The Battle of the Convoys

Churchill wrote that the only thing that really worried him was the submarine menace. The Battle of the Atlantic reached its crescendo in 1943, when operations in North Africa drew escorts away from the Atlantic, and Britain depended utterly on the main North Atlantic convoy routes at the very time that German submarines, concentrated in “wolf packs,” redoubled their efforts, paying particular attention to the narrowing gap in mid-Atlantic left uncovered by land-based aircraft. ULTRA proved decisive, enabling escorts to find submarines with accuracy: the Germans lost 47 in May alone. Sinkings continued, but the battle was won by the end of the month.

Above, the Torch convoy at sea, November 1942. The convoy was kept under an air umbrella that reduced the risk of attack, but demands imposed on convoy escorts by the demands of North Africa were to influence the Battle of the Atlantic.

Arctic convoys ferried supplies to Russia. Here the cruiser HMS Belfast is at sea in northern waters, March 1943.

Most British warships relied on multi-barrelled automatic “pom-poms” for close defence against aircraft. This air spotter, binoculars at the ready, watches for hostile aircraft.

The cruiser HMS Sheffield, on the same convoy as the Belfast, has both forward turrets trained to the beam to avoid damage to their canvas blast screens. Nevertheless, one turret roof was torn right off by a wave.

Depth-charges dropped by a Canadian corvette ship. The Canadians, short of modern equipment and adequate destroyers, had a particularly hard war in the Atlantic.

A U-Boat commander at his periscope. German submarine crews had a horrifyingly high casualty rate: 40,900 men served in submarines during the war, and 28,000 perished. Admiral Dönitz, Commander-in-Chief of the German navy, lost both his sailor sons, one in a submarine.

The last moments of a freighter, seen from a submarine. From January to May 1943 Allied shipping loses averaged 450,000 tons per month.

U625 sinking after depth-charge attack by a Sunderland of 422 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, March 10, 1944.

This U-Boat, attacked at periscope depth by a Sunderland, was brought to the surface by depth charges and then sunk.

Merchant seamen scramble aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter.

Firemen “Bonny” Bartell and “Snowy” Foster, both of Canning Town in East London, come up for a breather on a North African Convoy, July 1943.

Britain at War, 1942 — Part 2

Members of the Women's Land Army ploughing in Hertfordshire, March 1942.

Between January 1942 and D-Day in 1944 more than a million and a half U.S. servicemen arrived in Britain. There were complaints that the Americans were “overpaid, oversexed and over here,” but paradoxically most civilians were sympathetic to black G.I.s, victims of colour bars in their own army.

Although women did not fly in direct combat, 166 served in the Air Transport Auxiliary which ferried aircraft from factories to their bases, and servicewomen like this Wren (from WRNS, Women's Royal Naval Service) radio mechanic flew to test radios.

In 1942 the Germans mounted hit and run “Baedeker raids” on historic cities in retaliation for raids on Lübeck and Rostock. Canterbury cathedral was damaged in June.

Many anti-aircraft batteries has male and female personnel. These women of the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) operate a mobile power-plant on an anti-aircraft site in December 1942.

Britain at War, 1942 — Part 1

Britain was emphatically a nation at war. Food rationing began in January 1940, and that autumn saw the beginning of the London Blitz, with endemic air raids thereafter. A 1940 extension of the 1939 Emergency Powers Act gave the government “complete control over… all persons, rich and poor… and all property.” Britain mobilized a higher proportion of its population than any other combatant: by June 1944, 22% of the working population was in the services and another 33% in war work. Women replaced men in factories, public transport and on the land. Men were not only drafted into the forces, but eventually down the mines as well.

Mrs Minnie Murless of the Wynnstay guest house (above) clips the ration books of her guests. There were weekly forms for butcher and grocer, and every two month the local Food Office required detailed lists of consumption. Fuel and animal food required separate permits.

“Local defense,” reads the original caption, “releases men for overseas offense.” Like most Home Guard units, this one includes those too old or too young for regular service as well as men in some key occupations which spared them regular call-up.

Rail travel was cramped and uncertain. Here a member of the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) and a soldier sit on their luggage in the corridor of a London to Scotland express.

In May 1942 Molotov, the Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs, flew to England to sign a Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance. Here he is walking next to Churchill in the garden of No 10 Downing Street. Clement Attlee, Deputy Prime Minister, is shrouded in tobacco smoke in the centre of the photograph, and Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, is just behind Churchill.

Russian ambassador Ivan Maisky accepts the first tank produced under the “Tanks for Russia” scheme. War material was shipped to Russia, often at great cost, in the arctic convoys through the Norwegian and Barents seas.

North Africa — Part 2

The fall of Tobruk on June 21, was a heavy blow to Churchill. Here the first German vehicle to enter the town pauses in front of abandoned vehicles and a sign, couched in Tommy's humour, pointing to a barber shop.

By September 1941 there were nearly 60,000 South African troops in Egypt, 15,000 of them black: all had volunteered to serve outside South Africa, and wore an orange strip on their epaulettes to mark the fact. 1st South African Division was bloodily engaged during Operation Crusader, and the over 10,000 South Africans were captured when Tobruk fell. These South Africans take cover while their truck is bombed, June 4, 1942.

German tanks roll eastwards following British withdrawal from Gazala.

One of a series of photographs taken in July, just after Rommel had been checked at “First Alamein,” showing British guardsmen practising an advance with tanks. At this juncture the “brave but baffled” 8th Army was holding a strong position just west of the little railway halt of El Alamein, but it did not fully find its feet until the arrival of Montgomery in mid-August.

German reinforcements moving up by train to the El Alamein front in October.

Montgomery preferred to let metal, not flesh, do the business of battle. On the night of October 23-24, 882 guns pounded the Axis defences before his men began to break into them.

Japanese Invasion of Singapore

After landing in Thailand and Malaya on December 8, 1941, the Japanese moved swiftly southwards and on January the causeway linking Singapore island with the mainland was blown by British engineers. On the night of February 8, the Japanese crossed the Johore Strait, and made good progress against a disorganized defense. Although Churchill had ordered that the battle should be fought “to the bitter end,” the loss of much of the city’s water supply persuaded Lieutenant General Arthur Percival to surrender. Churchill called the surrender, of some 85,000 men, “the worst disaster… in British military history.”

Singapore’s coast defense guns, like this one, became the topic of ill-informed postwar criticism. They were designed to engage warships, and so they naturally pointed out to sea — though some could also fire inland. From 1937, British planners recognized that the main threat to Singapore came from landings to it’s North.

Some women, children, and key specialists were evacuated. The decision as to whether wives and children should be evacuated was an agonizing one, and for many families this grim parting in Singapore’s bomb-ravaged docks was the last.

Surrender negotiations began at 11:30 on the morning of Sunday, February 15th, when a ceasefire was arranged. There was a surrender ceremony in the Ford factory at Bukit Timah that afternoon: the British delegation was kept waiting outside before it began.

Lend-Lease

Though President Roosevelt was firmly convinced that an Axis victory would be disastrous, isolationism in Congress and the electorate compelled him to proceed with caution. In December 1940 Churchill told him of the damage done by German submarines, and warned that the time was approaching when Britain would not be able to pay for munitions. The Lend-Lease bill, introduced into Congress in January 1941, empowered the president to transfer any defense material to any nation whose defense he believed vital to United States’ interests. Although isolationists fought hard, the bill became law in March, and proved a key turning-point in US foreign policy.

Although the Thompson sub-machine gun was not an ideal military weapon (above), its American symbolism, arising from prewar gangster films, made it another propaganda coup. The British soon replaced it by the cheaper and lighter Sten, though it remained in limited service.

The Middle East

A treaty permitted the stationing of British troops in Iraq, but in May the Iraqis, emboldened by Britain's misfortunes elsewhere, besieged the air base at Habbaniya. Churchill, concerned about the threat of oil supplies and the danger of German build-up, ordered Wavell to send troops from Palestine to relieve it, but when they arrived the siege had been lifted. In Syria and the Lebanon substantial French forces under General Dentz remained loyal to the Vichy regime. When they gave aid to the Iraqis and allowed German aircraft to land, the British decided to take action. Although Free French, as well as Australian, British and Indian units participated in the invasion, which began in June, Vichy troops fought with unexpected determination, and an armistice was not signed till July 14, 1941.

Above, an RAF armoured car from the Habbaniya base enters Fort Rutbah, Iraq, on May 16. There were few Germans and Italians in Iraq, and the pro-Axis elements in Iraq lacked both troops and a cohesive
plan: Baghdad itself fell on May 31.

After the German invasion of Russia, British and Russian troops jointly invaded Iran, where German influence was strong, in August 1941 to secure an overland route to Russia. A captured Iranian officer (below) talks to a British officer, through an interpreter, near an Anglo-Iranian Oil Company refinery at the head of the Gulf.

The Atlantic Charter

In July 1941, presidential envoy Harry Hopkins told British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that President Roosevelt would like a personal meeting. Churchill grasped the opportunity to draw the U.S. closer to the beleaguered Britain. The meeting took place in early August off Newfoundland. Churchill arrived in the HMS Prince of Wales and Roosevelt in the USS Augusta. Roosevelt suggested a joint declaration of principles, and the Atlantic Charter, agreed on August 12, bound both states to forswear territorial aggrandisement, support self-determination and establish a peace bringing "freedom from want."

Despite its bland tone, the Charter aligned the U.S. — though still technically neutral — firmly against Germany. One of the least-posed of a series of photographs of the meeting (above) shows Roosevelt and Churchill with General George C. Marshall, U.S. Army Chief of Staff (over Churchill's left shoulder) and, on Marshall's right, Admiral Ernest J.King, later Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. fleet. The balding civilian in profile is U.S. Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles, who helped his British opposite number, Sir Alexander Cadogan, to prepare the Charter.

The Blitz

The Blitz — an abbreviation of Blitzkrieg (Lightning War) — was the name given to German attacks on British cities in 1940-41. London was bombed by accident on the night of August 24, and the RAF responded by bombing Berlin the following night. In early September, Goering unwisely shifted the Luftwaffe's main effort from airfields to cities, and “Black Saturday,” September 7, saw the first major raid on London. When the Blitz ended in May 1941, over 43,000 civilians had been killed and great tracts of ancient cities and industrial centres devastated — but popular resolve had not been broken.

The Blitz did not just hit London and major provincial cities like Bristol and Liverpool. Here Churchill inspects bomb damage (above) in little Ramsgate.

On November 13, German bombers struck Coventry in the midlands, destroying not only twelve armaments factories but also part of the city centre and the 14th-Century cathedral (below).

More British Preparations

As England prepared for impending invasion by Germany’s armed and naval forces, beach defenses transformed the British coast. These little girls (above) look wistfully at the wired-off sand where they normally would’ve been allowed to play in the peaceful days prior.

When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was asked what should be done with “enemy aliens” — German and Italian citizens in England at the outbreak of war (many of them refugees, Jewish and non-Jewish) — his reply was characteristic: “Collar the lot.” Here on May 29, 1940, women and children (below), escorted by police and officials, board a train which will take them to internment on the Isle of Man.

Britain Prepares

With the fall of France, Britain stood alone and Churchill presciently informed his countrymen that Hitler would have to “break us in this island or lose the war.” Serious preparations were made to meet an invasion, although, with so much of its equipment lost in France, the army was pitifully weak. The evacuation of children from London and other major cities, begun the previous year but reversed (despite government pleas) as many children returned to the cities when air attacks did not materialize, resumed, and Britain braced itself for a long war.

The battle of France was still being fought when these little evacuees left London (above). A policeman is checking one little tot's label to make sure she boards the right train.

Signposts and other direction indicators (below), which would have helped the invaders to find their way around the country, were taken down.

The Miracle of Dunkirk

The Dunkirk evacuation, code named “Operation Dynamo” by the British, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France, between May 26 and June 4 1940, when British, French and Canadian troops were cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk.

In a speech to the House of Commons, which has since come to be known as “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” Winston Churchill called it the greatest military defeat for many centuries, warning that “the whole root, the core, and brain of the British Army” was stranded in Dunkirk. He hailed their subsequent rescue as a "miracle of deliverance."

On the first day only 7,010 men were evacuated but by the ninth day a total of 338,226 soldiers — 198,229 British and 139,997 French — were rescued by the hastily-assembled fleet of 860 boats. Many of the troops were able to embark from the harbor’s protective mole onto 42 British destroyers and other large ships, while others had to wade from the beaches toward the ships, waiting for hours to board, shoulder-deep in water. Others were ferried from the beaches to the larger ships, and thousands were carried back to England, by the famous "little ships of Dunkirk," a flotilla of around 700 merchant marine boats, fishing boats, pleasure craft and Royal National Lifeboat Institution lifeboats.

Churchill Becomes Prime Minister

Churchill had joined the War Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty on the outbreak of war, and replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister in the furor that followed the disastrous Norwegian campaign. Here he confers with Gort and his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Pownall. The latter pointed out in his diaries that it was not easy to work with Churchill. “Can nobody prevent him,” he wrote on May 24, “trying to conduct operations himself as a sort of super Commander-in-Chief?” However, Churchill’s energy and resolve had a terrific impact on the British war effort: his flaws, like his strengths, were on a grand scale, but he was the man of the hour. This image was taken in France on November 5, 1939, while Churchill was still First Lord of the Admiralty.