German Wolfpacks of WW II This

This research paper examines the effects of the principal tactical innovation of the German U-Boat service in World War II. The wolfpacks enabled the U-boats to apply sudden and concentrated force with maximum impact against Allied merchantmen in many theaters of war, especially in the vital Atlantic Ocean shipping lanes between North America and Great Britain. Successive U-boat campaigns wreaked havoc on Allied shipping during the first four years of the war, nearly severing the North Atlantic lifeline twice, in early 1941 and again in the spring of 1943. However, this effort ultimately failed because German war aims, especially after 1941, outstripped Germany's resources and capabilities which could not support the effort required to make the U-boats a decisive weapon of war. By May of 1943, the quantitative and qualitative superiority of Anglo-American anti-submarine countermeasures had largely negated the tactical advantages of the wolfpacks resulting in the eventual defeat of the U-boats.

Strength. The German U-Boat (Unter-See-Boot) service entered World War II substantially understrength; it had only 57 U-boats. As late as February 1941, the number of U-boats available for ocean operations did not exceed 22 (Terraine 207). According to Hezlet, "German U-boats were quite unready for war with Great Britain in 1939" (162).

A force of only 12 small U-boats were on the drawing boards when Adolf Hitler came to power

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anti-submarine efforts improved in 1941 for various reasons: (1) better and more convoy training and anti-submarine warfare (ASW) tactics and the availability of greater numbers of escorts, especially after the United States began to enter an 'undeclared war' in the North Atlantic after March 1941; (2) strengthening of Allied patrol and combat air strength including after September 1941 the most effective U-boat killer American B-24 Liberators; (3) breakthroughs in Allied electronic warfare and counterintelligence which traced U-boat radio signals. Meanwhile, the British developed ASV (Air-to-Surface Vessel) radar which was used to pinpoint the location of vessels at sea. The most revolutionary development was the British decryption of the German naval version of the complex Enigma encoding and decoding machine. However, the German naval code Triton remained uncracked until the spring of 1941 when the British captured various Enigma machines and codebooks, etc. from an abandoned German trawler in the Lofoten Islands and from U-110 which was seized off the Hebrides in early May 1941. Hughes said the latter "was to prove one of the most important single intelligence breakthroughs of the war" (155). By the end of May, signals
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Approximate Word count = 2649
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)