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Adm Dönitz expalineds to his U-boat commanders why he was brealog off the North Atlantic convoy campign. "Subnarine warfare must reckon with the fact that at present the eneny has discovered technical counter measures which robbed the U-boat of its fundamental principle -- invisability."
-- Adm. Karl Dönitz
At sea the U-boats by mid-1943 were no longer the hunters, but suddenly the hunted. The Allies and the Germans fought several major convoy battles in the North Atlantic (May 1943). The Germans located several convoys and formed large wolf packs to destroy them. The Allies fought through losing freighters, but for the first time inflicting major losses on the Germans. The success was due to a combination of training and experience, expanding air cover, code breaking, advanced weaponry, improving radar, and electronic detection. The U-boat losses in Black May, something like a quarter of the operational U-boats were so horrendous that Dönitz had to recall the U-boats at sea and break off the the intensive campaign in the North Atlantic (May 1943). Dönitz even lost his son Peter. And this was before the U.S. Navy escorts entered the battle in a major way. Dönitz had only occasional contact with Hitler until prior to 1943, but Dönitz met with the Führer twice a month after being named commander of the Krigsmarine. At first he ws a are commnder delivering ggod news. Thissuddenly changed in May. Somewhat surprisingly, Hitler did not react violently . It is not clear why. Some believe it was his total confidence in Dönitz. It also could have been Hitler's failure to understand the importance of the U-boat campaign. At the time his focus was on the impending 1943 summer campaign shaping up at Kursk. Increasingly after May, there was less and less a chance of a U-boat returning from a cruise. The Germans by the end of 1943 had built 442 U-boats, but had lost 245 of them. After mid-1943 the Allies were able to run convoys laden with troops and weaponry virtually unmolested across the Atlantic. It meant the strategic bombing campaign could be identified and the build-up for the cross-Channel invasion could continue with little German interference. Even so Dönitz persisted. The shipyards contined to chun out U-bots. His assessment was the battle in the Atlantic was lost. He believed, however, that even limited operations could tie down vast Allies resources. We are not entirely sure what he told Hitler. The Battle of the Atlantic was the last German campaign to turn in the Allies favor. The war in the East and North Africa had shifted at the end of 1942. The Around the Clock bombing of Germany had begun (January 1943). Now Hitler and Dönitz as in the other areas cold only pin their hopes on technological breakthroughs and the defeat of the inevitable cross-channel invasion. The Germans did make significant technological innovation, but thanks in poart to the strategic bombing, too late to impact the War. And when the Allies landed in Normandy, Dönitz's U-boats like Göring Luftwaffe had no impact on the landings and subsequent supply operations.
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