alerted byEnigma, the United States Air Force sank the 6,000-ton SanFINEST HOUR 149 / 26