![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Allies gained the upper hand by organizing their convoy system, breaking the Enigma code, developing coordinated and deadly air and ship attacks, closing unprotected areas in the Atlantic and building about 4,700 new ships, including 2,700 Liberty ships - more of them built in Baltimore than anywhere else. Paul Kemp's 288-page book, "U-Boats Destroyed" (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1997) reinforces the impression of lemmings diving over the cliff. Herbert Werner, a U-boat captain, called his 1969 book "Iron Coffins" and wrote that Allied air power made some missions suicidal. What Blair finds "most shocking of all, 215 U-boats (33 percent) were lost on first patrols, usually before the green crews had learned the ropes or inflicted any damage on Allied shipping." ![]() Blair attributes to the German historian Axel Niestle the conclusion that of 859 U-boats that set off on war patrols, 648 were lost - 75 percent. It was the German subs that were in perilous waters. Of 43,526 merchant ships in these convoys, 272 were sunk. From September 1942 to May 1945, Blair writes, "99.4 percent of Allied merchant ships sailing in North American convoys reached their destinations intact." During this time, the Allied sailed 953 convoys east and west on the North Atlantic and Middle Atlantic runs. ![]()
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