The Battle of the Atlantic

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Canada’s Merchant Navy Veterans bore much of the brunt ofthe war in the Atlantic. Many of the sailors aboard merchantvessels had survived the mines and submarines of the FirstWorld War and chose to sail again, some two decades later.They sometimes sailed in rusty old ships, but more often inhighly inflammable tankers or in freighters loaded withammunition. With each voyage the odds of survival seemed togrow longer. Still, voyage after voyage, men who had beentorpedoed or had seen ships go down about them, sailed andsailed again.The most important achievement of the war in the Atlanticwas the more than 25,000 merchant ship voyages made fromNorth American to British ports under the escort of Canadianforces. These vessels delivered approximately 165 milliontonnes of cargo to sustain the United Kingdom and madepossible the liberation of Europe. In the process, Canadianwarships and aircraft sank, or shared in the destruction ofsome 50 U-boats.Beginning the war with a mere 13 vessels and 3,500 personnel,PAINTING BY HAROLD BEAMENT. THERE SHE GOES. (CWM 10067)The Battle of the Atlantic 22
the Royal Canadian Navy grew to become, for a brief time atleast, the third largest of the Allied navies. At war’s end, theRCN comprised 373 fighting ships and more than 110,000members, including 6,500 women who served in the Women’sRoyal Canadian Naval Services. The principal Canadian antisubmarineforces at that time included 261 sea-going escorts(Bangors, corvettes, frigates and escort destroyers). Hundreds ofother craft — Fairmile launches, tugboats, coastal tankers and theother kinds of transports — protected Canadian waters, servicedthe fleet and kept the bases running. All but a handful of theRCN ships, moreover, were built in Canada — anaccomplishment of critical importance to the Allied cause.During the dark years of 1941 and 1942, when Canadianproduction came on stream, the larger Allies simply had no othersource of escorts.The RCAF’s Eastern Air Command reached a peak strength of21,233 personnel, including 1,735 members of the Women’sDivision, at the end of January 1944. Of this total, more than1,200 were air crew. The rest managed the bases,communications, navigation systems and other services neededto operate multi-engine aircraft over the vast expanse of thenorthwest Atlantic. At this same time, nearly 2,000 RCAF aircrew were serving in both Canadian and British squadrons ofthe Royal Air Force Coastal Command.The main objective of Canada’s Atlantic forces was always theprotection of shipping. The outcome of the war was dependenton the success of the Atlantic convoys — on the merchantships reaching the United Kingdom.In 1939, Canada had only 38 ocean-going merchant shipsaveraging little over 6,000 deadweight tonnes, with a total of23 The Battle of the Atlantic
Page 1 and 2: Remembrance Series
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Page 8 and 9: important and vulnerable routes was
Page 10 and 11: In September of 1940, for the first
Page 12 and 13: for a crew of some 60 sailors were
Page 14 and 15: western Atlantic. However, when the
Page 16 and 17: ANTI-SUBMARINE GRENADE LAUNCHED INT
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Page 26 and 27: about 290,000 tonnes and manned by
Page 28: Halifax MemorialThis memorial in No

The Battle of the Atlantic

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