Is this a true statement about the B24?

[Juha]

Hello Kutcha
yes, Tony has again problems with facts, the first US made RN escort carriers were commisioned in early 1942, but were mechanically unreliable, so their effectiveness was at first impaired, look e.g. the service history of HMS Archer.

Juha

[Rainer]

Tony, even if the Coastal Command would have had 100 VLR Liberators in mid-1942 they would have achieved almost nothing because the U-boats weren't operating against the North Atlantic convoys at all, but found plenty of easy targets off the US East Coast and the Caribbean.

Although the few available VLR aircraft made some impact during the large convoy battles in the winter 1942/43, the Admiralty recognized that it was not possible to maintain the needed continous air cover over a convoy in the Mid-Atlantic gap with those aircraft. Often the aircraft had difficulties to find the ships they were supposed to cover, expended their depth charges quickly in one or two attacks and the convoys were inevitably left without air cover if one of the VLR aircraft had to return to base for one or the other reason. The Admiralty clearly preferred the aircraft from escort carriers as air cover of a convoy as they could be used for defensive patrols around a convoy, but also offensively against U-boats located by HF/DF or ULTRA.

The Coastal Command played a major part when the tide eventually turned in the Battle of the Atlantic in May 1943, but it weren't its VLR Liberators. During that month almost no U-boat could leave or reach its base in France without having been attacked at least once by an aircraft during the transit of the Bay of Biscay, caused by the deployment of ASV Mk.III fitted aircraft on continous patrols at day and night. Not getting an allocation of a certain aircraft type well suited for anti-submarine patrol was bad for the Coastal Command, but the true scandal is that the rivalry between the RAF services almost led to a stop of the development of the airborne centrimetric ASV radar that proved to be decisive to beat the tactics employed by the the type VII and IX submersibles.

[harryurz]

As a (slight) side note, an interesting account of Churchill's B-24 VIP transport here:

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-o...Churchill.html

[tcolvin]

The following is sourced from Capt. Roskill:The War at Sea and Richard Overy:The Bombing War, as well as from Alex Smart's posting.

March 1942. Both the Admiralty and RAF agreed that convoy losses could be reduced "by largely increasing the strength of our land-based air forces over the sea" in Pound's words. The requirement "to provide air cover over the Atlantic was for 70 VLR aircraft against an actual availability of 20 VLRs in the RCAF. The Air Ministry accepted the numbers and said they would be met with US deliveries, but not for the first half of 1942. They insisted that only radar-equipped VLR aircraft would be used for maritime patrols, and since radar had fallen badly into arrears this was the limiting factor. Until radar was available, it was better to use VLRs to bomb Germany offensively rather than use them for 'defensive' patrolling. The RN disagreed that hunting U-boats was 'defensive'.

April 1942. Slessor transferred four squadrons of Wellingtons and Whitleys to Coastal Command for patrolling, but the Navy was not satisfied by this sop. June 1942. 'Planned Flying and Maintenance' was implemented in Coastal Command to increase operational availability; this successful reform was later extended to Bomber Command.

July 1942. Slessor offered a half-measure of a fixed weekly number of sorties against U-boats in the Bay of Biscay. August 1942. Trenchard waded in with a paper (undoubtedly written by Slessor since Trenchard couldn't string a sentence together - why did anyone listen to that fool?) defining "two-dimensional air operations in the Atlantic as purely defensive in nature...... The place to hit the submarines was where they were made and to mine the seas where they emerge instead of hunting them over the illimitable sea". Unfortunately for Bomber Command, the number of submarines was rising fast because bombing had failed to destroy any of them, or their shelters on the Atlantic coast, and the best place to attack submarines was in the vicinity of the convoys.

August 1942. The Cabinet Anti-U-boat Warfare Committee met for the first time, and it included the Americans Harriman and Stark. 243 U-boats were operational, production was running at 20 to 30/month, while since the start of the war only a maximum of 203 submarines had been destroyed. So only 33% of U-boat monthly output was being destroyed, and the situation looked dangerous. The Committee decided that closing the mid-Atlantic air gap was the priority and that 40 radar-equipped VLR aircraft were needed plus more and longer patrols in the Bay of Biscay. The only alternative to the B-24 was the Lancaster now entering production, but it was fitted only for land bombing. So the only source for VLR aircraft was the USA. The trouble was that the USAAF was taking most of the B-24s for the Pacific war. The PM agreed to ask the USA for 30 VLR B-24s, and the USAAF responded by sending two of their squadrons including crews. The problem was now considered solved. Only it wasn't.

January 1943. The Casablanca Conference declared that destruction of U-boats was the priority. It was agreed that 80 VLRs should be used to plug the Greenland Air Gap. The Conference made area bombing of the French ports Bomber Command's priority after warning the citizens. This was because neither the RAF nor Bomber Command had suggested bombing the U-boats bomb-proof shelters while they were under construction. By end 1941 shelters had been constructed at Lorient and La Pallice to service 2 Flotillas at each place.

Mid 1942 similar shelters had been completed at Brest and St Nazaire, and by mid 1943 a shelter for 1 flotilla would be completed at Bordeaux. Bombing the shelters was a waste of time - no bomb ever penetrated them, but from January to May 1943, 98 aircraft were lost bombing these U-boat bases, and 168 lost bombing U-boat construction yards, all to no effect.

February 1943. The problem of VLR aircraft became hot again. The Casablanca Conference had approved 80 VLRs to close the Greenland Air Gap, but most of the B24s were being allocated to the USAAF mostly for recce duties in the Pacific. The USN employed 52 B24s at end 1942. (By July 1943 they had 209 when Coastal Command had only 37).

March 1943. An Atlantic Convoy Conference re-arranged responsibilities with the USN withdrawing to the south and Canada becoming an equal partner with GB in the North Atlantic, effective April 1. It was decided to increase the number of VLRs in Newfoundland to 4 squadrons (48 aircraft) but for them to work to their patrol limits and not to respect the Chopline. March 1943. The USN had a change of heart after FDR made enquiries about the destination and use of newly constructed B-24s. 112 B-24s had been delivered to the USN by March 19, 1943 and more than 70 of them were operating in the Pacific. The Americans agreed that the Mid-Atlantic Air Gap should be closed with 255 B-24s - 75 provided by the USAAF, 60 by the USN, and 120 from British allocation. In February 1943 there were 9 VLRs in Iceland, and 9 in 15 Group for a total of 18 operating. There were none on the western side of the Atlantic. By end March there were 20 VLRs and by mid-April 41, all with British crews.

May 22, 1943. Doenitz ordered the U-boats back to base. "The conflict between the desire to devote the maximum strength to bombing Germany and the Admiralty's deep anxiety regarding our losses from U-boats was thus reopened in March 1943. As the Admiralty saw it, the whole grand strategy of the Allies depended on defeating the U-boats....In addition to bombing the U-boat bases.... the crucial needs were, in the Naval Staff's opinion, to provide more VLR aircraft, to expedite the entry of escort carriers into service, and to gain the use of bases in the Azores. Bomber Command and the Air Staff considered that the 'softening process' , which could only be applied to Germany by the persistent use of the heavy bombers against land targets, was the essential preliminary to victory. Against that the Admiralty argued that the art of grand strategy was to employ all our forces in furtherance of a common aim, that the accepted aim was the strategic offensive by all arms into Europe, and that the destruction of the U-boats was the necessary prelude to the successful mounting and maintenance of our offensive plans. Such was the problem which the Cabinet ........ had to resolve. In effect it was resolved by something of a compromise. The Admiralty's needs were met, though not as quickly as that department wished, the U-boats were defeated - though only after they had inflicted terrible losses on us and our allies - and the bombing of Germany continued. Whether final victory would have come sooner had our forces been differently allocated at an earlier date is likely to continue to be a subject of dispute. For what it is worth this writer's view is that in the early spring of 1943 we had a very narrow escape from defeat in the Atlantic; and that, had we suffered such a defeat, history would have judged that the main cause had been the lack of two more squadrons of very long range aircraft for convoy escort duties": Roskill: The War At Sea. Volume II, page 370-371.

Conclusions:

1. Merchant shipping losses in the North Atlantic Jan to May 1943 were 1,336,650 tons (228 ships) January 172,691 tons (27 ships) February 288,625 (46) March 476,349 (82) April 235,478 (39) May 163,507 (34)

2. The March number was at an unsustainable rate meaning convoy was failing and would have to be suspended even though there was nothing better to replace it.

3. How many fewer ships would have been sunk if those B-24s listed by Alex Smart had been used to close the air gap: AL504 used to transport Churchill's silk underwear (according to Bill Walker), the 26 that were destroyed in accidents, the 6 sent to the MAAF, and the 11 to 45 Group (Canada) to become Transport aircraft - a grand total of 44 B-24s that could have been converted to VLR? Would these have saved 1 ship? 20 ships? 200 ships? Have a guess!

4. What would have been the effect on sinkings if the first Lancasters produced in August 1942 had been converted to VLR (removing gun turrets, armour, self-sealing tanks, and fitment of extra tanks in the bomb-bay, depth charges, bombs etc) and used to escort the convoys from September 1942 onwards when shipping losses were 1,644,142 tons (286 ships)? September 473,585 tons (95 ships) October 399,715 (62) November 508,707 (83) December 262,135 (46) Have a guess about how many ships would have been saved by 70 Lancaster VLRs! How about half (143 ships)?

5. "The resources devoted to strategic bombing might more usefully have been used in other ways: providing large tactical air forces; strengthening air-sea collaboration (NB); producing more and better tanks; or, above all, concentrating research and production on high-quality air technology (long-range fighters, for example, or guided weapons), which might have made bombing a more effective campaign for all three states that tried it." Richard Overy: The Bombing War, page 633.

6. Richard Overy has moved on from trying to defend the indefensible. His latest book has caught up with common sense that the area bombing campaign was The Greatest Miscalculation (page 607). Hopefully the prickly contributors to this website can now make a similar mental leap.

Tony

[Kutscha]

Ah, Tony would you mind editing your post to include some line spacing as line after line after line of text is very hard to read.

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Kutscha

Ah, Tony would you mind editing your post to include some line spacing as line after line after line of text is very hard to read.

I would if I could, but I can't. I've tried twice and it won't accept the changes. Tony

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

I would if I could, but I can't. I've tried twice and it won't accept the changes. Tony

It's just a matter of posting, then using the "Edit" button. Make the changes and hit the "Save" button.

That's what worked for me. You might want to try it by going back in and cutting out that snarky last sentence in your post.

[tcolvin]

Thank you. Nick. But there is no edit button whereby I can accommodate your wishes. So perhaps you could oblige me by removing the last point. Being snarky is in the eye of the beholder, and beholding it in this thread (posting number 18) I preferred to call it prickly.
Tony

[John Beaman]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

Thank you. Nick. But there is no edit button whereby I can accommodate your wishes. So perhaps you could oblige me by removing the last point. Being snarky is in the eye of the beholder, and beholding it in this thread (posting number 18) I preferred to call it prickly.
Tony

Tony, are you saying that when you view a posting, your own included, that after you actually post it there is no "edit" button in the lower right of your screen or also a "quote" button along with two other buttons? When I view your posts, the buttons are there. Please explain what you see on your screen.

As for being snarky or "prickly", those have no place on this forum.
Be careful.

[Kutscha]

Here is some data acquired many years ago (source forgotten):

Numbers of ships arriving and losses in North Atlantic convoys inbound to Britain (ships arriving/losses)

1939 700/5 (.71%)
1940 5,434/133 ((2.5%)
1941 5,923/153 (2.6%)
1942 4,798/80 (1.7%)
1943 5,667/87 (1.5%)
1944 7,410/8 (0.1%)

The most comprehensive inet source on U-boats is http://www.uboat.net

Please take a look Tony, especially http://www.uboat.net/technical/shipyards/ for the number produced by each shipyard.