Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned the Tide in the Second World War by Paul Kennedy

was not clear to the Germans at this time, but the intelligence nevertheless gave Doenitz plenty of time to order his western patrol group to ready for an attack, while also instructing additional U-boat groups to move westward, toward the key zone in the middle of the ocean. An examination of the route charts, losses, and reports of the convoys (there actually was a further fast convoy of twenty-five ships, HX 229A, well to the north, off Greenland, at this time), and especially of Rohwer’s reconstruction of the maneuvers ofthe individual U-boats, leaves the reader with a sense not only of the complexity of this contest but also of its enormous size. Correlli Barnett has it right: “It could be said that for the first time an encounter in submarine warfare attained the scale and decisive character of the great fleet battles of the past.” 11 In fact, one would probably have to go back to the grim multiday fights of the mid-seventeenth century between the Dutch and British navies to find a good historical equivalent.
    The German attack upon these two convoys seemed to unfold like clockwork, although serendipity played a role, too. Because of engine trouble, U 653 was slowly heading westward to a relay point when it saw the approaching convoy HX 229 on the horizon, steaming toward British harbors. Its captain, the bemused though resourceful Lieutenant Commander Feiler, dived under for a long while as the entire convoy passed over it. When he resurfaced, the ocean was clear; the convoy had steamed on, and U 653 could send the critical message to Doenitz’s headquarters, which then took immediate action. Twenty-one submarines responded to that news, a clear testimony to the way that electronic communication was changing the art of war. 12
    The seas were terribly rough, but the wolf packs pressed in, sensing that this was a great opportunity. The clear, moonlit night of March 16–17 truly was a night of the hunter, for which many merchantmen were to pay the price. The attackers were also advantaged by the fact that on that same night the HX 229 escort commanders decided to slow the convoy in order to pick up stragglers and, by doing so, unwittingly bumped into the first cluster of U-boats. Had that decision to slow down not been taken, the submarines “would certainly have passed by to the stern.” 13 But once the convoy had been detected, there was little that its escort commander, Lieutenant Commander Luther in the destroyer HMS
Volunteer,
could have done to lead his flock to safety. His direction finder had located two U-boats 20 miles away and closing, so he had dispatched another escort to drive them away. But if one group of U-boats had missed their target, others surely would not. By this time, both the American and British admiralties were picking up U-boat signals from all around the convoy, so alterations in course to avoid one cluster of attackers simply brought HX 229 closer to another.
    Thus, around ten o’clock on the moonlit night of March 16, thecaptain of U 603 found himself watching an entire Allied convoy slowly steaming by, with its remaining four escorts widely separated. By this stage Doenitz had his submarines equipped with the deadly FAT torpedoes, which ran straight at 30 knots over a given course, and then zigzagged in order to counter the opponent’s evasive actions. Since the horizon was filled with targets and U 603 was able to come as close as 2 miles (3,000 meters), the zigzagging capacity was probably unnecessary on this occasion. The submarine fired its three front torpedoes, then its rear torpedo, and had the satisfaction of hearing a large detonation before slipping back under the waves; the freighter
Elin K.
sank within four minutes. With the convoy escorts now distracted by picking up the ship’s survivors and looking for U 603, the convoy’s northern flank was virtually uncovered. This gave Captain Lieutenant Mansek in U 758 the freedom to fire off torpedoes like a cowboy in a