Northwest Approaches of Ireland.

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VIA: Neutral Shores, Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic

After the fall of France in June 1940 the Admiralty was forced to abandon the Southwest Approaches as a convoy route. Instead, all convoys for the rest of the war would go “north about Ireland.” The difficulty in sustaining this new convoy route was compounded by a lack of naval escorts equipped with radar.

The German U-boat command appreciated what was happening and made its dispositions accordingly. The result was that between July and October 1940 a total of 282 ships were sunk off the Northwest Approaches of Ireland. A German report described the effects of these vulnerabilities. “There were at times surprisingly high sinking figures in successive short operations near the North Channel. The U-boats pursued homeward-bound ships close to the coast and attacked convoys whose escorts could not deal even with single U-boat attacks.”

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VIA: Neutral Shores, Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic.

October 1940 and U-boats were operating further from the Irish coast in The Northwest Approaches, closer to Rockall now compared to the in attacks that were wreaked on the convoys in August around the North channel and Donegal coasts. Convoy protection was still weak due to a lack of effective convoy escorts and the U-boat tactics of surface attacks at night were successful.
This success prompted the Admiralty to issue an order on 06 October that all merchant ships with a max speed of less than 11 knots were no longer required to zigzag to avoid U-boats.

Those merchant ships that lost contact with their convoy and escorts were always vulnerable. The Norwegian ship TOURAINE lost contact with convoy OB-225 on the night of 06/07 October. Sailing alone on the evening of 07 October the ship was attacked and sunk by U-59.

The crew managed to abandon ship in three lifeboats, one came ashore at Arranmore Island on the 9th with the second landing at Tory Island on the 10th.

U-59 would remain patrol and was not yet finished sending stricken sailors ashore to Ireland.

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VIA: Neutral Shores, Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic.

08 October 1940 and a large troop convoy 85’ northwest of Malin Head sighted an FW200. WS-3 was a large troop convoy with a strong escort en-route to Alexandria, Egypt. The FW200 made an attack run on the troop transport ORONSAY and dropped several near misses that caused concussive damage to the ship and temporarily disabled the propulsion.

One engine was brought back into operation and partial propulsion restored, ORONSAY began the slow return to Greenock escorted by the armed merchant cruiser HMS CHESHIRE and the destroyers HMS ARROW and HMCS OTTOWA. Meanwhile the Admiralty had dispatched three rescue tugs from Greenock, the light cruiser HMS CAIRO was ordered to depart from Belfast and the destroyer HMS SABRE from Londonderry.

The FW200 would be spotted by several other ships that morning in the Northwest Approaches and near Tory Island.
ORONSAY would safely make back to the Clyde under heavy escort.

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The Armed Merchant Cruisers (AMC) of the Royal Navy were converted passenger ships that were employed for convoy protection against enemy warships and surface raiders.

From 1939 to 1941 an AMC would be used as part of the ocean escort for convoys coming from Halifax, Canada and Freetown, Sierra Leone. The AMC was particularly vulnerable to U-boat attack and in 1940 six would be sunk in the Western Approaches, nine sunk in total in the Atlantic and several others damaged.

To protect the AMC’s escorting HX (Halifax to UK) convoys and avoid the area in the Northwest Approaches were U-boats patrolled, on 08 October 1940 the Admiralty issued an ordered that no AMC’s should not proceed beyond 20° west and at least one long range destroyer be made available to meet the inbound convoy.

One of the AMC’s sunk earlier on 10 August 1940 was HMS TRANSYLVANIA, hit by one torpedo from U-56 40’ northwest of Malin Head, County Donegal.

VIA: Neutral Shores, Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic.

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VIA: Neutral Shores, Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic.

In 1944 the U-boats had been forced to adopt new tactics. These featured submerged penetration of focal areas of trade by individual boats, which then lay in wait for targets of opportunity, made sudden attacks from ambush and then evaded the searching Allied escort groups for prolonged periods.

These "static" tactics seldom caused severe merchant shipping losses because U-boats spent more time avoiding detection than aggressively seeking opportunities to attack. Yet their new success in avoiding detection in areas where the Allies had previously been able to detect and destroy them caused concern.

The new equipment that allowed this dramatic change in U-boat tactics was the schnorkel. This was a comparatively simple device that provided the boats enough air to operate their diesel engines while submerged. The schnorkel greatly reduced a U-boat's vulnerability to searching Allied forces because its small head was far less conspicuous than a U-boats conning tower.

The only remaining area where these schnorkel equipped U-boats could achieve success was in the coastal zones near ports and the focal points of shipping routes such as the North Channel and The Irish Sea. The Germans were earlier encouraged by the schnorkel-equipped U-boats ability to operate in such heavily defended coastal waters as the English Channel. An offensive against coastal shipping in The Irish Sea offered the best chance of inflicting losses on the Allies. With their decision to move into coastal waters using schnorkel equipped U-boats, the Germans created a difficult problem for the Allies because shallow water anti-submarine warfare had been rare since early in the war.

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VIA: Neutral Shores, Ireland and the Battle of the Atlantic

10 October 1940, Fliegerführer Atlantik were active in St Georges Channel. The British cargo ship THORNLEY was at anchor off Milford Haven when it was attacked and machine gunned, there was no casualties from the attack

Pictured below a JU88.