Stalking the U-Boat: USAAF Offensive Antisubmarine Operations in World War II by Max Schoenfeld

Abstract

262 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Stalking the U-Boat: USAAF Offensive Antisubmarine Operations in World War II. By Max Schoenfeld. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Insti­ tution Press, 1994. Pp. xi+231; illustrations, maps, tables, appendi­ ces, notes, bibliography, index. $37.50 (cloth). The organization of the United States Army Air Force Antisubma­ rine Command (AAFAC) in October 1942 revived the old struggle between the army and the navy over who should control land-based aircraft operating over the sea. Also at issue was the way to conduct anti-U-boat operations. The Battle of the Atlantic was rising to a crescendo in March and April 1943, after which the tide would turn in favor of the Allies. The two groups created to be the AAFAC, the 479th and the 480th, represented the ultimate development of equipment of the day. Their B-24D Liberators with 10-centimetric radar were on the cutting edge of technology as well as being the longest-ranged landplanes available. They were based first in New­ foundland, then in the United Kingdom under the Royal Air Force’s Coastal Command, and finally at Craw Field, Port Lyuatey, North Africa, under the United States Navy. At first the aircraft and crews suffered from their inexperience. Once in Britain, they learned under the expert tutelage of Coastal Command, which was launching its offensive to make crossing the Bay of Biscay hazardous for U-boats. Coastal Command welcomed the B-24s because the Germans hadjust developed Metox, a receiver that could detect the probing waves of the new Leigh-Light Welling­ ton’s radar but which would not be able to detect the 10-centimetric radar carried by the B-24Ds for another year. The USAAF SCR-515, later supplanted by the SCR-717, had a range of from 10 to 20 miles against U-boats and about 40 miles for coastlines. The problem was sea clutter, especially as the aircraft came down to attack heights of 50 to 200 feet above the sea, when the U-boat target would disappear from the radar. Usually by then the submarine was in sight. The problem was to drop depth charges in a line at 100-foot intervals starting ahead of the swirl left by the boat’s conning tower. In order to be lethal, the depth charges had to land very close to the pressure hull within ten seconds of the disap­ pearance of the U-boat. This degree of precision required excellent performance from the crew members concerned to spot, stalk, and attack the rarely sighted boats (the number of hours of patrolling per sighting varied from roughly eighty-seven when Grand-Admiral Karl Doenitz ordered his craft to stay on the surface and fight with their 20-millimeter cannon to over sixteen hundred when he at last ordered them to transit submerged). The problems for the airmen were manifold. They had to home in undetected on a U-boat (a task aided by the sounds of the diesels, which made it impossible for lookouts to hear aircraft) so as to catch it on the surface or onlyjust submerged, as the depth charge fuses TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 263 were set for 25 feet. But there was no low-level bombsight, the B-24s bomb bay doors were fitted with elastic safety latches that would not allow the bombs to be dropped unless the doors were fully opened, the bomb-release gear frequently malfunctioned, and even if all went well the charges might not explode after they entered the wa­ ter. On top of this, the special cameras also failed to function on occasion so that damage assessment had to be based on eye-witness reports. In the great hunting season ofJuly and August 1943, when U-boats stayed on the surface to fight, aircraft began to be lost. More followed when Luftwaffe patrols roamed the Bay of Biscay. The Lib­ erator was well enough armed that it could beat a singleJu-88 or a single FW-200, but usually not more than one. As Max Schoenfeld, earlier a student of Winston Churchill, re­ lates, this was an offensive war against submarines which neither the army nor the...