Gadsden County Times

Inside WASHINGTON

Allies Have Weapons To Beat The U-Boat
Patrol Planes, Escort Ships Play Big Role

Prime Minister Churchill reveals that the anti-U-boat war has taken a "most solid and encouraging" turn. Thirty of Hitler's undersea raiders were sunk in May, and in June, the Allies had "the best month we have ever known in the whole 4 1/2 years of the war."

Though Mr. Churchill did not say so, evidence is piling up that the Allies at long last have developed the weapons and the methods to beat the U-boat. New long-range patrol planes and bombers, faster, more maneuverable escort ships to protect convoys, and new sonic detection devices are sending Hitler's U-boat marauders to the bottom with accelerating tempo.

In the past two weeks, better than a U-boat a day has been sunk, according to Malcolm MacDonald, British High Commissioner in Canada. And, according to Mr. Churchill, in the past 45 days "scarcely a single merchant ship has been sunk in the whole of the North Atlantic."

Even the German military commentators concede the fact that when announced, Allied shipping losses for June will be "the lowest in years." From a high in March, according to communiques of the German High Command, of 851,000 tons, Allied losses fell to 415,000 tons in April and 372,000 tons in May. Though these figures are doubtless greater than our actual losses, they do indicate the downward trend.

"U-boat warfare is growing increasingly hard," Vice Admiral Luetzow complained recently in the German Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten.

'The enemy's lavish use of effective depth charges hampers the activity of the U-boats to an extraordinary extent. Further difficulties are caused by the constant enemy patrolling of vast stretches of sea off the North American and European coasts and the use of carrier-borne aircraft on the high seas."

The Atlantic Patrol of huge four-motored bombers operating out of the U. S., Canada, Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland and the British Isles is what the Admiral referred to. The planes make day-long series of interlocking sweeps and watch over convoys mile-by-mile from the time they leave our East Coast ports until they reach the British Isles.

The British Admiralty and Air Ministry issued a joint communique late last month describing a 5-day battle in which land-based planes of the Patrol, including B-24 Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, teamed with warships and aircraft from an escort carrier to hammer U-boat packs stalking Allied convoys.

In the fight, which ranged over hundreds of miles of the Atlantic, the planes attacked the U-boats with depth charges, machine-gunned them when they surfaced and directed the convoys' destroyers to the spot where they were hiding. Final score: 2 U-boats sunk, 3 probably sunk, and others damaged.

Also aiding in the war against the U-boat are the new D-E anti-submarine vessels being turned out by the hundreds in U. S. ship-yards to protect our convoys. The 1,300-ton, 300-foot D-E's are larger and faster than the British corvettes used for this purpose.

Germany banked heavily on her U-boat fleet to keep the Allies from massing sufficient men and equipment in England and North Africa for the coming European offensive, and possibly, even to starve the British into submission.

Last year German subs and bombers sank some 13,500,000 tons of Allied shipping, thus nullifying all new U. S. and British construction. In addition, much precious war cargo went to the bottom with the ships. When thin-lipped, British-hating Vice Admiral Karl Doenitz was made commander-in-chief of the German Navy early this year, everybody expected an intensification of the U-boat war.

Doenitz was the originator three years ago of the U-boat technique known as the "Rudel-system" or "wolf-pack," as the British named it. It consists of a number of submarines attacking the center of a convoy, preferably at night, firing torpedoes in every direction, and then, slipping away.

However, despite Doenitz' efforts, the war at sea seems to have turned definitely in favor of the Allies. New ships came from Allied shipyards 7 to 10 times faster than Doenitz could sink them last month. Hitler is finding, as the Kaiser did before him, that he cannot win the war with his U-boat fleets.